I am a guest on Episode #124 – Christmas Horror and Christmas of the Hello! This is the Doomed Show podcast.
Posts tagged movies
80s movie marathon
Richard of Doomed Moviethon and I had an 80s teen movie marathon. He will write a wonderful article on the experience. This is my notes. (OFF stands for overly fashionable friend/family member/etc)
Guesting on Hello! This is the Doomed Show
I have made my official debut on ‘Hello! This is the Doomed Show.’ Listen to me and Richard of DoomedMoviethon.com talk about Halloween and stuff: http://hellodoomedshow.podomatic.com/entry/2016-10-24T05_09_24-07_00.
The cremaster cycle by Matthew Barney
Years ago I made a case to our media librarian to acquire The CREMASTER cycle by Matthew Barney. I had seen the visually stunning, mysterious, and grotesque preview online and I knew there was no way I was ever going to see it unless some forward thinking library bought the movie for the collection. There was only one then. There are more now.
The Paramount Vault – YouTube
Are you hankering to watch some movies, but haven’t yet decided whether you’re going to sign up for Netflix, Hulu, YouStream, Moogoo, Mojo? Well then, head on over to the Paramount Vault on YouTube and watch some of the full length movies that Paramount has shared from their history of making film.
Source: The Paramount Vault – YouTube
Gigi extras
from the Elvis moviethon
Richard and Shelly told me to draw this.
Richard says my Elvis looks goth.
You remind me of a man
Have you ever seen The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer? I wish Shirley Temple had done more movies as a teen.
Scarlet Pimpernel
I read The Scarlet Pimpernel (Wikipedia) by Baroness Orczy (Wikipedia) right after reading the Count of Monte Cristo. I was desperate for some kind of sequel or anything else of Alexandre Dumas’ that could live up to it that wasn’t about the three musketeers. The Scarlet Pimpernel came to my rescue then, and thanks to project Gutenberg, I am now buried in sequels. You could say, I am making it a new obsession.
Books in order of publication:
- The Scarlet Pimpernel (1903)
- I will Repay (1906)
- The Elusive Pimpernel (1908)
- Eldorado (1913)
- The Laughing Cavalier (1914)
- Lord Tony’s Wife (1917)
- The First Sir Percy (1921)
- The Triumph of the Scarlet Pimpernel (1922)
- Pimpernel and Rosemary (1924)
- Sir Percy Hits Back (1927)
- A Child of the Revolution (1932)
- The Way of the Scarlet Pimpernel (1933)
- The Scarlet Pimpernel Looks at the World (1933)
- Sir Percy Leads the Band (1936)
- Mam’zelle Guillotine (1940)
The novels and other collections of short stories were not typical sequels. They jumped about in time, each a piece of the French revolutionary world that the Baroness had created. Their huge popularity at the time drove her production as much as it inspired movie versions:
Movies:
- 1943 movie with Leslie Howard
- 1938 sequel with Barry Barnes
- Another sequel in 1950 starring David Niven
- 1940 Pimpernel Smith starring Leslie Howard
- The Scarlet Pimpernel, 1955 (starring Marius Goring)
- 1966 Carry on Pimpernel
- 1982 movie with Anthony Andrews and Jane Seymour
- 1999 miniseries with Richard Grant
- 2010 rumblings of Michael Armstrong directing a new version with Neil Jackson.
But there is no comic. Oh, there were advertisements of The Pimpernel: An Adaptation Of The Scarlet Pimpernel by Doug Kissock, but it doesn’t seem to have gone anywhere, much like the 2010 movie plans of Michael Armstrong.
Elvis movie marathon
When I was a kid in Texas with no cable there was a TV station that would pack it’s summer Sunday programming with Elvis movies. They are mostly formulaic, have familiar faces, take very little commitment, and include spontaneous music. I would commandeer the 4.5 inch portable TV and putter around in my room to the spontaneous Elvis-a-thons. This is how I best know Elvis. Over the fourth of July weekend I made cherry pie, and my husband and I embarked on an Elvis-a-thon of our own. We had bought a few extra movies just for this occasion; we didn’t watch them all.
We started on Thursday after work:
Jailhouse Rock – 1957 – Vince Everett is in jail for accidentally punching a guy to death in a bar fight. A young man, he forms a partnership with his cellmate, Hunk, who used to work the music scene. Vince is talented, and Hunk takes advantage of his naivety by drawing up a 50/50 partnership contract. Once Vince is out of jail he meets a woman who gets him set up in a recording studio, distribution deal, and whom he treats badly. Hunk gets out of jail and Vince treats him badly too. Vince is basically the jerkiest of all jerks. If you have favorable notions of Elvis, this movie might surprise you and possibly annoy you. That’s probably why the Texas TV station of my youth never included this in their spontaneous Elvis-a-thons.
Flaming Star – 1960 – Pacer lives with his Dad, half brother and Kiowa mother in untamed Oklahoma. Power struggles among the native tribe are testing the family loyalties and there are deaths and misplaced blame all around. I totally thought they made up the tribe name for this movie, and am happy to find out the Kiowa Indians are the native tribe of Oklahoma. My notes say: “I’m just gonna concentrate on the horses ’cause the plot ‘s kinda losin’ me.” Elvis sings very little.
And then continued on Friday:
Viva Los Vegas – 1964 – Lucky Jackson is a gear-head racer who is consistently thwarted in getting an engine for his car so he can win the big race. He is in a friendly rivalry with an Italian count, that escalates slightly when they both set eyes on Ann Margaret’s character. That’s pretty much the plot. There is some racing derailment while Lucky takes various odd jobs both to get money and be close to his leading lady. It all comes back around when they butt heads over him only ever thinking about racing. Ann Margaret, triple threat, pretty much steals the show as she sings, dances and acts as both the perfect girl and a strong woman with standards. She’s so frenetic it would be annoying if she weren’t so damn cute.
Blue Hawaii – 1961 – Chadwick Gates returns home to Hawaii from the army and spends the first few days avoiding his folks. By the time he sees his parents, he’s got a plan to avoid the family pineapple plantation and is set up as a tour guide by his girlfriend’s boss. His first customer is, of course, a pretty lady teacher and her 3 female students. Flirtation, jealousy, and unacceptable behavior ensue. Includes the most annoying female character of any Elvis movies I’ve seen to date.
Jem, superhero
There’s been talk about Jem and the Holograms, the movie and the comic re-visitation by IDW. Jem is near and dear to my childhood heart and a solid evening filler from my DVD shelves. ‘Trick or Techrat‘ is on our list of Halloween viewing every year, so I felt a little compelled to add my voice to the cacophony over the movie trailer’s laying out a to-be-successful-and-like-yourself-you-must-become-someone-else story without actual holograms.
I could re-iterate arguments on how the original Jem was empowering and the movie looks anything but, however, in thinking about just what about Jem was most important, I made an amazing discovery! Jem is the pink fashion plate Batman of superheroes! Consider, for one reason or another both Jem and Batman have to adopt alter egos. They do so with pretty amazing technology and run around fighting bad people and protecting children. They are both orphans, live in mansions, and have pretty successful real life identities. Because of their complicated issues, alter egos included, they are ridiculously bad at romance.
Now, who would go to watch a movie about how Bruce Wayne get’s a lifestyle coach in order to come out of his shell and finally have a good relationship with his sweetheart? No, Bruce Wayne’s story is great because of Batman. And Batman isn’t just a handle Bruce uses on his fitness and training discussion boards, Batman is the costumed, tech-ed out, fighter of evil doers and symbol of justice.
Similarly Jem isn’t just make-up and a costume that a paralyzed performer puts on to get through the day. Jem is a hologram extended to the entire band, misdirection that foils enemy plots, and a message to women and children a like to “Believe in Yourself,” and “Share a Little Bit of Yourself” because “Love Unites Us” and “We Can Make a Difference;” “You Already Know” that you are “Truly Outrageous.” (Wikipedia)
This is my theme song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7uidpDAHNE
The selfsearching song from The Inspector General with Danny Kay – YouTube
Bechdel test rating movies
Because I’d never heard about this before and now that I have I cannot stop applying it whenever I am confronted with a movie preview: The Bechdel test:
To get an A rating, a movie must pass the so-called Bechdel test, which means it must have at least two named female characters who talk to each other about something other than a man.
And of course, a reminder:
“There are far too many films that pass the Bechdel test that don’t help at all in making society more equal or better, and lots of films that don’t pass the test but are fantastic at those things,” said Swedish film critic Hynek Pallas.
via Swedish cinemas take aim at gender bias with Bechdel test rating | World news | theguardian.com.
As an advertizement strategy, it’s pretty awesome. At first, I’d say that it shouldn’t be put in a position to shut out movies that don’t fit, though, it couldn’t do worse than any current rating system.
lost boys
I was watching a version of Peter Pan when I drew this. It might have even been the Disney animation. But I realized that I have seen many many versions of the story…
I do not yet have many many versions of the story as I do for Alice and Wonderland. And some versions of Peter Pan are just annoying.
Speaking of many many versions, I have yet to do my Sherlock Holmes and the Hound of the Baskervilles marathon wherein I watch all the different versions of the Hound of the Baskervilles story, but it is on my list.
Shelf Life (2005) – IMDb
Shelf Life (2005) arrived in our mailbox a while ago. I had added it to our queue ages agon and had since forgotten exactly what it was about. In the meantime, both Richard and I developed the idea that the film was foreign and subtitled. I specifically developed the idea that the film was Korean.
These aren’t the reasons why we avoided putting the disc in the player and instead chose movie after movie, including plenty of subtitled Korean movies, to watch instead. Eventually, we decided to get it over with and just watch the thing.
I remember that I wanted to see this in the same way I am interested in all movies and TV shows about libraries and librarians. It’s a weird introspective, self mocking, others mocking type of enjoyment I get from depictions of these people and places. AND BOY DOES THIS MOVIE DELIVER! Sorry I had to shout. Shelf Life is not Korean, nor is it subtitled. It is a stark, yet funny, slow starting, acerbic look at small library hierarchy and personalities. It reminds me of The Librarians. It is less big laughs than small furtive, guilty chuckles (at least for me), and it is utterly impossible to stop watching.
It starts like a quite school assignment production with the characters awkwardly exchanging dialog and then it grabs your attention with a fishhook to your face (not literally). Suddenly you are wrapped up in the mystery of an unfolding story of miscommunication, misconception, quick judgements and terribly questionable human behavior. This is love, ladies and gentlemen. Though, I have to admit, not the marrying kind of love. I probably will not want to watch this movie over and over again. No, this is a summer camp romance kind of love. The kind that you deny ever happened when you catch each other’s eye in the hallway on your way to class, but secretly you review over and over again in your diary at night.