Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
DigiGods Episode 21: Classy Classics
51 Plays9 years ago
This week, the Gods praise Brie Larson’s Oscar winning performance in Room and Criterion’s Blu-ray of The Graduate. Plus, two featuring Humphrey Bogart and two featuring Frankenstein!
DigiGods Podcast, 03/08/16 (MP3) — 28.74 MB
right click to save
Subscribe to the DigiGods Podcast
In this episode, the Gods discuss:
- American Friends (Limited Edition Collection) (DVD-R)
- Amos & Andrew (Blu-ray)
- Beat Street (Blu-ray)
- The Big Sleep (Blu-ray)
- Breaking Up (New Regency Collection) (DVD-R)
- Carpool (New Regency Collection) (DVD-R)
- Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things (Blu-ray)
- Class (Blu-ray)
- Code 46 (Blu-ray)
- Code 7... Victim 5 / Mozambique (Double Feature) (Blu-ray)
- The Curse / Curse II (Blu-ray)
- The Decline of Western Civilization (Blu-ray)
- The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years (Blu-ray)
- The Forbidden Room (Blu-ray)
- Frankenstein – The Complete Mini-Series Event (Blu-ray)
- Frankenstein (2015) (Blu-ray)
- Goodbye Lover (New Regency Collection) (DVD-R)
- The Graduate (Blu-ray)
- I Confess (Blu-ray)
- I Knew Her Well (Blu-ray)
- In the Heart of the Sea (Blu-ray 3D/DVD)
- Jafar Panahi's Taxi (Blu-ray)
- Key Largo (Blu-ray)
- L'Inhumaine Deluxe Blu-ray Edition (Blu-ray)
- Made in America (New Regency Collection) (DVD-R)
- Millennium / R.O.T.O.R. (Blu-ray)
- Moonlight and Valentino (Blu-ray)
- Mr. Moto Takes a Chance (Cinema Archives) (DVD-R)
- My Boyfriend’s Back (Blu-ray)
- Mystery Date (Blu-ray)
- The New Age (New Regency Collection) (DVD-R)
- The Peanuts Movie: Limited Edition Giftset (Blu-ray/DVD)
- The Power of One (New Regency Collection) (DVD-R)
- Pressure Point (Blu-ray)
- Revolt of the Slaves (Limited Edition Collection) (DVD-R)
- Room (Blu-ray)
- Secret Admirer (Blu-ray)
Recommended
Transcript
Fast and Slow: The Perception of Time
00:00:21
Speaker
All right, and we're back. It's March already, Mark. Can you believe that? I know. It's crazy, right? You know what it is? The first six months of the year always go very fast, and then the second six months go a lot slower. And the third six months goes even faster.
00:00:35
Speaker
Yeah, it's crazy.
Mobile Studio Woes
00:00:36
Speaker
Move the mic closer to your pie hole. Thank you. How's this, Wade? That's slightly better, but yeah. You can tell. After all these years, we're still not much of a production, are we? It's a mobile studio.
00:00:51
Speaker
It's a mobile studio. It has to be, so that we're agile.
Post-Oscar Film Releases
00:00:55
Speaker
So we're still in kind of Oscar cleanup mode a little bit with the movies get released. The weeks that roll by after are, of course, loaded with lots of Oscar contenders that are hoping to capitalize on the possibility of having one Oscars. They roll the dice, right? You think, OK, we stand a good chance of winning an Oscar, so we'll set our Blu-ray and DVD release date for a week or two.
00:01:17
Speaker
after maybe the day after or two days after as it was this year and maybe we'll win something. And very often they don't.
00:01:27
Speaker
So we may as well get right into it,
Ron Howard: A Director's Critique
00:01:29
Speaker
Mark. Yes, we should. We have a ton of, we've got foreign films that I'm hoping we'll get to. So let's get right to it. Let's talk about film that was considered at one moment in time to be a possible Oscar contender, Oscar-winning director, you know, certainly had the pedigree, right? Not just an Oscar-winning director, wait a minute. Somebody whose last film made us think, wow,
00:01:54
Speaker
Ron Howard might have his mojo back again. He might. It looked good for a moment. Sure, Rush was great. My favorite film of that year. That was amazing. And then, what does he follow up Rush with? In the Heart of the Sea. Which, you know what, I mean, look, the idea here was, let's go back to the original story that underlies Moby Dick and let's tell the original story, which sometimes, you know, that's a double-edged sword, right? There are, because sometimes the original story ain't so hot. There's a reason why
00:02:23
Speaker
They get turned into novels and loosely fictionalized stories, because somebody saw something and said, you know what? Not such a great story, but I can make it better. Case in point, Hamlet. The Danish director who did Babette's Feast, whose name's completely skipping me. But he, some years later, made a movie about the actual real story behind Hamlet starring Gabriel Byrne.
00:02:48
Speaker
I mean, this goes back 25 years, but it was like really dull because the real story, they like live in mud huts and the king is like a king of 10 people. And, you know, it's suddenly, it's like really medieval and really dressed down and not very interesting at all. And you realize Shakespeare was, yeah, you need to dress that up a little bit. There's some embellishment required. So here I thought,
00:03:15
Speaker
Well, it's not better than Moby Dick. I mean, it's flamboyant. It's got lots of CG. What is going on? How could this movie ever be better than Moby Dick?
Moby Dick and CGI Overload
00:03:25
Speaker
That's the thing.
00:03:29
Speaker
There's so many other films that tackle seafaring, maritime material better. Just go ahead and watch like the Moby Dick with the horribly miscast Gregory Peck, but still it's a great Moby Dick. Written by Ray Bradbury. Yes, and I read the book. Ray Bradbury wrote a book about the writing of the script, and I read that book. And if you read that book and you watch the movie, A, you don't have to read Moby Dick. You don't have to read Moby Dick. And B, you don't have to see
The Rise and Fall of 3D Films
00:03:56
Speaker
this film.
00:03:56
Speaker
Well, anyway, it takes place 1820 and of course it stars Chris Hemsworth, who is nice and square-jawed and rugged and fits the part perfectly. But, you know, it misses all of the sort of, the fundamental, elemental, dramatic
00:04:15
Speaker
components of Moby Dick. It doesn't feel very well constructed, and it's just kind of a director's showpiece. That said, you know, this may wind up being one of the last sort of non-superhero, non-tentpole 3D movies
00:04:32
Speaker
released to Blu-ray. 3D is kind of going away. 3D is going away. It's going away like we said it would. But I don't see any period films showing up in 3D for a very long time, if ever again. So this may be the last one. Well, let's hope so. Because right now, the home electronic manufacturers, now they're all about the Ultra HD and the 4K. They turned their attention to something else. 3D did not happen. Nope, didn't happen.
00:04:59
Speaker
So if you got a 3D TV and 3D Blu-rays and the goggles and the whole deal, hang on to it because you are going to be able to eBay that stuff in like five years for about a buck 25.
Nostalgia and Collectibles: From Vectrex to Blu-rays
00:05:08
Speaker
It'll be awesome. Like my Vetrex. I have a Vetrex. I love Vetrex. I love Vetrex still. I still do. Do you really? Oh, I own the Vetrex. Yeah, when it came out. You still have it. Oh, God, no. Oh. I sold it. I think I sold it to somebody now. You're going to kill me for this. I think I sold it to somebody for 40 bucks.
00:05:23
Speaker
This was like 15 years ago. I would have bought it from you for 40 bucks. That was the best game ever. With the little joysticks and the whole, oh it was the best. Yes, it was in black and white. The monitor was in black and white and they gave you, with each game you bought, each game you bought came with this plastic color overlay to simulate
00:05:38
Speaker
Now I've got to go on to eBay and buy myself a Vectrex. I'll bet I can get one for like 10 bucks. You know what? Let's waste more time on the show by talking about Vectrex. How do you see how much they are right now? Blu-ray, 3D, DVD, and ultraviolet all on the same thing. Lots of special features. Really interesting stuff, actually, believe it or not, even though the movie's not that good. A lot of behind-the-scenes stuff with Ron Howard and how the movie was planned and put together.
00:06:04
Speaker
Uh, and, you know, the original story. I mean, it's really, really rather elaborate. So, um, it's a, it's a, it's a good set. I mean, the movie is, the movie is lacking, but, uh...
Reviewing 'Room': Emotional Impact or Lack Thereof?
00:06:14
Speaker
Here it is, 338 bucks, I've got treks. Really, 338? Yep. So on the other side of the equation is a film that actually won an Academy Award. It only won one, but it won one, which continues to affirm the fact that films that win the Audience Award at the Toronto Film Festival continue to be Oscar contenders because it was also nominated for Best Picture. And we are, of course, talking about Room, which won Brie Larson, a very deserved Best Actress, finally at long last.
00:06:42
Speaker
You know, for years, she has been right there in the LAFCA Best Actress conversation for movies that nobody sees. You know, it's been like five every year for five years. People like Aubrey Larson in, you know, the bottle that found its way up the side of a mountain. You're like, what? Who? Where? What? You know what else it proves? It proves that when the Academy expanded their best picture nominees from five to 10, these are the films that wound up slipping in.
00:07:06
Speaker
Not Star Wars. True. And not the Avengers. How do you feel about Room? I'm a bit in the minority about Room. I felt that Room took a very respectable, good shot at a very tough subject and didn't quite hit the target for me. Now I don't have kids, so it's possible that people with kids think that it hits them on a different level. For me,
00:07:29
Speaker
you had to spend the first hour, it's a very noble attempt, but to me, you had to spend the first hour, the first hour of that film is very well shot, right? It is. It's claustrophobic, but yet you don't feel like you're gonna kill yourself. True. And so you have to, that first hour has to be so incredible that the second hour just feeds off that, and I didn't feel like I spent enough time in the room for the second hour to affect me as much as I was hoping.
00:07:55
Speaker
Um, but I'm the minority. Yeah. You know, it's a very tender subject. I think everybody knows what it's about. Now I'm, if you don't, I'm not going to tell you, but, uh, as it's one of the best films I've seen about the relationship between a parent and a child.
00:08:09
Speaker
Jacob Tremblay is amazing as the son. He's just phenomenal. She's amazing. She's great. And I got to say, here's what really most impressed me. It's based on a novel, for those who don't know. Lenny Abramson, who directed it, I think has really come of age as a director. He was never on anybody's lips before. He was one of those directors that's sort of there in the back of your head, and you're aware. But the thing that's amazing to me about this film is that there are moments in the film that you know are coming. You're like, OK.
00:08:39
Speaker
I get it. I understand the premise. I know where we're going to go emotionally. I know where you're going to, you know, you're going to turn the screws and you want me to cry here and you want me to cheer here. And you know that those moments are coming because otherwise there'd be no reason to even have the film. It would just, the only other place you could go would be a pit of such unbelievable depression that no one would want, why even make the movie?
00:09:01
Speaker
So you know that those moments are coming, those moments of elation and, you know, catharsis. And you prepare yourself for it because we've all seen, we've all had those emotions in movies before. We're familiar with them. And so you steal yourself for it and you say, okay, it's coming. I know it's coming. I know how I'm going to feel. Let's, you know, I dare you to actually measure up to the best that I know that those moments can be. And son of a bitch, he beats it.
00:09:26
Speaker
he gives you even stronger moments than you know are coming. And I gotta give him credit for that. As a director, to take a moment, an emotional moment, and the audience is expecting it, and they know how they want to feel, and then to exceed that, is really quite a gift. So I think he's, I think the second half of the film is weaker than the first, because you kind, it's sort of anticlimactic. It relies on a different set of emotions, but that being said, there's really no way around it. He kills it where he has to kill it.
Insights in Commentary Tracks
00:09:56
Speaker
Yeah, and again, it's really her film. It's totally her film. If she did not deliver, then it just would have been an exercise in... It would have been too melodramatic is what would have happened. Listen to the commentary here with Lenny Abramson and various crew members. It is really, really worth listening to. There aren't a lot of commentaries these days that I feel give you anything new. This one does. It is really, really worth listening to.
00:10:19
Speaker
And then there are some featurettes, and that's about it. But otherwise, it's wonderful. This is a Blu-ray with digital HD. It is from Lionsgate, which means it is ultraviolet. So enjoy that.
00:10:32
Speaker
We have you, the new, from, what's his name, Sorrentino. Sorrentino.
Sorrentino vs. Fellini: Substance and Style
00:10:38
Speaker
And Sorrentino also directed The Great Beauty to Oscar-winning success, a film that I loved. This one, I just think this thing is just a misfire. It's with Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel. They play these, they're lifelong friends. They're vacationing in the Swiss Alps. And it just becomes this really unbelievable, wait, hang on, who texted me?
00:10:59
Speaker
Someone texted you? Yes. Actually, it's the birthday boy. Oh, well, very good. After this podcast is done, I need to go to a birthday party. That's beautiful. Let's put it out there. Anyway, they're in the Swiss Alps, and I just think this thing is just, it's overwrought, and it's pretentious, and I never bought it, and it's just two up its own butt.
00:11:18
Speaker
Yeah. I agree. You know, I agree. Here's the thing. My problem with Sorrentino, uh, Sorrentino has for, you know, now that he's won an Oscar, he won an Oscar for the, the great beauty, uh, which I loved for which, which I don't particularly love, but I, I get it. But the thing is he's always been kind of posturing himself as the new, uh, Fellini. And, uh, in order to do that, he seems to have missed the fact that before Fellini became the guy that did all of this sort of, uh,
00:11:45
Speaker
overly artificial theatrical weirdness with just strange things happening and all of this kind of orgiastic excess on the screen just for the sake of being indulgent. He actually made movies like Lestrada, which were real movies. You know, they were earthy and they were heartfelt and he sort of earned the right to go bananas. Sorrentino hasn't earned the right to go bananas. He's been making wacky, weird
00:12:08
Speaker
excessive, indulgent movies from day one. So he hasn't really earned that in my mind yet. And then The Great Beauty is just like a Fellini homage. It's just completely parroting Fellini. So, you know, now he's just, it's just more of the same. And it's, you know what, I'm sorry, I had two guys hanging out at a resort in
00:12:26
Speaker
in Switzerland with, what's his face, doing weird little meditative stuff as well. Oh, that scene where the monk levitates. Oh, stop it. None of it makes any sense. It's threadbare, and he's indulgent now. I'm tired of it. I'm done with it. That said, Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel, I guess they're fine, but Paul Dano. Paul Dano's just beautiful.
00:12:51
Speaker
freaking weird stuff. Paul Dano loves
The 'Peanuts' Movie: Necessary or Not?
00:12:55
Speaker
weird. You need to corral him. You need to rein him in. And then the last two of our new movies, before we get into our giant pile of classics, the first one is the Peanuts movie. It doesn't really disgrace Peanuts. The animation's good. They do good characterization. They certainly don't disgrace the
00:12:56
Speaker
That's right.
00:13:16
Speaker
the look and the feel of Peanuts, the voice characterization is fine, but otherwise it's just... You know what's funny? Isn't that remarkable? There was no reason for this movie to exist. You know, it somehow, it so gave me
00:13:29
Speaker
everything I wanted, that in the end I thought, isn't there anything else? At least with a lot of these reboots, like JJ's Star Wars or Star Trek, he's giving you everything you want, but adding just enough so you feel it's like, at least it's new enough, I guess. This one, it gives you everything you want, and yet at the end, it still feels a little empty. Yeah, true.
00:13:49
Speaker
And, you know, Brian Schultz was producer on this, as was Craig Schultz. So, I mean, the Schultz family is represented. It's rated G. It's perfectly fine for kids. But I'll tell you this, my daughter, the thing that most excited her was that when they sent this to us, it came with a little plush Snoopy. She cannot leave that thing alone. She's been sleeping with it for three nights now.
Guy Maddin's 'The Forbidden Room'
00:14:10
Speaker
Yeah. And then the last one on the new film front is The Forbidden Room. Oh my gosh. Did you have a chance to watch this? I did not. Oh my gosh, Mark. Okay, first off, we have to point out this is Guy Madden. Now, here's the thing. I love Guy Madden. So I don't like the fact that I missed this, but I did miss it. Okay. So I just want you to look at the credit bed on the back. Wait a second. Is this in color?
00:14:38
Speaker
Partly. A guy mad in film and color? Partly. Okay. The credit bed. That's a big-ass credit bed. Yeah. Yes, it is. Wow, I've never seen a bigger one. I'm trying to see what it is. Okay, so here's- One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. It's nine lines of text. Yes, it is ridiculous. Well, that is the cast. It's the never-ending cast.
00:14:58
Speaker
Everyone shows up in this movie. You will not believe who shows up in this movie. And they all play double and triple roles, and it's crazy. So no point in naming all the stars that show up in this. Guy Madden, of course, is the Winnipeg Canadian filmmaker who makes movies that look like very odd satires and kind of eccentric genre films that always shot on film, except for he made one that was in digital. But they're all shot on film. They're shot on film that looks like it was shot in the 1930s and then stomped on and rolled over by a truck.
00:15:27
Speaker
Scratched and the sound is bad and you know they all he just makes movies that look really weird in retro So here's what the forbidden room is
00:15:36
Speaker
You start with a guy lecturing you about the glory of baths. And then you go from that into a classic kind of 1940s submarine melodrama, a bunch of guys on a submarine, and it's so far beneath the surface, they can't go up because then some of the ordnance on board will explode and kill them, but they're running out of air. And so what they do is they need to talk to the captain who is in the forbidden room. He's locked up in his little forbidden room.
00:16:04
Speaker
Meanwhile, somehow unexplained to anybody, a lumberjack is able to make his way onto the submarine. And when they ask him how he got on, he starts to tell his story. And his story is the story of him and a bunch of other lumberjacks having to rescue this, this woman, this, you know, dear woman of theirs.
00:16:23
Speaker
from this pack of weird kind of feral humans the wolf pack who live in caves somewhere in the mountains and when he goes in there to liberate her she has amnesia and then from there you go into her backstory and then you go into somebody else's story and then you see a newspaper headline which takes you into another story and there's like a doctor and he operates on a woman and then she has plastic surgery and then his brother. You're talking a lot about a film that no one listening to this podcast will ever see.
00:16:51
Speaker
It's a compelling, fascinating movie and it eventually comes full circle and it wraps around itself and goes back inside itself and up its own intestines. But there are like 55 actors in this thing and there are at least 27 different storylines that all kind of thread in and out and all over the thing. And ultimately you realize he's basically just written a satire like a satirical pastiche of every old movie genre imaginable.
00:17:17
Speaker
And there are things in here that are hilarious and weird and hilarious and weird, but you got to know what you're in for. I mean, it's quite a set. Well, it's a Guy Maddon film. Every Guy Maddon film. It is the most Guy Maddon-y movie I've ever seen. All right, I'm going to make up for lost time because Wade could have talked about that for another 20 minutes.
Documenting the LA Punk Scene
00:17:33
Speaker
We finally have on Blu-ray the landmark documentary, The Decline of Western Civilization.
00:17:39
Speaker
Part one is on a Blu-ray and then decline of Western civilization. Part two is on a separate Blu-ray. You gotta buy him separately. If you are not familiar with this film, then how dare you? It is from 1981 and it is this landmark look at the punk scene in Los Angeles at the time.
00:17:57
Speaker
Part 1 includes Black Flag, Circle Jerks, Fear, Germs, and X. It was produced and directed by Penelope Sveris. And the reason why people love this documentary is, even if you don't like the music, which by the way I kind of don't,
00:18:13
Speaker
These people are outrageously dressed, their personalities are way out there, their music is obnoxious, they lived in this weird drug and alcohol-fueled frenzy of the Los Angeles club scene back then, but Spheras, she doesn't look at their life with any sort of sarcasm or judgment.
00:18:32
Speaker
She has kind of a critical distance, and she looks at their life and what it really is. And so I think as a documentary, it really is very even-handed. It just sort of puts the camera on these bands and lets them go for better or ill. And it's amazing. It's very fresh. And some of the interviewees are just really funny and provocative and just a little crazy. And Decline of Western Civilization 1 is just a landmark documentary. 2 is not as successful. I mean, 2 is just great.
00:19:00
Speaker
That one has Faster Pussycat and Megadeth and a couple others. Also features Alice Cooper and Ozzy Osbourne. But really you should definitely check out Decline 1 because that is the masterpiece right there. Fantastic.
B-Movies and Genre Blends
00:19:14
Speaker
All right, and then I got some double features here just to cut these out of the equation. One's from Blue Underground. This is a kind of an old adventure action double feature of Code 7, Victim 5, and Mozambique. Both of these strictly, strictly B movies, but they're better than average B movies from the 1960s. They kind of
00:19:38
Speaker
A little bit of James Bond, a little bit of the Beach movies, a little bit of kind of go-go stuff. I mean, it's sort of in the same vein when they, like all those the Dean Martin, Matt Helm films, and then the James Coburn, Flint films, which sort of tried to take James Bond into an even groovier, kind of hippier, yeah. It's a little bit of that on a B level. Steve Cochran stars in Mozambique. If you don't know Steve Cochran, he was a good B level solid guy.
00:20:05
Speaker
And then Code 7, Victim 5 stars Lex Barker and Ronald Frazier. Yeah, these are all totally solid. And you'll have a good time with this. So that's worth checking out.
00:20:20
Speaker
blue underground. And then we have a couple from Scream Factory, the division of Shop Factory. This one is Millennium and Rotor. Rotor is an acronym, R-O-T-O-R. Judge, jury, and executioner. Kind of like a judge-dread figure.
00:20:36
Speaker
And Millennium, of course, is kind of a weird retro future cyberpunk noir. Both of these are from the 1980s when these things were, you know, people were cranking these things out in the late 80s. It's when AFM was really just flooded with all this stuff strictly because the video revolution
00:20:56
Speaker
created the straight-to-video boom and these things were being cranked out for next to nothing. The best thing about this is that Cheryl Ladd is in Millennium. So I highly recommend it just because Cheryl Ladd is in it. Daniel J. Trevanti is also in it. Then the other one is the curse and the curse to the bite, as though it wasn't bad enough without the bite, the first curse.
00:21:16
Speaker
Not so good in this case. These are also a couple of 1980s-era straight-to-video genre films, trying to create a straight-to-video franchise at the time. The concept of the curse is basically the same as every other horror film at the time, which is that some kind of otherworldly thing came on a meteor.
00:21:39
Speaker
And next thing you know, people are transforming, kind of a pre-zombie zombie film in some ways. But anyway, directed by David Keith, by the way, who also did Firestarter and went straight downhill from there. And then The Curse 2 is kind of more the same with an even lesser cast that only has of any noteworthy in it, anyone noteworthy. It's got Jamie Farr and Bose Venson, who I saw at the market the other day. I saw Jamie Farr at the market? No, I saw Bose Venson.
00:22:08
Speaker
I thought you said Jamie Farr. Jamie Farr and Bosevenson. And I saw Bosevenson at the market. I've never seen Jamie Farr. Wait, is Jamie Farr still alive? I don't know. That's a good question. We should check. We probably wouldn't know if he wore it. He's probably wearing a dress. Aww. But no, I saw Bosevenson. Every time I see it, and I've seen it like three times in 20 years, but every time I see Bosevenson, I always think, didn't Magnum kill you? It's the first thing that goes through my head. You know. And then I go to the apples.
00:22:32
Speaker
Now, did you see him in Malibu, one of those little convenience stores? No, no, no, no, no, no. Supermarkets you've already seen celebrities have. Also, I'm in Gelsons. They all go to Gelsons. That's not in Malibu. No, they all go to the Gelsons on Sunset Boulevard by the Pacific Palisades. Yeah, that's where they all go. That's where I saw Sydney Pollock, and that's where I... Christmas Eve, honestly, Christmas Eve at that Gelsons is ridiculous. Everybody comes out of the woodwork. I see Martin Short there every year on Thanksgiving, or the day before Thanksgiving, loading up for his big Thanksgiving feast, like three carts worth of food.
00:23:00
Speaker
Now, do you get there when they open and then stay there until you see, like, three, four celebrities and then you're satisfied and you leave? No. It's actually rare to see celebrities there, but there are certain days where they're all over the place. Do you think Martin Short says, every time we go to Gelson's on Thanksgiving, I see Wade Major? I see that guy. Yeah, I see that guy. Unbelievable. All right, a couple of Frankenstein's for you, because you can never have enough Frankenstein.
Critiquing Acting Styles: Houston to Frankenstein
00:23:21
Speaker
Actually, I take that back. You can have enough Frankenstein, especially when they star Danny Houston. Now, Wade and I have this weird,
00:23:30
Speaker
We had to have this weird, irrational dislike of Danny Houston's acting. We really do. But he's been good in a couple of things. I've liked him in a few things. I didn't mind him in Children of Men. I really didn't. Well, Children of Men, I think, is just like that. Even he couldn't destroy Children of Men. But it also has Carrie Anne Moss, who we always like. Anyway, this one, directed by Bernard Rose. Bernard Rose is the guy who directed Candyman. So you know that this Frankenstein. And he also did Immortal Beloved. And he also did a not such a terrible version of
00:23:57
Speaker
Star Wars. Anna Karenina. Really? Yeah. Starring Sophie Marceau. Wasn't bad. Well, he's gone back to doing crap because look, you know, this is not like a real deal. Frankenstein, when the only reviews of this film online are all like bloody discussing dot com horror films dot org. Like nobody legitimate is really reviewing this film because it's just really just a horror film. And
00:24:22
Speaker
What I guess, if you like this kind of stuff, it definitely gets more into the viscera of what the guy looks like and how he's all disgusting and he starts to devolve and lives in this weird environment. I guess if you want to treat it more like straight horror, this might be the Frankenstein for you, but it was not the Frankenstein for me.
00:24:44
Speaker
We also have Frankenstein, the miniseries. Now this is from 2004. Yeah, I remember this. And it's got a terrific cast. It's got Donald Sutherland, William Hurt, Julie Delpy. And you sort of can't really
00:25:03
Speaker
You can't knock the pedigree. I just think that this thing Really was only notable for the makeup which for the time was good actually I believe I wanted Emmy for best makeup But I just think we know between this and I Frank and help you remember I Frankenstein the one there Yeah, yeah, which is horrendous, which is terrible awful
00:25:20
Speaker
You know, the only, the only Frankenstein movie that's really worth it, Young Frankenstein. Well, apart from the original and Bride of Frankenstein, the two James Whale films are pretty great. No, no, no. Just Young Frankenstein. Just Young Frankenstein? Okay. You know, I gotta say this. I know, we never, we never get...
00:25:38
Speaker
We never get political on this show, per se. But honestly, in a week where everyone is talking about Donald Trump's manhood, everything is ridiculous all of a sudden. First of all, after Chris Christie came out and endorsed Trump, and Trump's giving that long speech, and Christie is standing behind him just sort of looking dumbfounded, I kept thinking to myself, it reminds me of something. It reminds me of something. What is this like? This is nagging at me. And then I was like,
00:26:06
Speaker
Peter Boyle right before they sing on stage. Peter Boyle's saying the same look on his face. It was like he was the living incarnation of Peter Boyle in that moment. I just thought that was so funny. Here's some really great stuff. Flicker Alley.
Silent Film Restoration: 'La Noumen'
00:26:21
Speaker
always comes up with some amazing stuff, especially when it's on Blu-ray. Marcel L'Herbier's La Noumen. Without the accent, that would be Marcel L'Herbier's The Inhuman or The Inhumane from Lobster Films. This is now on Blu-ray from Flicker Alley.
00:26:41
Speaker
and it is absolutely dazzling. This is a two-hour movie from 1924 that is one of the most fascinating silent films that I have never seen prior to this. This comes from the Black Hawk Films Collection, which is of course David Shepard's collection. We gave a
00:26:58
Speaker
special award to David Shepard for all of his pioneering effort in preserving silent films at our LAFCA dinner. And everybody got behind this in doing a restoration recently. It's really kind of amazing how gripping this still is this many years after the fact.
00:27:14
Speaker
I was relatively unfamiliar with Marcel L'Herbier. I was unfamiliar with this film. And it's quite a discovery. It is visually a feast. It is a fascinating, silent avant-garde movie that winds up being still very much ahead of its time. And you just have to see it. You got to get this. If you are a true cinephile, you definitely want to have this on your shelf.
00:27:42
Speaker
The idea here is that the title is named for the woman, this inhumane woman. She's kind of mad and lives just outside of Paris.
00:27:56
Speaker
She is kind of, what do you want to say, not like a lady of the night, but she's, well, no, but she's like a seductress. Let's just say she's a seductress. And it becomes a, it almost, I would, let me leave it here. I almost, in watching this, it dawned on me that this may very well have been a tremendous inspiration for Sunset Boulevard on many levels.
00:28:23
Speaker
Let's leave it there. But it is a fascinating film and definitely needs to be seen. Beautiful, beautiful visuals. They scanned it at 4K. So you could probably expect at some point when they start doing actual 4K Blu-rays that this film will be ready to rock and roll. And you're going to have to see it at that time. Really, really fascinating film. And then here are the mega goodies this week,
'The Graduate' Blu-ray Celebration
00:28:49
Speaker
Mark. We've got two criterions.
00:28:51
Speaker
Fantastic Criterians. I Knew Her Well, which is a really cool 60s film from Antonio Pietrangelo. I don't pronounce Italian as well as I pronounce French. A movie from 1965, a great year. This is not a film that I had seen previously, but it is one of the coolest kind of 60s groove films I think I've ever seen.
00:29:14
Speaker
There are a lot of movies that sort of try to capture that moment in the 60s when everything in Europe was just freewheeling and kind of libertine. And this is maybe the most realistic one that I've seen. The actress who stars in this, Stefania Sandrelli, is not your typical Italian ingenue from the period. She's not a sex bomb. I mean, she's beautiful, but there's something very earthy and very grounded about her.
00:29:42
Speaker
And as a result, you are really drawn into all of her kind of libertine, hedonistic lifestyle. And it's not really one that is that positive. It doesn't reflect positively on the 60s. It's actually quite a compelling and troubling film in many respects. Really, really well done. This is a 4K digital restoration with great, great audio. A new interview with the actress.
00:30:10
Speaker
and an interview with film scholar Luca Bratoni. Luca Brasi from The Godfather? Exactly. All about the director's career and a bunch of other stuff. Audition, footage. It's really, really good. And then here is the big mama. This is historic. This is historic. Buy this tomorrow. The graduate on Blu-ray.
00:30:30
Speaker
I don't need to tell you what the graduate is. If you don't know what the graduate is, a guy named Ivan will show up with a silencer at your doorstep in about 10 minutes because you have no reason to exist on this earth if you don't know the graduate. 1967, Mike Nichols won Best Director for this, a legendary film. This was the year that In the Heat of the Night won Best Picture, but Jewison did not get Best Director.
00:30:53
Speaker
Mike Nichols won Best Director. One of those split years. Here's why this is so legendary. Back in the day of Laserdisc, the graduate was one of the first really awesome criterion Laserdiscs.
00:31:05
Speaker
And it had, among its many, many, many amazing extras, it had an audio commentary by a UCLA professor named Howard Suber, which vanished once LaserDisc vanished. And that commentary became a treasured thing. I think there were bootlegs of it online. It did not show up on any subsequent version of The Graduate. It is back.
00:31:25
Speaker
And what makes me so happy is Howard Suber was one of my professors. And I have lunch with him. Not since my daughter was born, but I used to have lunch with him a few times a year still. It's always a legendary moment. I just sit down and I just sort of feel like I'm in class again and I should be taking notes. Extraordinary guy. One of the great professors of all time at any film school. A wealth of knowledge and not professorial in demeanor at all.
00:31:52
Speaker
When you sit in class and you're talking about Dr. Strangelove and he lays in and says, you know why he carries around those golf clubs in that golf bag? It's a phallic reference. They used to make golf bags out of elephant penises. That is the kind of critical studies class that you want to be in. In any case,
00:32:12
Speaker
Howard Suber, the commentary is as great now as it was then. It is one of the best commentaries you will hear for any movie ever. It is fantastic. You also get an audio commentary from 2007 featuring a conversation between Steven Soderbergh and Mike Nichols.
00:32:31
Speaker
And you get new conversation between Lawrence Turman, who is the producer, and Buck Henry, documentary stuff, featurette stuff, behind-the-scenes stuff, a 1966 episode of The Today Show, a 1970 Paul Simon performance of The Dick Cavett Show. It just never ends. This thing is amazing.
00:32:51
Speaker
It's one of the most beautiful Blu-rays I've ever seen. It's fantastic. True. And also, if you're a student of film, which hopefully you are by virtue of listening to this podcast, you might want to get a sense of the historical importance of the graduate and how it was one of the nails in the coffin in terms of like the 50s in the studio system and how the films used to be made versus like all this counter-culture. Because don't forget,
00:33:13
Speaker
You know, the idea that Mike Nichols would want shrimpy, Jewish, nebbushy, nerdy, Dustin Hoffman to star, because the studio wanted Robert Redford. I know. They wanted Robert Redford. You know, and I have to say this too. Going back to Subur.
00:33:30
Speaker
I mean, I got the full spiel on the graduate in that same comedy class where we talked about Dr. Strangelove, which was great. The best thing that we did in that class was to watch Dr. Strangelove and then Sidney Lumet's
00:33:45
Speaker
uh... the his doctor strange love that uh... that uh... that which is uh... drawing a blank on what what is it with the city limits uh... uh... this is doctor strange love film is is the old nuclear threat film of fails fails a thank you and uh... we we watch the same day back-to-back because the idea being what makes one funny in the other one not is basically the same movie
00:34:05
Speaker
and a legendary lecture. And then talking about the graduates, Subers showed it because the UCLA archives are right there, and they can pull out anything you need. They've got a whole litany of screen tests for actors who screen tested for the part. Robert Redford, John Gavin. Gavin was the stiffest guy in the world. And the best screen test, which he wasn't allowed to show, but he showed it anyway because he goes, ah.
00:34:32
Speaker
Screw it. And he didn't say screw it, but it was great. So we wound up actually seeing a screen test by... Take a guess. Woody Allen. No. I'll give you a guess. He had a talk show once. He was in midnight run.
00:34:45
Speaker
Charles Grodin. Charles Grodin did a screen test. Charles Grodin screen tested for that part. You have no idea how funny it is. It's not right. He's just doing the Grodin thing. He's too wry. Well, he's just being, he's just being kind of, he's playing it too broad and he's kind of playing that dumb lunk that he did at the time. Well, what do you mean?
00:35:06
Speaker
What do you mean? What are you talking about? It was so funny. It was so funny. So it's great to see those things. And they're really well shot screen tests. It's not like video. It's on the set. The set is built. Katherine Ross is there. You know, it's shot. It was shot on a red. On a red camera. Yeah, exactly. Wow. All right, you know what? Hang on. Before we move on, a couple of, because we just talked about two Frankenstein films, there's a couple more that I just saw in the pile. One is kind of worth renting. This is children shouldn't play with dead things.
00:35:34
Speaker
It sounds ridiculous, it's from like 1972, but you know what? This is a film that was directed by Bob Clark. Bob Clark is the one who went on to direct Porky's and Christmas Story, so Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things is not just like a zombie movie, it's a funny, low-budget zombie movie.
00:35:55
Speaker
And the good folks at VCI really knocked this thing out of the park. A lot of great special features, Q&As and memories of working with Bob Clark. And there's also the alternate UK version, which is, you know, it's okay. It's not that much different. It's different, not that much different. And there is a commentary track on this thing. And this is a super duper low budget. It was done for like $50,000.
00:36:17
Speaker
You know, it's not always super funny, it's a little silly, but still, you're really seeing Bob Clark kind of emerge and become what he would eventually be, which is the guy who did A Christmas Story and Porky. So, as a little piece of film history, Frankenstein-related or undead-related, children shouldn't play with dead things. And on the other half of the spectrum, we have My Boyfriend's Back from 1983. This was directed by Bob Balaban. Oh my gosh, that's right. I forgot he directed that. Good grief. Yeah.
00:36:45
Speaker
Bob Balaban, you know him as the translator in Close Encounters, and if you aren't that old, then you know him probably as the NBC Network chief in Seinfeld, and if you don't know him as that, then maybe you know him as kind of a minor sporting character in Altered States. Anyway, he's Bob Balaban. Altered States. Anyway, this thing is nonsensical. It's just awful. The plot twists are just ridiculous, and the thing is just nothing.
00:37:13
Speaker
The only reason why you'd want to see this film is because you get to see very young-looking Matthew McConaughey. I had forgotten that Philip Seymour Hoffman's in this film. If you, you know, just like you blink, you miss him, but he's there. And it's got a good cast, but in the end it's just, just stupid. Anyway, it's about this guy who comes back from the dead to try to win back his girlfriend. But he should have stayed dead because the movie's terrible.
00:37:36
Speaker
Okay, so,
MOD Releases and Forgotten Films
00:37:38
Speaker
all right, here we go. I'm gonna blow through a bunch of MOD stuff from Fox and MGM. MGM distributes through Fox, so this is all from the same deal. This is the MGM limited edition collection. We have American Friends with Michael Palin, which is not a very good movie, from 1993. It's all very much oriented around kind of a certain British
00:38:08
Speaker
educational subculture, I just can't. It means to be sort of more literate and wry than it actually is. Anything pertaining to Oxford and Cambridge is always kind of a stretch for me. It has to be really, really literate and really well written and a great story. Revolt of the Slaves is kind of a standard
00:38:32
Speaker
1960s era, sword and sandal, Roman Empire thing. It ain't Spartacus, that's for sure. The only sort of noteworthy thing about this is that it stars Rhonda Fleming, who was kind of a mid-level starlet who would go on to marry Ted Mann of Mann Theater fame.
00:38:52
Speaker
And that was it. That was done. I think she's still around. Ted Mann passed away years ago. I once drove his car. Did I ever tell you that? When I was in Usher at Mann Theaters, he showed up with the big car, and he walked, I'm taking tickets, and he hands me the keys and says, can you go park the car, the lot up the street? It was a lot of good fun. I got to drive his car. Then we've also got from the Fox Cinema Archive's These Thousand Hills with Don Murray, Richard Egan, Lee Remick,
00:39:22
Speaker
Stuart Whitman, you know, it's one of those big melodramatic adaptations of a Pulitzer winning novel that doesn't really stand up to the novel. It's okay. It's fine. You know, it's a good cast, but it's just a little bit
00:39:38
Speaker
It's just too much of a vehicle, really. Directed by Richard Fleischer, kind of going through the motions. And then we also have Peter Lorre in one of the great Mr. Moto films, Mr. Moto Takes a Chance. If you haven't seen these, they are borderline offensive, but it's hard to be too offended because they've got Peter Lorre in them. The Moto films, of course, are like
00:40:01
Speaker
They're sort of like Charlie Chan meets Indiana Jones, and that's really the best you can say about them. They're fine. You see a lot of Indiana Jones in these things, and you see a lot of other kind of procedural movies and thrillers from subsequent years. But this is one of the better ones.
00:40:19
Speaker
Peter Lorre is just always wonderful. And then we've got a bunch that are from the Regency Library. Now New Regency, which is Arne Milchon's company, which produced not only consecutive Best Picture winners in 12 Years a Slave and Birdman, but they also produced The Revenant this last year. And Arne Milchon has been producing movies for decades. I mean, going back even, you know, Brazil and
00:40:45
Speaker
on and on and on. And it's a huge, huge library. Anyway, he's putting out some of his lesser stuff here. A lot of it's been released previously. Now it's on MOD, DVDRs from Fox, and it includes breaking up with Russell Crowe and Salma Hayek. Bet you didn't know that those two acted in the movie together. That was before Crowe was anybody. The power of one
00:41:08
Speaker
which is the movie that introduced Stephen Dorff, basically. This is John Avelson doing the Rocky slash Karate Kid thing all over again, except with a, you know, from a boxing standpoint in South Africa, segregated South Africa. John Gilgood and Morgan Freeman also in it. Not bad. One of the better things that Dorff has done. He was really young at the time.
00:41:28
Speaker
Goodbye Lover with Patricia Arquette and Dermot Mulroney. Also has, in a small part, Ellen DeGeneres and Don Johnson. Nothing really great here. This is just one of those kind of wannabe screwball comedies with style that never really went anywhere. Carpool. Tom Arnold and David Pamer. Terrible. Absolutely terrible.
00:41:50
Speaker
This is back in the era when everybody's like, we want to do a vacation type movie. People kind of go on wacky, and they're in a car, and they're going from somewhere. But we don't really want them to go on vacation. So fine. OK. So they just get in a car, and they're carpooling, and it's wacky. Not funny. The New Age, Peter Weller and Judi Davis, a Michael Tolkien directing effort that kind of falls a little bit flat. But he was kind of riding high in the early 90s, wasn't he? I mean, he wrote The Player. He had a moment. He had a moment. Well, when he wrote The Player, he became a
00:42:18
Speaker
player and then kind of died after that. Yeah, he kind of died and this is sort of a reason. He wrote and directed this and it's not really, it's sort of one of these movies that wants to be too much about all of the idiosyncrasies of Los Angeles and Peter Weller and Judy Davis are just a little bit too, I guess, pretentious.
00:42:37
Speaker
And then one of the most dreadful films, truly one of the most dreadful films of the 1990s. I don't I don't know how this got greenlit. This is just appalling. This was like the nail in the coffin of Richard Benjamin's directing career. This was made in America. You remember this? Whoopi Goldberg and Ted Danson. Wait, isn't Ted Danson the one who dressed in blackface?
00:42:57
Speaker
Yeah. Was he the guy who did that? Yeah, he did for a moment. And he and Whoopi Goldberg were also going out about this time. They were a couple. This is before he veered over into Steen virgin territory. The idea here is basically, how do I describe this without just horrifying people?
00:43:17
Speaker
I mean, by the way, just to clarify that, that Blackface, that was a roast for Whoopi Goldberg. Yes. So he appeared in a roast for Whoopi Goldberg in Blackface and it was a huge, huge deal at the time. So basically the idea here is, poor Richard Benjamin, I feel so bad for him. This is basically a sperm donor comedy where with Ted Danson revealed, Ted Danson is like a cheesy car salesman who is revealed as the father of Whoopi Goldberg's child. And it is just not funny in any conceivable way. It is just horrendous.
00:43:46
Speaker
when surfing with Ted Danson? It's humiliatingly bad. I once went surfing with Ted Danson. I don't really even want to know this story. I did? Ooh. See? Actually, he did the surfing. I didn't do my surfing. Okay.
Jafar Panahi's Defiant 'Taxi'
00:44:00
Speaker
Anyway, folks, very highly recommended is Jafar Panahi's taxi. If you're not
00:44:07
Speaker
familiar with Jafar. He is one of the world's most important filmmakers because he is an Iranian filmmaker and because of the overt political content in his films, the Iranian government has banned him from making films for 20 years. So for 20 years, the Iranian government says you cannot write any movies. You can't direct movies. You can't write movies. You can't, you know, give interviews with the foreign media. So basically because of it, can you imagine this in America? I mean, with Donald Trump, America could happen. Donald Trump, President Donald Trump could happen. Right now, which is in Iran. So
00:44:37
Speaker
Panahi, because he was making films critical of the government, he was banned by the government from making films in Iran for 20 years. However, that has not stopped him from making films. He made a great one, ironically called This Is Not A Film, and then now he's got this new one which is just fantastic called Taxi, and in Taxi,
00:44:56
Speaker
He spends the day driving around the streets of Tehran, picking up men and women. He's so defiant. He is so defiant. It's so amazing. The thing is that, you know, when people think of, like, danger, you know, they think, oh, it's editing and music school or whatever. No, sometimes just making a film is dangerous.
00:45:14
Speaker
He is so defiant and he just keeps doing this and he's banned from filmmaking and he just keeps doing them and sending them out of the country. And it's fascinating because that whole class of amazing Iranian new wave filmmakers, there are only three things that have happened. Most of them have left the country like Karostami,
00:45:32
Speaker
out of the country. And then you have others like Majid Majidi, who are saying, okay, fine, I'll make what the government wants me to make. And they've kind of, like, they cry uncle, and he says, I want to make movies in Iran, and this is the only way I can make it. And he's making junk. You know, like, he made this Mohammed biopic, which was horrible last year. It was their official Oscar submission. And then you have Jafar Panahi, who's just like, screw it, I'm going to stay here, and you can tell me what I can do and what I can't, but I'm going to do what I want anyway.
00:45:57
Speaker
So screw you. I mean this is not a film. It's amazing. This is not a film to me felt even more dangerous because there were scenes of his cell phone conversations. With his lawyer. With his lawyer. And he's figuring out in his living room how to make this film without actually making the film. And so there's real danger in this and that's what makes it so electric and so taxi is very highly recommended.
00:46:19
Speaker
All right, and then we've got a whole bunch here from Olive. Olive Films continues to do really amazing licensing stuff. They pick up all kinds of great stuff. And they've got a whole bunch of interesting films. They're not all great, but they're all kind of noteworthy from the 80s and 90s in particular. And some of them are even older. And here's one that's even older, Pressure Point with Sidney Poitier and Bobby Darin. There's a buddy.
00:46:43
Speaker
comparing that you never imagined ever happened. And what an unusual movie that just really fell between the cracks here. Not just Sidney Poitier and Bobby Darin, by the way, but also Peter Falk is in this movie. It's the strangest combination of characters produced by Stanley Kramer.
00:47:02
Speaker
and directed by a guy named Hubert Kornfield, which is not a name that any director should have. Kramer is really all over this. Forget about Kornfield. Kramer is all over this. And it's based on a Robert Lindner story. And here's the idea. Peter Falk plays a psychiatrist who is trying to
00:47:27
Speaker
help his black patient, played by Sidney Poitier, get over his hatred of other white people. And from there, you flash back into this very, very disturbing backstory involving Bobby Darin, which I won't get into the details of, because the details are meant to be very shocking to you, especially considering that it's Bobby Darin. We love Bobby Darin. It's Bobby Darin.
00:47:54
Speaker
This is a very different Bobby Darin. Anyway, beautiful, beautiful black and white cinematography. Really, really interesting story. Very unusually told. So that is Pressure Point on Blu-ray with Sidney Poitier and Bobby Darin. Bravo to Olive. Really good film. That's actually an interesting double feature with No Way Out.
Political Comedy in 'Speechless' and More
00:48:12
Speaker
No Way Out, which was Poitier's first film where he plays the black doctor who has to treat the white criminal, played by Richard, the racist criminal, played by Richard Widmark. That's actually a better film than I think than this film.
00:48:22
Speaker
But this film's kind of lost. It sort of got lost. It's totally worth rediscovering. And then there's more recently Speechless with Michael Keaton and Gina Davis. This was when Michael Keaton was in his first stage of sort of asserting himself as a serious actor. Directed by Ron Underwood, very nicely done, 1994. Was that the Michael Keaton who has appeared in two consecutive Best Picture afterwards? Sure is. Did you ever think that that would happen? Two consecutive Best Pictures starring Michael Keaton. Didn't we think that he was done?
00:48:52
Speaker
Didn't didn't you feel like he was done although? I'll name drop I sat next to him at at the bar at What was what's that restaurant on Wilshire Boulevard in 9th Street? That used to be a Chinese restaurant, and then it became like this trendy thing Yeah, I can't remember, but I know what you're talking about heaves. He was really Michael Keaton fast-talking funny. This is these dropping on their conversations
00:49:15
Speaker
He's good in this. That's it, yes. He's good in this. Gina Davis is good in this. This is when she was dating Renny Harlan and they produced this together. It's basically a Gina Davis vehicle, all about competing speech writers in politics. It's got some observations, but it's not great. I enjoy the stars. It was nice to rediscover. Christopher Reeves in it as well. It's okay. It's all right.
00:49:45
Speaker
It's all right. Wow. Is it my turn to talk now? Yes, indeed. A couple more from all of these are all marginal films. Moonlight and Valentino kind of hit a little miniature chord when it came out in 1995. It is very much a women's picture. It's with Elizabeth Perkins, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kathleen Turner, and Whoopi Goldberg.
00:50:08
Speaker
and directed by the guy who directed Rudy which is funny nowadays you'd maybe want to have a woman direct this but Elizabeth Perkins who you remember from big she just lost her husband and then she's having trouble moving on from that and then her friends are there to help her very much like beaches and women's pictures like that
00:50:24
Speaker
uh... this what's funny about this film if you'd like to rock in the role is that there's a moment when john bon jove was trying to become an actor really was not bad he was not good he's in u five seventy one he's good i interviewed him i interviewed him at the junket for u five seventy one and he was he was clearly stoned but um... or seemed to be but uh... little too mellow for for a junket everybody else's you know pitched but uh... he's really good in that film he's really good
00:50:52
Speaker
Less successful is Secret Admire. This is with C. Thomas Howell, Fred Ward, Lori Loughlin, and Kelly Preston. This is kind of a screwball comedy. It's kind of a romantic comedy. It's two disparate tones that David Greenwald, the director, never really wound up meshing smoothly. But you know, it's got a good cast. D. Wallace Stone is in this. Corey Haim is in this. So Casey Schimasco, who had a moment back in the day, he's in this too. This is from 1985. I Would Pass on Secret Admire. Beat Street.
00:51:22
Speaker
funny stuff. Beat Street is it's all about these these break dancers in South Bronx and it was from 1984. This is back when the whole electric boogaloo, electric boogaloo break dancing thing was happening and Beat Street tried to try to capitalize on that and although it's funny it was produced by David Picker.
00:51:42
Speaker
Yeah. And Harry Balafonte. Yeah. So, you know, it was kind of a movie. This thing definitely rode a wave. It's not a great film, but it's got some good music, you know, Rock Steady Crew, Grandmaster Mel. Come on, Grandmaster Mel. Mel can't beat that. So this is definitely a throwback film if you're of that age.
00:51:59
Speaker
We also have class. Now class, I didn't mind class that much. This one stars Rob Lowe and Andrew McCarthy. This is from 1983. It takes place in prep school and it's about an older woman dating one of the prep school kids.
00:52:15
Speaker
This one, not bad. This star is co-stars Cliff Robertson and John Cusack, and also Alan Ruck from Ferris Bueller. This one, I think, kind of, it's a little bit comedic, but it also took its themes pretty seriously when it had to.
Musicians on Screen: Bon Jovi's Acting
00:52:28
Speaker
So class actually might be the best of the bunch. Probably one of the worst of the bunch is Amos and Andrew.
00:52:32
Speaker
My name is Andrew. I'm drinking my guy an Emax Fry at a moment. Unbelievable. And this stars Nicholas Cage and Samuel Jackson and the great Dabney Coleman. Unbelievable, this movie. And it's just this comedy about this car thief and, you know, and he winds up being, you know, hanging out with this hostage. And it's just not funny, really not funny. This is bad. Sam Jax looks so young here.
00:52:58
Speaker
You really get a sense of how long because this is from 93 you get a sense of a sense of how long? Samuel Jackson has been in film. Mm-hmm true because really when you think of Samuel Jackson you think of him like Pulp Fiction onward. Yeah, I really like you know, he looks like You think of Sam Jackson as being like a really cool-looking 60 year old man, but he's been acting since forever 30 years
00:53:22
Speaker
And our last three on Olive before we get into the Warner stuff, because I really want to get the Warner stuff in here before we tie the show up. Mystery Date with Ethan Hawke and Terry Polo. What a weird misfire of an eccentric thing this was in 1991. This is one of the films that sort of heralded the end of Orion right before they had. They were like in the middle of a spate of Best Picture winners, you know, like kind of after Dancing with Wolves and right before
00:53:45
Speaker
uh... sounds of lambs but man this is just bizarre you think it's gonna be a romantic comedy about a guy who's just in love with his neighbor uh... this is terry polo before meet the parents and then it like turns into this bizarre kind of crime thing with a body in a trunk it's very odd film but uh... not bad per se it's just
00:54:02
Speaker
Kind of typical of these strange genre-splicing movies of the 90s. A totally underrated movie is Code 46. This was cool, man. Michael Winterbottom film. You know, this was during my big man crush on Michael Winterbottom.
00:54:17
Speaker
You know? And this one, even though I don't know that it was 100% successful, it was just really cool, because Winterbottom was just, he was at the top of his visual powers back then. He was, he had, this was, this was after he had, he'd already worked with the screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce for Welcome to Sarajevo in the, in the 90s, which I saw at Cannes. And this is basically Michael Winterbottom doing a better job of the same kind of story that the inventors attempted until the end of the world. It is this, it is like a near future quasi dystopian
00:54:44
Speaker
thriller. It has a very, very cool vibe to it. Tim Robbins is wonderful. It has sort of a dreamy, ethereal feel. And it's like an intellectual thriller in many respects. And it's really, it's just a cool film. It's one of his best films. And I highly recommend this. It's a really good looking Blu-ray. And then the last film here from Olive, which I'm going to give really high marks to, is Sleep With Me.
00:55:11
Speaker
which I thought was a really lame film at the time. And in hindsight, I realize it's a much better kind of love triangle than I ever really gave it credit for. Craig Sheffer, Eric Stoltz, and Meg Tilly, all of whom have kind of gone off the grid in recent years. But this is really a very, very sharp film, directed by a guy that I actually was in school with, Rory Kelly.
00:55:36
Speaker
And there's some really, really great, honest acting in it. Roy Kelly's done like next to nothing since, but this is a great independent film from the early 90s. And Roy Kelly, by the way, he was like the guy that I used to rent equipment from at the equipment lab. You know, you go to the desk and he was this guy who gave you the equipment. Next thing you know, I'm at Cannes in 94.
00:55:57
Speaker
And he's there, too, with this movie. It was just a wild thing. But the best part of this film is a party scene where Quentin Tarantino explains how everything in Top Gun is a sexual innuendo. And that is worth, you know, all of those innuendos and double entendres are familiar to us, but he did a hell of a job with this movie. Rory Kelly, Bravo.
00:56:23
Speaker
sleep with me, great film, and really worth checking out. Craig Sheffer, Eric Stoltz, Meg Tilly, and a great supporting performance from Quentin Tarantino.
00:56:33
Speaker
And then, Mark, we've got to talk about a few Warner Archive titles here. Most notably, Big Sleep and Key Largo. Oh, yeah.
Classic Blu-ray Restorations
00:56:43
Speaker
Both of these are a big deal. And they are on Blu-ray from Warner Archive. Both have undergone extensive restoration. And the
00:56:53
Speaker
Here's the thing that I love on The Big Sleep. The Big Sleep, I think, looks fantastic. I think they've done an amazing job. They also include the 1945 alternate version on here, which many people feel is a better version. The 1945 version, however, it does not look as good as the other, and they have not done a real number on it like I had hoped they would.
00:57:17
Speaker
So that is largely unrestored. But the film itself, the actual release version of the film, is fantastic. Classic Raymond Chandler. You also get a comparison between the two versions on here, as well as an introduction by Robert Gitt. But as far as the big, the release version of The Big Sleep, this is it. Hopefully at some point they'll be able to do the pre-release version
00:57:41
Speaker
Give it the the same attention and key Largo. I can say nothing about key Largo nothing bad about key Largo is a fantastic film amazing production value the whole hurricane sequence is still just tremendous and The editor of this was one of my editing teachers I know I'm name-dropping left and right today
00:58:02
Speaker
But Rudy Fair, who would edit Prince's Honor with his daughter, this was one of his big editing gigs back in the golden days. And it's a wonderful, wonderful film. It's a great film. Directed by John Huston, some of his best directing of the era. Richard Brooks and John Huston together wrote the script. How's that for a couple of hard-boiled guys?
00:58:20
Speaker
Right? No. They're lame. Richard Brooks and Johnny Houston, can you imagine being in that room when they're writing together? What if Danny Houston was there at the same time? I'll bet they were just drinking and punching each other and then occasionally sitting down and typing something. John Houston was a... He was a Hellraiser. He was a Hellraiser. And Richard Brooks, too. But again, read the Ray Bradbury book about the writing of Moby Dick. You read a lot about Johnny Houston. You sure do. The real Ken Tanker is drunk.
00:58:48
Speaker
You sure do. And then the last two are a pair of Hitchcock films, The Wrong Man and I Confess. Two of these... I love The Wrong Man. Two gaping holes in the Hitchcock Blu-ray compendium right now. People have been like, okay, so here are the Hitchcock films that were missing. Missing, you know, The Wrong Man and I Confess. Thing is that like... And they're both great. Look, Hitchcock was all about, you know, the innocent man, accused of something. Yeah. I'm so proud of it.
00:59:14
Speaker
And a lot of times that was, you know, Cary Grant or Jimmy Stewart, but Henry Fonda, who was like iconic, he was the iconic face of decency and American real grapes of wrath and Henry Fonda. To see Henry Fonda go through that was a whole different thing. And he's great. And not only is he great in that, but I confess is fantastic because of the same thing, Montgomery Clift, who's essentially in the same position as a priest.
00:59:39
Speaker
You know, where he hears a killer confesses to him, and boom, that puts him into this unbelievable predicament. I mean, it's classic Hitchcock, both of these. They're on beautiful Blu-ray transfers. Really, really first rate. There's a great, great making-up documentary on iConfess.
00:59:59
Speaker
called Confession, a look at I Confess, and then there's also premiere stuff. And then on the Fonda film, The Wrong Man, there's also a making of documentary called Guilt Trip, Hitchcock and the Wrong Man, as well as a trailer. You gotta add these. If you are a Hitchcock fan and you're missing these, there's a gaping, gaping hole in your system. So I, with that, that's it. And we are done for this week. Mark, enjoy the birthday party, and we'll be back next week. Happy birthday to a guy we doesn't know.
01:00:45
Speaker
So.
01:01:55
Speaker
Yeah.