EricJ

Little did we realize, Woody was flat-out playing Bob Hope as a labor of love in Love and Death (1975). And got Hope's one-liner rhythms down pat. In his own PBS documentary and one on Hope, Woody later claimed the 40's "My Favorite Coward" Road-picture Bob Hope was his comic childhood hero, growing up--"I always wanted to be the little guy who could talk big and brag his way out of a situation like that." But we didn't know that back in the 70's SCTV days when Woody was making "Annie Hall", and Bob was making unfunny rightwing NBC specials and only remembered for Anita Ekberg.

Three nights later, a cynical, bottle-crawled Oliver Reed (he never got his career back until "Gladiator", and then it was too late) came on Dave's show to promote his breakout-indie movie--He arrived visibly sloshed, grumpy, and refusing to play along with the interview, instead putting on a Texas accent and pretending to be a "Dallas" character. (Dave: "Yes, it's fun to pretend, isn't it?") Dave was still clearly smarting from Crispin's follies when he finally interrupted Reed with "Y'know, I've bailed out on these before...You might end up flying this plane by yourself."

Except for the (ahem) singing ?, it's a fairly accurate film version of the Tea Party and Concord & Lexington: The BTP wasn't the rowdy town-mutiny whoop-up that certain history-challenged conservatives wishfully like to think it was; it was simply an organized power play of one poor warehouse night-watchman up against an angry local mob of twenty, and no violence needed to take place--As in the book/movie, the group simply dumped the disputed tea, and that was that. Also, by historical myth, no one quite knows who fired the Shot Heard Round the World, but it's theorized that it could have been a civilian bystander. (This is where Walt's live-action division starts to kick in, and it was practically all they had for most of the Ron Miller era, so if you're serious about including those too, better settle in--Those are at least the ones that show up more often on TCM Disney-Vault night.)

His David Letterman appearance was in his quirky-oddball character from "Rubin & Ed" trying to promote it, which...if we had ever heard of him OR the movie, would have been a maverick stunt. Unfortunately, we didn't and he didn't, you can see Dave's cold, hostile stare from the minute Glover walked out, and when Crispin aimed that kick ("I'm good at martial arts!"), to say Dave had no idea he was kidding is the understatement of the century. Dave had already been through Andy Kaufman's big faked-up wrestling stunts on his show, but that was back when we'd heard of Kaufman. It was only later that everyone, including the show, found out what the heck Glover had been doing, and they invited him back on for an "apology" followup appearance if he agreed to come as himself. He did, showed off some of his weirdo art, and...let's just say it didn't exactly restore his career after the first appearance became TV legend. And frankly, Glover playing George McFly just reeks of the "Look, I'm playing a NERD!" performance stunt that seems to attract the gonzo-quirky actors. Like Kaufman on "Taxi", one good acting gig fooled us into thinking he could ever be mainstream professional.

Basically, we have Chaplin slipping in his comments on television, just like we get the joke about Chaplin trying to watch wide-widescreen Cinemascope/Cinerama at the theater, and watching a Western showdown like a tennis match. When the old comics start Shouting at Clouds about current entertainment tropes, it's usually time to retire. At least Buster Keaton could keep up with the new kids.

And, of course, most of Wayne's World (1992): (The first movie anyway, I haven't yet rented #2, that's been floating around with all the other Paramount Orphans joining the MGM/UA Orphans on streaming.)

...Hast thee the rights of the Vulcan High Council, T'Pau?

And Max Dugan Returns is...pleasant enough if you like Jason Robards and 80's-teen Matthew Broderick.

I always like to think of Leo McKern in Thames' Rumpole of the Bailey as the "contemporary TV update" of Sir Wilfred Roberts, Charles Laughton or Ralph Richardson version: Also a barrister of lost defense cases, for those who wish Agatha could have written a few more.

I've been sitting out the thread because I could think of Simon plays and 70's Simon-boom movies that were droll, but couldn't think of one that I really liked. And then I found myself quoting old lines from Murder By Death (1976), the original proto-"Clue": Just mentioning Simon's plays brings up the memories of 70's old-school Broadway, when straight people went to original musicals and a Neil Simon play could be just as big of an out-of-town tourist draw. Even our idea of a live-audience TV sitcom like "The Odd Couple" comes from the experience of getting a half-hour taste of Neil Simon comedy theater in our living room. The Tony Awards try to keep the drama-play business going by saying that while Musicals throw spectacle at you, Plays put you into the room with the characters. That works well for drama, but when you're in a room with FUNNY characters, that's just as much of a memorable evening.

Okay, I must ask what Menahem Golan's "form" is. (If you've seen the "Electric Boogaloo" documentary about the Cannon Pictures glory days, it's certainly not the first time Golan's ambitious literary eyes were bigger than his stomach--And I still can't find his 80's Cannon version of "Threepenny Opera" on YouTube.) TBH, I thought he was dead, but this apparently predated that. Ask Dave.

Can anyone read spense's headline without flashing back on Lewis Carroll?:

In case you're wondering, The Singing Detective was also a six-part BBC miniseries before Robert Downey Jr.-- But either way, Dennis Potter symbolic-deconstruction is not exactly the easiest thing to sit through--The Pennies miniseries just wasn't as cheery, toe-tapping and feel-good as the Steve Martin version. ?

Close enough would be The Love God? (1969, and yes, with punctuation)--in which Knotts' birdwatching magazine is turned into a 60's Playboy girlie magazine behind his back, and Knotts finds himself having to play the Hugh Hefner bathrobe-swinger role--which did rather disorient audiences at the time, as the Mature rating and "sexual revolution!" theme kept out the core kiddy audience. Let's just say Knotts was born to play one type, and played it better than most could. In How to Frame a Fig-g (1971, the last of his non-Disney solo movies before Tim Conway), he comes off as a bit of a know-it-all A-hat to his dim co-workers, and doesn't really come across as likable--It's a tricky character act to make a jumpy coward or big-talking Barney Fife sympathetic, but basically "Ghost" will pretty much spoil you for any other solo Don Knotts movies. "The Private Eyes", however, is still a classic.

"So, if any of you may wish to...no? Well, don't say I didn't warn you!" On a lighter note, there's always the waiter's reaction to Leslie Nielsen drowning his sorrows, in Naked Gun 2-1/2: the Smell of Fear (1991): Think Marty Feldman's opening credits to The Last Remake of Beau Geste (1977) might fill that basket for a start.

And, of course, she's not the only one... Ever wonder how we got from this: To this: To this: with Jock & Trusty asking who's going to do the "right thing" for that little matter that no one wants to talk about, and that Lady is in tears over after hearing about Tramp's love life in the dog pound?

Lee makes a good Fu (better than Peter Sellers', anyway), but this movie became infamous among MST3K fans as a movie where absolutely nothing coherent happens for ninety minutes, and even the above description gives the story and pacing too much credit. One of the few movies the series considered truly painful to sit through, without hope of heckling.

When I was a kid, it was years before I ever learned about the "framing ratio" that's blocked off by projectors, and that's why you see overhead boom mikes in films where the projectionist hasn't set it up correctly. That would explain one or two strange films I remember. And then, I did mention that one year I was at an all-night cult-scifi marathon in the coldest day in February, the theater was showing some early archival foreign/silent animated version of "Baron Munchhausen" (I keep thinking it was Lotte Reiniger's, but can't find one on IMDB)....and the heat went out? All of a sudden, seeing foreign animation frolic about lost every bit of its whimsy, and the audience started to mutiny. Shouts to the projectionist started coming up from the audience, of "Stop the Baron!" and "The Baron must die!!" (That's one of the few times our rowdy all-night audience couldn't make a painful film fun, MST3K style. For example, when they showed Michael Crichton's aptly-named "The Terminal Man"--with half an hour of surgical footage followed by another hour of George Segal running around as a lunatic killer--the audience was so restless that every time the scene faded out, we cheered "Yayy!"...And when the next scene came on, "Aww!") We have a generation to whom you literally can not explain what's so "fun" about going to see a movie, if they've never been to an old non-cineplex movie palace in their life. In My Day, Junior(tm), theaters were on main street, had one to three screens, were either small or huge and antique, and since you could go to one just about anytime, it was all about the going, not about what was playing. If it was Friday night, you would actually go see something you hadn't heard of, just to get out and go...Try THAT one on studios today.

For the record, it's...okay in 3-D ( http://www.store-3d-blurayrental.com/Man-in-the-Dark-3D-Blu-ray-Rental-p/2115.htm ) but as Columbia's "first" one, still gives the impression that the studio had to jump on 3-D at the last minute, and grabbed any project they could shape to fit it. Some nice moments with the dream scenes, the fake bats, and at the amusement-park climax, but nothing particularly gimmicky to stand out. Nothing on the level of the full-on House of Wax-knockoff they did for Vincent Price in "The Mad Magician". (Hey, even if you didn't buy the screens, it's not too late to get a Playstation VR! ? )

As long as you know the difference between your not liking it, and the movie not being likable. I didn't go into Tiffany's overwhelmingly interested either, and only watched it for AFI-classic completism: My review was also pretty scathing, but only because I felt that the movie was overpraised for the wrong reasons--yes, Audrey's gloves are pretty, but she's maddeningly unsympathetic as a character--and I also wanted to be iconoclastic enough to strip some boxer shorts off the emperor. That's not the same as calling it "Two hours I'll never get back", or laying my own grudges into the movie as "worthless", or that I wanted to "throw things at it", as I didn't think it was bad-bad, just frustrating. Whether I wanted to throw things at Holly, OTOH... Remember the old saying, "The critic doesn't say he 'hated' the movie, he asks, 'Why wasn't it BETTER?'" (From the same guy who gave us the "Two hours I'll never get back" phrase.)

There's the famous story of Welles trying to get Toland's camera low enough for one of his ceilinged low-angle shots of Kane, and when Gregg said "we can't get it any lower!", taking a pickax and cutting a hole in Culver's studio floor to get it:

That's okay, I wouldn't consider "Labyrinth" a "Muppet movie" either, for pretty much the same reason. (Even if Sony has beaten it into the ground as Default Sony Studio Kids' Film next to "Jumanji" for the last twenty years, and is already tossing around a house "reboot" based on the success of the other.) Jim Henson in the 80's was like Walt Disney in the 60's--When Walt was so smitten with building technical marvels for his new park, he almost completely lost interest in animation, and left it to his best studio people to look after while he ran off to play with his new Animatronic toys. In Henson's case, Jim was so convinced that mechanical-creature-effect lab The Creature Shop (they almost got the contract for the Jurassic Park dinos) was going to be the Lucas-like moneymaker for the company, he tried to RETIRE the Muppet Show characters, with "Muppets Take Manhattan" not only marrying off Kermit and Piggy, but introducing the Saturday-morning Muppet Babies as their new replacement. "Labyrinth"--made back when Jim had a personal fan fetish for the look of Ridley Scott's "Legend", and hired the same designer--was going to be the new flagship, but tanked badly at the box office for being disorganized and butt-ugly, taking most of producer George Lucas's expansion plans with it. And while the Creature Shop did try to do a few of the next Muppet shows, Jim went back to trying to revive Kermit & Co. for new TV shows. (That's when we got Kermit in talk shows saying "Well, y'know, that 'marriage' stuff was just a movie...")

Does it still have the PBS "Battle Over Citizen Kane" documentary on disk 2? That's one of the great classic-film docs that I've seen, disk or in general--that also gives some background on why Welles was such a hot property after the Mercury stage-theater company--and somewhat better than HBO's fictionalized docudrama version. (Which shortchanges the real-life Hearst and Davies in trying to parallel them with the Kane versions...Not like Edward Hermann's more scarily true-to-life Hearst from the otherwise fictionalized The Cat's Meow (2001). )

We've gotten so used to smugsy Simpsons parodies of dropping snowglobes (again, the disgruntled Fear of Great Movies), that it never occurs to the first-time viewer to ask: Just why DID seeing a snowy cabin happen to trigger that mysterious memory from dying Kane? (Just as there are people who never stop to realize just why Rick never did say "Play it again, Sam" in Casablanca.) Didn't Ralphie or George Bailey name theirs? But seriously people: We know Beth's lost her Kane-ginity about the identity of Rosebud, but even if it isn't the third act of "Murder Strikes Out", let's go easy on new lurkers in the thread. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to whip up some Soylent Green in the kitchen, call up my dad, go fishing with Fredo, and pick up Bruce Willis' check in the restaurant.

It's like a vegetarian being served a perfect grilled T-bone with bacon-grilled mushrooms and onions, and saying "That was the worst meal I was ever served in my life!" I don't like Westerns or romances either, but I at least take what I'm given in context at face value if I have to "study" it for film history. It's not the greatest Fred Astaire (from his "Daddy Long Legs" days when he was cast as the charming senior father-figure to the young lead), and as I can't stand Breakfast With Tiffany's (but wouldn't begrudge it to anyone else either), I don't feel qualified to say whether it's the best Audrey Hepburn...But at least I know a diverting Gershwin jukebox-musical when I see it, and I'd rather moon over Audrey's nerdy beatnik-bookshop Capri pants than see her as NY's best-dressed lunatic in her better-known role, or hear her sing about the Rain in Spain. ...Everyone admires an iconoclast, but nobody likes a danged Grouch. Hehehh...(trash-can lid slams)