EricJ

I don't know whether Paramount was TRYING to bury Airplane II (a December Christmas release, with Christmas-themed ads, is usually a big fat sign), but it seemed like literally the only clip the studio would show for critics was the scene where Julie Hagerty says "It feels like we've been through this whole thing before..." As if handing the critics the line to unanimously use in their reviews. But considering that the Zuckers wanted to move on to other parodies, and the studio brought in a new replacement, writer/director Ken Finkleman (who hadn't done quite as good in the sequel business earlier that year with "Grease 2") absolutely captures the rhythm and 70's-TV look of the first film. It's the work of a master art forger...Even the trial scene is an uncanny pastiche of the Zuckers' own court trial from "Kentucky Fried Movie". That's probably why the first 15 "airport" minutes of the film were comedy gold, and things got slow until William Shatner came to take over Leslie Nielsen's job in the last third, but at least Finkleman threw in parodies of the original "Airport", which the first film hadn't..

We LIKE writing book-reports about our movies. Remember in fourth grade, when you had to turn in a two-page one by Monday, and you couldn't think of more than a two sentence paragraph? Now we're actually doing it for fun, in our spare time! Speaking as self-proclaimed 80's defender to the younger kids, are there any other campy-kitschy 80's-90's movies on your list you need a warning/recommendation beforehand?

Some of us knew George Lucas hadn't written or directed it. What was more painfully obvious was that the writers of "Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom" HAD written and directed it.

I have this group to thank to know I am no longer alone on Xanadu. (But then, I knew all along I never was anyway. ☺️ ) Thanks to the rise of disk-Twitter culture, I've seen some cult rallying finally beginning to surface on the underground for Street Fighter (1994) Santa Claus: the Movie (1985) Disney's Treasure Planet (2002) and Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982), so I can now focus much needed attention on Airplane II: the Sequel (1982) as the next Unfairly Persecuted Cult-Martyr of the 80's...There are some movies that will always need more love and support. (And when I posted in the defense of a sudden Twitter trend for Speed Racer (2008), I was besieged with an avalanche of fellow-warrior Likes.) I did, however, wonder why there was such an uncomfortable silence and looking-away when I'd innocently said I'd thought it was cute that Elvis sang to a puppet in G.I. Blues (1960)... 😕

Would an Elvis biopic be interesting if it was JUST about a fat Las Vegas guy in tight pants eating peanut butter sandwiches and shooting TV sets? (Although there is actually an interesting backstory to that incident that makes complete sense, which might make a revealing scene in such a movie--Just not a particularly fun or groundbreaking one, and fruit so low-hanging it's practically trampled on.)

At least that clears up the mystery of why UMO was so eager to post the screaming-headline box-office update, and not a certain other week-to-week Oscar-obsessed poster who might think it was the end of the world... So, I'm not up on the lingo: What offensive, contemptuously-dismissive passive-aggressive terms are straight guys supposed to use as a bigoted personal-issue social coverall term when we don't want to go see buff males in the new Rambo movie? (Well, you know we're all sitting there thinking "Eww, somebody drown Stallone in his own sweat; die, beefsteak, die!...They should have made the whole movie about his hot daughter, I'd shoot a cartel for her, any day!" 😉 )

I still picture Bill Cosby's old "9th St. Bridge" routine every time I see the later Universal monster-mashups: 😂 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fjm9qxRxn-g

Well, Marilyn wasn't "aging", "declining career", or wistfully "near the end" during Prince & the Showgirl--Now, if it'd been on the filming of "The Misfits", it'd have Fox Searchlight written all over it.

...AHH!! 😱 IT'S HILLARY CLIN--oh, wait, that's just Chucky. Whew.

Not to mention, like Joker and Venom, they were just poor lowly GOOD guys, forced into a bad position by other mean people! Poor little war-orphan Hanny, in his poor little apartment with the Japanese samurai-mask collection he got from his sweet old aunt, having to avenge the only sister who ever loved him from mean war-scavengers...CAN'T YOU SEE HE'S HURTING INSIDE??? 😭 (And no, I was not trying to sound like Martin Short on that last line.) --- EDIT, after reading Gershwin's post: A-haaa, that's why. Even if the Dracula movie was just Universal trying to coattail on the success Disney was having (at the time) for their "Maleficent" movie that started the whole poor-villain-spinoff thing. Also, original author Thomas Harris used the Ukranian serial-killer's-sister story for a deliberately sequel-commissioned book before the movie, which holds up the old Gump & Co. rule of "Never get the book author to write a sequel novel for the movie."

THAT could be one reason. And in comparison to other slow-released, much pre-hype-groomed Oscar-bait biopics, "Stan & Ollie" opened last year on 754.

(Anybody else right now hearing that old Tom Hanks SNL sketch about support groups for dangerously addicted Mr. Belvedere fans?)

Even just for the climax where O'Brien's cover is blown, and Cagney realizes the first person he's ever put his trust in since losing Ma was informing on him--"How you like that, boys?...A copper! A T-man, and I was going to split 50-50 with him!"--and while he's still playing the hard-as-nails tough guy, he looks like he's laughing off the urge to cry. Yep, Cagney was robbed, but the whole awards backlash reflects the entire '49 social poor-crazy-sap negative dismissal of old-school crime in the movie. ("Cody Jarrett...He finally got to the Top of the World, and it blew up in his face.")

Fans kept wondering what exactly was WRONG with Daniel Craig's "Quantum of Solace", but they just didn't believe me when I kept trying to explain how it was an almost plot-for-plot remake of Timothy Dalton in "License to Kill". Right down to Bond losing his License and going rogue on a personal vendetta, to kill the post-Cold War bad guy taken from the current headline issue of the week (00's third-world water, as opposed to 80's Central American drugs). And both were uncharacteristically nasty, icky, and had Bond acting like an enraged Liam Neeson thug rather than Her Majesty's Secret Servant.

(No, no, you're getting confused, Jake--It's Nipkow who posts the comment-free out-of-context YouTube clips tangentially related to something someone earlier said, YOU'RE supposed to do the mindlessly couriered Twitter feeds! I suppose next you'll be asking where Spencer Tracy is buried in Forest Lawn?...Cherce!) 😛 And for those who ask "Why a new Matrix movie", the answer is the same one listed under "Why is Warner filming the Shining-sequel book?", "Why would they do a Young Willy Wonka movie?", and "Why on this good green earth would they put Sia, Jim Gaffigan and NBA's Chris Paul in a Scooby-Doo cartoon??" At the rate Warner's going through its house classics to find the next New Legacy-quel, we may be getting the Adventures of Pluto Nash reboot any minute, with Eddie Murphy handing the bar off to his long lost son...

White Heat (1949) - 👍 Another great classic found on DVD library-crawls (that up to now I only knew from "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid" clips). I'll watch anything with James Cagney in it , and ruthless mama's-boy gangster Cody Jarrett is arguably the Cagney performance--Even though he was just coming back to Warner after a few years away from the studio trying to produce "prestige" productions, and only came back to the gangster roles if he could have more studio involvement and a juicier, more complex character. But as the commentary historians point out, a 1949 post-war gangster movie is not a gritty 1939 "Public Enemy" or "Angels With Dirty Faces": During the Depression, struggling audiences had a fascination to root for the lone enterprising public-enemy gangster to make it on top of his heap, and Cagney was the perfect ambitious young punk to slap and slug his way to the top; the "coppers" were either anonymous or completely inefficient, even if the Code had to declare that Crime Doesn't Pay in the end...And even if Cagney's "Angels" character was caught and goes to the electric chair, he still goes out as the good guy, keeping the Dead End Kids out of crime. Here, it's after the war and after the Depression, postwar America is settling into its urban status quo, Cagney at 50 is a little too old to be a young ambitious punk and is an experienced lifer instead...Not to mention, an unrepentant nut, a loose-cannon danger to himself and his other gang members with a migraine-headache screw loose. And even more telling, despite his complex heists and prison escapes, he DOESN'T seem to be the main antihero of the story, tragic or otherwise: Gangster movies in the late postwar 40's and early 50's are now gritty Untouchables-style dramas of realistic gang violence, and the heroic FBI squads that brought them down. About 50-50, or possibly even 60-40, of the story, is devoted to Edmond O'Brien's T-Man Treasury agent going undercover as "Vic Pardo", the only real friend Cody believes he has in the world, and the main drama is in whether O'Brien will successfully stay undercover to betray him into a police raid at the oil refinery. (The last quarter of the movie seems to be homaging "Radar Secret Service", with a fleet of modern new radar-antenna'ed police cars triangulating onto a highway chase.) The Treasury and FBI invented more organized and forensic methods by the end of the Depression; here, the message is not only Crime Doesn't Pay, but Crimebusting is a National All-Powerful Army with the Latest Technology, and the old-school individual scofflaw with a gun has no hope against the might of Society to protect the average law-abiding citizens at large. Raoul Walsh still gives the picture the same 30's-Warner crackle of energy, but as much raw tough-guy energy as Cagney puts into his performance, you begin to wonder if this was a "farewell" role to an earlier-generation character, as he was looking more to playing Navy captains and song-and-dance men.

And as the historian will probably point out, it was because of Parnell that Gable was originally terrified to get back into 19th-cty. period-costume ruffles when David Selznick wanted him for that Civil-War picture he was making, and thought he was headed for disaster when he finally did...

A) "Classy" narrative 50's-TV still used film stock, since videotape was more for live-audience shows, and B ) Studios think the only way they can get paying audiences to see "old" movies in Fathom screenings (at least apart from Princess Bride, Ferris Bueller, the Grease Sing-Along, or Spirited Away) is to use the "Anniversary" to promote awareness for the disk release. For which they only use the "Anniversary" to bother to re-release anyway. (I remember one of our college sci-fi festivals showing "The Invaders"--yes, one of the Boomer episodes--in the theater, followed by an audience Rod Serling imitation contest. So we know it can be done, and that was still just on film, rather than digital.)

And, in a rare twist, they're not JUST showing The Only Four Episodes Everybody Who Never Watched the Series In Their Life Knows. (Well, it would be five, if they threw in "It's a Good Life", but they apparently didn't have time.) They're also throwing in the two "Serling's Choice" classic-script episodes--"Walking Distance" and "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street"--so whew, it's not just three Boomer-TV hours with the Pig-Faces and the Mannequins.

No, no, thank you...BTW, what did that have to do with hot blessed ANYTHING??

Given the also available copies of The Keep, Let It Be and Little Darlings, I have strong doubts. But--like those who went in search of Roger Corman's "Fantastic Four", Disney's "Song of the South" or "KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park"--some grass-roots movie fans know when to knock on the Internet-fan-devotee door and tell them Joe sent you for the ice delivery. Not that we responsible folks ever would, mind. 👼 (Back when it was still in limbo, I remember one gray-market fan who painstakingly bootleg-recreated "Giorgio Moroder's Metropolis" in detail from the VHS soundtrack and clips from Kino's ultra-restored Complete version of the original Lang...Now that was true dedication. 👍 Actually ended up better looking than the legit version we later got on Blu-ray, but such things were only temporary to heal wounds.)

You CANNOT release Electric Dreams without Culture Club (it's too tied into the plot). Or Jeff Lynne's "Video" either, so there. And besides, I was just giving an example--It might have been the Giorgio Moroder songs, which rights-limbo kept his 1984 Metropolis off of disk for years.

I always like to needle Tim Burton fans by telling first-timers to watch John Waters' "Hairspray" and "Cry Baby", and ask them to "guess which one is the Tim Burton film". Trick question, of course, they're BOTH goofy-kitschy-campy John Waters, but watch how many will say Cry Baby was the Burton film because Johnny Depp was in it. 😛

But then--thanks to Nip's first-associated-thought responses--I don't quite see what Underdog has to do with it either. (And no, Nip, you don't have to post the Tennessee Tuxedo theme just because I mentioned Underdog.) Wired had a recent article from last August that said it all--"Are (00's-10's) Sci-fi Movies Getting Too PRETENTIOUS?" https://www.wired.com/2019/08/geeks-guide-pretentious-sci-fi/ Got a point--I can see Ridley Scott's last two Alien prequels getting out of hand because, well, Ridley Scott, but you wouldn't make a grownup-parent-issues-metaphor movie like "Arrival" or "Ad Astra" unless you were nostalgic for Jodie Foster in "Contact", and, well...has there ever been a recorded case of that?? (Are we getting to a point-of-no-return where I now actually miss "The Ice Pirates"?) Oh, and I don't know whose meme it is, I just like it:

Because the series has to grind out episodes on a quick assembly line, directors have to take care of all the details, and only have the actors for a few shooting days--One episode can be in pre-production while the other shoots, and the third could be going through editing. As for the actors, they're trained to work with anybody.