Category Archives: Movies

Jake & Samantha plus 34

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Samantha sometimes had to pinch herself to remind herself it was real. 34 years ago she had met Jake. 8 years later they had married. Last October they had celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary. When Jake had gone off to college two years before Sam they had dated other people, but they both had known. From the first time the ‘lightening bolt’ had struck them in her sophomore year.

She had picked up over the years from her friends that not everyone had what she has. Being married to her ‘ideal’. Some had, but a lot of them had “settled”. Her own sister Ginny had divorced Rudy after 3 years. Not everyone was lucky enough to be married to the person who makes your stomach jump when you look at them. The person who makes your skin tingle for hours after they touch you. When locking eyes with that person physically rocks you.

3 kids and 3 decades later she couldn’t imagine her life turning out any other way. Sure there had been bumps in the road and the scars that life leaves you, but all in all she considered herself the luckiest woman alive. She had seen the effects of not living with your soulmate. Not living with the person who builds you up, but tears you down. A relationship where the sum is greater than the parts.

She had taken for granted that everyone could look across a crowded room like she could at Jake, and have it be just like having sex. The sex itself being out of this world. As they grew older the wrinkles came and a softness that comes with age. But they prided themselves in taking care of themselves for the other person. The feeling that comes with knowing you have the 1 person in the world that makes your life complete.

KMOX Radio: ‘Rocky style’

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About the only benefit to being up at 3:30 am is sometimes catching some very interesting radio shows. Anyone familiar with amplitude modulated broadcasting knows about a phenomenon called “skip”, where the radio signal bouncing off of clouds (at night) in conjunction with humidity and barometric pressure can result in reception of some far off stations. That happened to me Wednesday morning when I happened to turn on my Panasonic RF-P50D (a transistor radio that has the most amazing selectivity and sensitivity).

Kmox CBS Saint Louis broadcasts at 1120 on your AM dial. Their show ‘Our American Stories’ featured the making of Sylvester Stallone’s ‘Rocky’, which began on this date in 1976. The movie’s success was as improbable as the character’s. While $950,000 went a lot further then it does today, it was still a shoestring budget for one hell of a lot of movie. I had forgotten that Stallone wrote it. It was his baby all the way, he birthed it. Without his gumption this amazing movie never would have saw the light of day.

As a seventeen year old when it came out, I thought it was a boxing movie. Ha. All it encompassed was the sometimes pretty, sometimes ugly story of human triumph. Not bad for 2 hours. The story about the casting was a hoot. Meryl Streep, Bette Midler, Cher all wanted the Adrian role. Francis Ford Coppola’s sister Talia Shire got it. Stallone wanted Lee J. Cobb for the ‘Mickey’ part. Cobb tells Stallone, “I don’t read” (audition). ‘Apollo’ played by Carl Weathers after making mince meat out of Stallone in the boxing audition, “Maybe he’ll get better.”

To hear Sylvester tell about Ken Norton auditioning, Joe Frazier, brought back all the memories of just how huge boxing was in the 70’s. In fact I was completely unaware of the real life inspiration for the movie, the March 1975 bout between longshot Chuck Wepner and reigning World Champion Muhammad Ali. Wepner was within 20 seconds of going 15 rounds with the champ before succumbing. Unbelievable.

Shooting on the streets of Philadelphia when nobody knew who the hell he was. Doing the ice skating scene where it was supposed to be with 300 extras and 1 shows up. Stallone said that if it hadn’t been for the invention of the Steadicam in 1975 and the mobility this new equipment afforded, Rocky never gets made. A truly fascinating story at 3:30 am.

Maud Lewis

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A most fascinating film was found on Netflix the other day, ‘Maudie’. About a Canadian folk artist who lived from 1903 to 1970. Crippled by rheumatoid arthritis and living a very harsh life in the land of sky blue waters, she nevertheless captured the minds of Canadian art lovers. A beautiful and fascinating person.

Loving Vincent

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While Hollywood is busy making remakes (Murder On The Orient Express being the latest example), indies continue to advance the cinematic art. Loving Vincent is a good example of that. A hundred artists hand painted this animated ode to Van Gogh. Over 65,000 frames. An artistic feast for one of the greatest to ever live. If only Almond Branches and the Tower had been included.

They said at the end of the movie that Van Gogh painted 800 paintings in his tragically short 8 year career. With a total of 1 painting sold during his life. Mystery surrounded his death as shown by the film. Loving Vincent closes with that haunting Don McLean song, Starry, Starry Night…

Starry starry night
Paint your palette blue and gray
Look out on a summer’s day
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul

Shadows on the hills
Sketch the trees and the daffodils
Catch the breeze and the winter chills
In colors on the snowy linen land

Now I understand

What you tried to say to me
How you suffered for your sanity
How you tried to set them free
They would not listen they did not know how
Perhaps they’ll listen now

Starry starry night
Flaming flowers that brightly blaze
Swirling clouds in violet haze
Reflect in Vincent’s eyes of china blue

Colors changing hue
Morning fields of amber grain
Weathered faces lined in pain
Are soothed beneath the artist’s loving hand

Now I understand
What you tried to say to me
How you suffered for your sanity
How you tried to set them free
They would not listen, they did not know how

Perhaps they’ll listen now

The field

 

25 Hill

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Corbin Bernsen does it again with 25 Hill. Written, directed, produced by. Simple, original, faith movie. Real people, real locations. A son without a father and a father without a son get together to fill each others voids and ride to soap box glory!

2011, also stars Ralph Waite. Nathan Gamble plays Trey ‘Wheels’ Caldwell.

Police Story

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Watching reruns on the retro TV channels in central Iowa has led me to a couple of conclusions. There are your ‘bubblegum’ shows, Gilligan’s Island, Brady Bunch, shows that are just fun. Not Masterpiece Theater, but they stand the test of time. Then you have your shows that didn’t stand the test of time, Night Court, Jefferson’s, Hogan’s Heroes.

Three shows that I didn’t watch when they came out, knocked my socks off in reruns. Police Story, Heat of the Night and the original half hour black and white episodes of Gunsmoke . Only one was a ratings bonanza, Gunsmoke. The other two ran 6 years each. They had respectable ratings, but not “out of this world”.

In the case of Police Story and Heat of the Night I think they had 3 things going for them. The writing, the acting and the location filming (I realize Heat wasn’t filmed in Sparta, Mississippi). Today’s television suffers horribly in comparison. It reminds me of the Star Wars series. George Lucas thought the second set of films were superior because of the whiz bang special effects. How clueless can you be? That’s not why people loved Star Wars.

Is a person’s taste in art at all quantifiable? It’s so subjective. I suppose in the end TV as art can be judged with a real simple test; ratings. Movies on the other hand have always had as their gold standard for worthiness the Academy Awards. Which went after how few people watched, their trophies were handed out by the anointed few, not the masses.

It’s hard to say what’s “good” and what isn’t. Part of it is the barren wasteland of modern TV, the older shows stand out in such contrast. They’ve also done studies that show that what you were exposed to between the ages of 8-15 become your “comfort” shows later in life. No doubt your own demographic plays a large part too. Who knows, its hard to put a number on art. We do know what we like though.

Something changed around ’81 and shows like Hill Street Blues. They took themselves so seriously, they forgot one important point: The characters have to be likeable. Weird, right? Nobody on that show was likeable. I’ve never seen my theory about what makes a movie or TV show watchable proven wrong. You need quality writing, good cinematography and actors that people can empathize with.

You can see which ones were successful at this by which ones from the 80s and 90s are shown in reruns today. Two of the most widely shown reruns of the Police Story genre shown today are Walker Texas Ranger and Magnum PI. Quality production with likeable people. Another thing Police Story had going for it besides that, was the genius in having an entirely new cast every week! It never got stale!

Rust

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Corbin Bernsen hit one out of the park with his “written, directed and produced” by movie ‘Rust’. Sure I have an affinity for the small budget indie movie, and for good reason. Having come from a small town on the northern plains, I know what one looks like in the winter time. It doesn’t look like one of those Hallmark Channel ‘Winter Holiday’ movies, with fake snow, fake people, fake buildings and fake towns. This movie screamed real. It was set in Kipling, Saskatchewan, it doesn’t get anymore real than that.

Bernsen plays a preacher who upon losing his faith returns to the comfort of his hometown decades later. The pickup he drives is a real GM 1500. The houses are real houses not palatial mansions. The people have the lumps and bumps we all have, not the look of people that could have just sprung off the pages of a glossy magazine. They used mostly folks from Kipling itself. It reminded me a lot of what they did with local talent in Winter’s Bone, an exceptional movie.

There’s a scene where Bernson is talking to his mentor in the living room late on a winter afternoon. They used just window light to caress each man’s face and bring out the character in each. Hollywood never would have done that. Low winter sun is beyond them. Sure the scene with the volleyball coach is a little stiff using an amateur. Sure his “sister” was not a professional, but it worked. And like his “dad” worked really well. So take that Hollywood.

I’ll take a low budget indie anytime over what Hollywood puts out. And as much as I enjoy the cheesy goodness of a winter Hallmark movie, after awhile the lack of any snow melting on an obviously 70 degree day it becomes painfully obvious they’re on a synthetic lot, and not really in Hometown, Ohio.

The Dream Factory

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‘Saboteur’, (1942)

How devastated I was! To discover once again the barren wasteland that typifies Hollywood’s creativity bucket. I’m channel flipping and come to the end of a movie on TCM. The hero for some reason is advancing on the bad guy at the top of the Statue of Liberty. He’s got a gun on him, yet when the bad guy falls over the rail and is barely hanging on, our hero tries to save him! Well then why were you holding a gun on him?!

Regardless, you see the coat sleeve of the guy in peril slowly bust its seams, then he falls to his death from atop a national monument. That keen computer-like mind of mine kicks in and I think, “Didn’t Hitchcock do this in ‘North by Northwest’, 1959? Yep. A trip to IMDB reveals he didn’t just do it in Saboteur and North by Northwest, he did it nine other times! Yeah! Hitchcock made the same movie 11 times! Incredible. 11 films of the common man wrongly accused fleeing across the country seeking to clear his name (and falling off various famous landmarks I presume).

Oy. They say an author just keeps writing the same story over and over in different forms. At least Harper Lee (Mockingbird) was honest and just wrote one book. People, and that’s assuming Hollywood types are people, respond to positive reinforcement. The reason Hollywood keeps putting out crap, is they make money at it. If people would quit buying tickets to bad movies, and quit watching bad TV, Hollywood would have to change. Way too many people cannot grasp the concept of “voting” with your wallet.

Here are the flat out remakes and different incarnations of the same character currently at local theaters: Spider-Man, Despicable Me, Planet of the Apes, Wonder Woman, Transformers, Cars, The Beguiled, Guardians of the Galaxy and Pirates of the Caribbean. Goodnight that’s pathetic. Why do people SUPPORT bad? I don’t get it. It’s like in our government, we see an ever-growing  collection of idiots and crooks driving our country into the ground. Here’s an idea, quit electing them! I hate being drug down by a nation of fools. I make enough of my own mistakes, I don’t need yours compounding it.

A check of the local channels replaying old TV shows reveals a similar lack of quality. While they may be “original”, they’re certainly not very good, and definitely didn’t age well 30, 40 and 50 years later. Shows like How I Met Your Mother, Night Court, Doogie Howser, Sanford and Son, 2 1/2 Idiots. Its ridiculous. I think back over the 60 years or so of television and what survived well, and once you get past the westerns and some cop shows, there’s only a handful of shows that stood the test of time. Heat of the Night, Police Story, Leave it to Beaver, Adam-12, Brady Bunch, Gilligan’s Island, It Takes a Thief and a few others are the only ones that come to my mind.

Admittedly, taste is demonstrably generational. I’ve heard reports of younger people that purposely watch Saved by the Bell and Friends. And there are older people that enjoy I Love Lucy, for reasons unknown. Nevertheless, I will forever maintain that there is nothing but a tumbleweed blowing across Hollywood’s collective mind. I suppose that would explain the popularity of the various “reality” TV shows. Shows that took Hollywood out of the “creative process”.


Then there are shows like ‘Ghost Whisperer’ that we’ll probably never know why it was popular.

 

 

 

 

Lion

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One of the best movies of 2016 is at the Fleur cinema right now, the Lion. Saroo, a 5 year old boy in 1986 India gets separated from his impoverished family. He ends up 800 miles away on the other side of India near Calcutta. Mispronouncing his own name and slurring together the name of his town and the neighboring town, the few attempts to unite him and his family come to naught.

Months pass and it is now 1987. Saroo escapes the hell hole of an Indian orphanage when a kind Australian couple adopts him. He thrives in the loving and nurturing home of the Brierley’s. He graduates college but is triggered by various events to long for his biological family that he is unable to suppress.  Google Earth is the new technology in 2006 that launches him into the search for his Indian family.

If ever a country exemplified “chaos theory”, it is India. Whether it is the delivery of lunch boxes in Mumbai or the randomness of life and death in Calcutta, Saroo’s survival on the subcontinent could be classified as a miracle or chance. Sue Brierley, Saroo’s adoptive mother looks at it as divine providence for the vision she had as a 12 year old to someday have a brown child.

Looking at the stark differences between the development of India and Australia, you realize the dysfunction of India is by design. The thought that came to my mind in the opening moments of the film, watching India’s teeming hordes of people, is that they are a commodity to the government and corporate leaders of India. No different than any non-living commodity. The difference being that the people of India are subject to unimaginable amounts of misery and suffering.

Indians are as hardworking as anyone else. Indians are as smart as anyone else. Yet for a large part of the people, India is a backwards hellhole. In some ways India didn’t progress until the English came, and that progress stopped when the English left. Australia progressed once the English came, and that progress never stopped. The government of Australia is not trying to hold it’s people down.

Normally a nation is like the 5 year old in the movie. It grows, gets stronger, smarter and more adept. It does not stay as helpless and pathetic for it’s entire life. Africa and India never progressed, except for the elites. It would almost seem harder to make time stand still then it would be to allow natural progression. But for some reason, many parts of the world do not wish their people to have opportunity.

Benevolent neglect would serve the people of India better than the oppression they are subjected to now. They would at least then stand a chance.

“India has the highest number of people below the international poverty line of $1.25 a day. India has the highest number of people living in conditions of slavery, 18 million, most of whom are in bonded labor. India has the largest number of child laborers under the age of 14 in the world with an estimated 12.6 million children engaged in hazardous occupations”. When humans are used and abused as a money making commodity, a stench seems to cover the land.

 

“If The Breakfast Club were made today, it would be a silent film about 5 kids staring at their phones”

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[This was found on YouTube by teacher Brad Zook: “I’ve been a teacher at an American public high school for 26 years. There’s an eerie silence now in the commons before school and the cafeteria at lunch as 100s of teenagers sit at tables with their “friends”, all of them staring at tiny boxes connected to earbuds and disconnected from those around them. I’ve had to enact rather serious consequences for using phones during my class. Many good kids do it anyhow. It’s like they can’t stop. I feel like I’m living in an episode of The Twilight Zone.”]