BYOB – Strike Ending Weekend
So… here is some space for you all to stretch out.
The strike is, in effect, over… as it effectively has been since the DGA did their deal.
If, in fact, the Guild got the added bump of a 2% residual on streaming that starts in a couple of years, as the NYT reports in their buried lead, there is REALLY no excuse for even considering a vote against.
Right now, the thing I will most strongly take away from this strike is how the notions of how to work a strike have become terribly outdated and spectacularly irrelevant.
I don’t know why they keep reaching for the “it’s not over yet” crap, but it really is the last gasp of an aging culture. Settling this strike was never about the Oscars or the Golden Globes or Jay Leno or The Agents… it was, is, and will always be about money, money, ego, and money.
Anyway… there is Hannah Montana, Hudson/McConaughey 2, and “urban” comedy to discuss. The beat goes on…
It’s not really an ‘urban’ comedy if it takes place in rural small town, now, is it? Perhaps the terminology needs updating.
DP, that’s not aimed at you.
This may be neither here nor there, but given that so many people consider No Country a cert for a clean sweep, does anyone recall what Stephen Frears said in the wake of the Cannes Film Festival last year. For the first time in Lordy knows how long, the Coens left the Coisette with nothing to show for the talents. And what was more, Frears, who was the Chairman of the Jury, said “Someone should have told the Coen brothers’ producer not to put the film in competition. It was ridiculous. You’re judging films that are made for audiences against films that are not.”
I just thought I would bring that up… just in case there is a surprise come Oscar night.
Maybe it’s time audiences educated themselves a little; time a learn a thing or two about cinema.
So Cannes is officially in the business of only rewarding movies with no commercial viability? In that case they should retroactively de-award The Pianist, Pulp Fiction, The Piano, The Mission, All That Jazz, Apocalypse Now, MASH, Marty, etc.
Nikki Finke is trumpeting the “it’s not over yet” idea like there’s no tomorrow. Her headline at the LA WEEKLY calls the offer “the crappy WGA deal” and breathlessly adds the line “Don’t Be Surprised if the Writers Revolt Over This One”. She is clearly attempting to incite and encourage the hardliners to turn the deal down without looking at it. Barring that, she’s hoping for an extended voting/ratification process before the strike is ended. Ostensibly, she has a point. The WGA members deserve to have their voices heard. But I tend to doubt that Nikki is that concerned with the rank and file writer. It is far more likely that she’s simply hoping to see the Oscars disrupted or crashed, the TV and pilot seasons crashed, and this whole quagmire go on for another few months. Because it will give her lots of great material for her columns, and allow her to maintain a position of supposedly being the only impartial journalist in town.
She has now decided to post a running commentary on when the written deal terminology will be sent to the members, complete with a couple of bonus shots attacking the moguls’ lawyers for “playing Russian Roulette”.
Nikki F is doing everything she can to incite the hardliners and get this strike to go on forever — it’s fucking disgusting.
And there’s no way it works. The hardliners have a large presence on the net but small in the actual guild. They are equaled in number by the folks who have been threatening to go fi-core from practically day one. The vast majority of writers just want this strike to end and know continuing it would be a disaster with no gain.
I’ll be at the meeting tomorrow. And I can guarantee you if some crazy starts mouthing off about striking until we bring the town to its knees… well, he or she will be shouted down and fast.
Come Monday, Nikki F just goes back to being crazy Nikki again and she knows it. Right now, we are witnessing the acts of a crazy and desperate woman.
If a strike neophyte were to read Finke’s comment section on her WGA posts, they’d think that the whole membership consists of rabid hardliners who will strike until the town burns down. Finke has a habit of deleting comments she doesn’t like, so who knows if that’s the way her readers actually think. Whatever the case, judging from her site alone, the entire union is committed to fight this until the studios cry uncle and begs forgiveness. Snicker.
“Whatever the case, judging from her site alone, the entire union is committed to fight this until the studios cry uncle and begs forgiveness. Snicker.”
Exactly, Wrecktum. This thing is OVER. Writers are back to work on Monday. The hardliners, most who are willing to strike forever because they get don’t paid to write anymore, can’t change this.
DVD want list…
Anyone have any idea when, if ever, the following titles might show up on DVD?
Enchanted April
Losey’s Boom!
Russell’s The Boyfriend
My cousin’s husband is a western buff, and he’s furious that the original Monte Walsh is not on DVD. He wants to know why.
Random.
I feel your pain, Adorian.
How about Russell’s “The Devils”? I bought a British import dvd (which is first-rate with lots of sweet extras) since an American release seems hugely unlikely at this point. No idea why. Also bought Polanski’s “What?,” Welles’ “Falstaff/Chimes at Midnight” and Johnny Depp’s “The Brave” as imports because I got tired of waiting for their U.S. release.
I’m still holding out hope for Antonioni’s “Zabriskie Point,” Mutrux’s “American Hot Wax,” Rivette’s “Celine and Julie Go Boating,” “The Loves of Isadora” (Vanessa Redgrave’s greatest performance), Losey’s “Secret Ceremony,” Henry Jaglom’s “A Safe Place,” “The Sterile Cuckoo” (Pakula’s directorial debut with a classic Liza Minnelli performance), Bogdanovich’s “At Long Last Love,” Tony Newley’s scandalous “Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?,” “The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart” (Don Johnson’s screen debut and a fantastic time capsule of NYC in the late 60s), Lumet’s “The Sea Gull”…and about a thousand other virtually-impossible-to-see titles.
At least Fassbinder’s “Berlin Alexanderplatz” finally got its U.S. dvd release last year thnx to Criterion!
I’ve been awaiting Enchanted April for years. With that director and those stars and award nominations, it should be a no-brainer (plus it’s a good movie, too). It’s out in Australia, if that will do you any good…
Movieman: Weirdly enough, some of the movies you list — Sterile Cuckoo, for example — were widely available on VHS (and even Beta) for years.
But I’d still like to know: When the hell are we going to get Lelouch’s Les Miserables on DVD, huh?
Sign that you know the WGA strike is ending: The story with the details is posted to the Showbiz page of Fark.
That is true, Joe. But I’m not about to pay absurdly inflated prices from Amazon.com dealers for scratchy old vhs copies of “Zabriskie Point,” “Sterile Cuckoo,” “American Hot Wax” or “At Long Last Love.” All of the films I mentioned deserve a dvd upgrade (especially when you consider some of the crap that routinely gets foisted onto the dvd market these days). But I’m sure that music licensing has a lot to do with the problem. For shame!
I taped “Cuckoo” off TCM last weekend and watched it again. That thing destroys me every damn time. I’m old enough to remember seeing it on a double-feature with “True Grit” (nuts I know, but it’s probabIy because they were both Paramount releases) back in 1970.
Speaking of dvds (import and otherwise), I was just about to pre-order a Hong Kong dvd of “My Blueberry Nights” until I noticed that the format was “DVD3,” meaning it can only play in certain Asian countries. Bummer!
I bought “2046” online in January ’05 from a HG distributer, and it was in the all-regions-friendly “NTSC/DVD9” format. Guess I’m going to have to wait for Weinstein to finally open the film in the states. Again, major bummer!
Movieman, are you my twin brother? I too worship “Isadora,” and I would like the longer version to come out on DVD. And I was afraid to mention “Secret Ceremony” (with the original ending) because I knew asking for “Boom!” was too much Liz Taylor camp for one wish list.
Does anyone who guards the various vaults read this site and pay heed to what the people want?
Well, if we’re going to talk about Universal releases from the 1960s… and, while we’re at it, talk about Liza Minnelli… where the hell is Charlie Bubbles, one of my favorite movies of that decade? (Saw it again fairly recently on Retroplex — and, yes, it holds up nicely.)
Oh, and Movieman: The double bill you describe is not weird, considering both movies came out in 1969. What is weird is that I recall seeing Sterile Cuckoo for the third or fourth time (with the future Mrs. Leydon) on a drive-in double bill with… The Godfather.
I think Paramount’s “logic” for pairing “Cuckoo” and “True Grit” stems from the fact that both were nominated for acting Oscars in the spring of 1970 (Minnelli and Wayne). I’d already seen both movies during their original release(s) in the summer and fall of 1969, so I was just happy to see them again for one low price (a kid ticket cost sixty five cents back then, I believe).
Remember: this was the pre-HBO/home video era.
“The Godfather” and “Cuckoo” makes a deliciously eccentric pairing…I would have loved to been at that drive-in! How about Fox’s twinning of “Planet of the Apes” and “Valley of the Dolls” (two of their biggest recent hits) back in 1969?
That was wonderfully demented, too.
I haven’t seen “Charlie Bubbles” since its original ’68 release (and I was way too young to really appreciate it back then). It’d be nice to have a second look at Finney’s auteur bid.
A restored “Loves of Isadora” is such a no-brainer I can’t for the life of me figue out what’s been holding them up. Hopefully Universal will finally put this package together while Vanessa Redgrave is still available to do a commentary track.
And a Losey/Taylor DVD double-pack of “Boom!” and “Secret Ceremony” is equally “why-hasn’t-anyone-thought-of-THIS-before???” elementary. (I’m pretty sure that MCA-Universal is the culprit here, too.)
A better place to pitch your dvd wish lists is on the TCM website.
I’ve been doing it for years–albeit with very little success so far, lol.
That “Godfather”/”Cuckoo” double bill is wonderfully surreal.
How about when Fox regularly tagteamed “Valley of the Dolls” and “Planet of the Apes” (two of their biggest post-“Sound of Music” hits) back in 1969? That was pretty groovy, too.
I haven’t seen “Charlie Bubbles” since its original release (and was way too young to appreciate it). Wish I could have a chance to look at it again someday…sigh.
And releasing a restored cut of “Isadora” is such a no-brainer I’m amazed that it hasn’t happened already. I hope someone at MCA-Universal comes to their senses before it’s too late for Vanessa Redgrave to do a commentary track.
And a DVD double-bill of “Boom!” and “Secret Ceremony” (the original cut) is equally “why-hasn’t-anyone-done-this-yet??” obvious.
A better place to post your DVD wish lists is on the TCM website.
I’ve been doing it for years–albeit with very little success, lol.
Yikes!
Sorry for the double post. I didn’t think the first one registered so I did it again….weird!
…another screwy Fox double bill from that era that I took advantage of more than once was “M*A*S*H” and “Patton” (two of Fox’s biggest post-“Apes”/”VOTD” hits), both of which were Oscar-nominated for Best Picture in the spring of ’71. Warner Brothers teagteaming “Bullit” and “Bonnie and Clyde” in 1969 was just flat-out cool, though.
Other favorite “hmmmm” double-features from my misspent youth: “Which Way to the Front?” and “The Wild Bunch;” “Brewster McCloud” (speaking of films overdue for a dvd release!) and “House of Dark Shadows;” “Bananas” and “Midnight Cowboy,” “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Flight from Ashiya,” “The Wild Bunch” and “Pretty Poison,” “Barefoot in the Park” and “Hurry Sundown” (double Jane Fonda!), “Let it Be” and “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly,” “Willard” and “10 Rillington Place,” “The Maltese Bippy” and “The Extraordinary Seaman” (possibly John Frankenheimer’s worst film ever)….and the beat goes on.
…and because I can’t stop myself.
How about “Night of the Living Dead” (in its original release) paired with “Dr. Who and the Daleks”?
Or–this is a classic–“Smokey and the Bandit” and “Two Lane Blacktop” for a buck at NYC’s old St. Marks Cinema in the fall of ’77? A very sensible two-for-one was when a neighborhood theater in Youngstown, Ohio that played exclusively Universal product double-billed “The Last Movie” and “The Hired Hand” in March ’72. Ironically, that same program turned up at NY’s Cinema Village (when it was a rep house) in the latter part of the decade.
Some of my favorite odd couple combos were courtesy of sneak previews (remember those?) where you’d see two movies for the price of one (imagine that!) on the same program.
The first time I saw “Carrie” was when it was sneaked with the abysmal “Norman, Is That You?” in October ’76. Or “Silence of the Lambs” sneak-previewed with “Dances With Wolves” (two eventual Best Picture Oscar winners); “Annie Hall” sneaked with “Rocky” (again, two future Best Picture winners); “Kramer Vs. Kramer” with a reissue of Disney’s “Sleeping Beauty;” “Paradise Alley” with “Halloween” (on its opening day, no less, at the old Rivoli on B’way); “16 Candles” with “Vertigo” (remember the 1984 Hitchcock rereleases?); “American Hot Wax” with Carl Reiner’s “The One and Only;” “E.T.” with “Conan the Barbarian” (Memorial Day weekend ’82); John Carpenter’s “The Thing” with “Firefox;” “Gremlins” with Richard Lester’s “Finders Keepers;” “The Three Musketeers” with “The Day of the Dophin;” “American Graffiti” with “Jesus Christ Superstar;” “The Honeymoon Killers” with “The Ballad of Cable Hogue;” “Me, Natalie” (Patty Duke) with “Daddy’s Gone-a-Hunting;” and I could go on for days; literally.
There was one 1964 double-header I saw as a wee bairn that bugs me to this day because I can’t for the life of me remember the title of the second feature. The headliner was “The Three Stooges Go Around the World in a Daze,” but the other movie was a b&w English psycho killer thriller whose coup de grace was a young coed hanging from (what I remember anyway) as a meat hook–10 full years before “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”
Does anyone know which film I’m thinking of? I could swear there was a number in the title (“13 Scared Girls” or something like that?), but have been drawing a blank for decades.
Joe- You might know the answer to this.
Whatever happened to John Boorman’s “The Tiger’s Tail”? It was reviewed (very favorably) in Variety in the fall of 2006 when it played the San Sebastian Film Festival, but has never opened in the states.
Although Disney had the U.K. distribution rights, they apparently didn’t think enough of the film to bother acquiring the U.S. rights as well.
Pretty sad. And the damn thing hasn’t even been released on dvd–at least not in America.
In 1969, I saw a publicly advertised sneak preview of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, then stuck around for the main feature — The Undefeated, with John Wayne and Rock Hudson. Two very diferent Westerns — almost like I was watching, in a single evening, the end of one era, the beginning of another.
As for The Tiger’s Tale: Who knows? Add it to an unfortunately long list of films that, despite the pedigree of established directors and/or stars, simply never get theatrical play in this country. I caught a terrific little movie called Melancholia with Jeroen Krabbe giving maybe the best performance of his career at Cannes back in 1989, just when Krabbe was gaining some visibility in this country. (I love that he played a character on Miami Vice named Klaus Herzog.)Since then? I’ve never even heard of it being on cable in the U.S.
That’s so funny that you would mention a sneak of “Butch and Sundance” with “The Undefeated” because I saw that very same sneak/regular feature pairing here in Ohio that fall.
I wonder if it was a national kind of thing…did the studios even think in those terms back in 1969???
Pretty sure they did. Something else I remember from that period: In New Orleans, the Loews State theater downtown showed almost everything United Artists released. And whatever movie that would open on Friday almost always got sneaked on the Sunday night beforehand. Now, keep in mind, this was back at a time when many movies (especially, if memory serves me correctly, a lot of programmers released by UA and Universal) would stick around for only one week. So there were times when I might be going to the Loews twice a month or more. And I would like to know what happned to some of the real oddities I caught during this period. Movies like Michael Winner’s Hannibal Brooks (made during that fleeting period when Oliver Reed and Michael J. Pollard were considered viable movie leads) and Sinful Davy (directed by John Huston, with an amazingly young John Hurt in the title role).
Also: I’m sure you and many folks on this blog are already aware of this, but just in case: Many of the Universal movies you’ve mentioned (and others, especially The Hired Hand and Night of the Following Day) were re-edited for TV broadcast on NBC in the ’60 and ’70s. Indeed, previously deleted footage was restored (in Hired hand, for example) and sometimes entirely new footage was shot to “explain” complicated plots, provide new endings that adhered more rigorously to old Production Code (and then-current broadcast TV) standards, or simply to pad out running time that had been trimmed because of nudity and language edits. Quite often, I was startled by some of this new stuff when I watched on NBC a movie I had previously seen in theaters. But here’s the funny part: Those “revised” versions were, for decades afterwards, the only versions available, even when A&E started programming them. Which is why, for example, some movie buffs might be amazed to find that Larry Hagman doesn’t appear in the “Director’s Cut” DVD of Hired Hand after they’ve seen him in many TV airings of the film.
…and funny that you should mention the Loews State in NO. I walked past it when I was in town last month (it looked so sad all shuttered up, and was wondering how long it had been closed. Was the State another casualty of Katrina, or had it already been dark for decades? Kind of hard to tell. It looked just like the sort of downtown “movie palaces” I cut my moviegoing teeth on back in the early 60s (we even had a State here in Youngstown, OH–it was the place that showed all the big roadshow pictures like “Sound of Music,” “Dr. Zhivago,” “The Bible” and “Mary Poppins”).
The most notorious examply of Universal recutting one of their titles was the hack job they did on Losey’s “Secret Ceremony.” Could that be the reason the film has never been released on DVD? Does a negative of Losey’s original cut even exist anymore?
“The Night of the Following Day” is another example of television basically remaking an entire movie. I remember seeing “Following Day” (on a double-feature with the Paul Newman racing flick “Winning” of all things) and barely recognizing it when it turned up on TV a year or two later.
And does anybody remember what CBS did to Visconti’s “The Damned”? It was given a nat’l late night movie slot (I think it started at 1:35 A.M. or something), and was an incoherent botch. The original run time was 155 minutes, but the whole thing was over in under two hours on CBS (and that was with beaucoup extended commercial breaks). I didn’t really “see” the movie until college when it played on a double-feature at the old Carnegie Hall rep Cinema with “Death in Venice.”
The X-rating prevented me from seeing “The Damned” during its one-week run in downtown Ytown back in the spring of 1970; I was only 11 at the time. Of course, if it had played the drive-ins, my mother would have probably taken me. It was mom’s indulgence (and lax security at drive-in theaters, lol) that allowed me to see X’s like “Midnight Cowboy,” “Heironymus Merkin,” “The Killing of Sister George,” “Last Summer” and “Myra Breckinridge” when I was just a precocious little tyke. (“Medium Cool” was another X that had to wait until college, though: it never played at any of the local “outdoor cinemas.”)
I suspect the Loews had been closed before Katrina. But I remember seeing a shocking news photo taken during the days following the storm: A guy in a small boat rowing past the Loews. (Obviously, there had been more flooding on Canal Street than I had been led to believe.) What a heartbreaking thing for me to see: There was the theater where I saw all the early Bond movies, the original Thomas Crown Affair, the Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns..
I wonder if younger generations of moviegoers feel the sort of sentimental attachments to the moviehouses they frequented during their youth? Or is it hard to get senitimental about multiplexes?
BTW: I bet it’s very hard for people under, say, 25 to appreciate just how brutally movies used to be cut and/or reconstituted for broadcast TV. I can still remember the first time I heard someone say “fuck” on TV, when I was over at a friend’s house watching Night Moves on HBO in 1976. What a shock. LOL.
Nostalgia is a funny thing. When I remember the movie talismans of my youth, I can always remember which theater I saw them in; what every inch of the theater looked, even smelled, like (and not just the downtown movie palaces, but the homey, single-screen neighborhood dives, too); how the popcorn tasted; etc.
Sometimes I wonder whether it was movies I fell in love with as a kid, or just the theaters I saw them in. (Maybe that’s why I’m always telling people that today’s “theatrical experience” is overrated, and that movies are more satisfying in the comfort of my home.)
I still remember going to see, at the tender age of nine, the Hammer HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES teamed with Chaplin’s THE GOLD RUSH. Oh, those wacky United Artists guys!
Movieman, I think–but not 100% sure–that the English psycho killer picture was another Hammer film, MANIAC, which was released by Columbia at around the same time. It’s on TCM next month.
On another topic, what the hell is James Earl Jones doing in a worthless Martin Lawrence POS like ROSCOE JENKINS? As he so memorably said on WILL & GRACE, “I don’t need this crap. I’ve got Darth Vader money.”
Speaking of nostalgia and butchered movies, in Los Angeles in the 70s and early 80s they used to have the “3:30 Movie” on the local ABC affiliate – KABC. They would often run packages that had weekly themes like “Planet of the Apes Week” or “Jerry Lewis Week” and each movie would run for 90 minutes WITH commercials in order to finish in time for the 5:00 news. Some longer films like “Ben Hur” or “It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World” would be shown over two days but for the most part films were just trimmed in order to get in under 90 minutes.
“Maniac,” huh? I’ll have to check it out on TCM, Cad, but I could’ve sworn there was a number in the title. Do you remember a girl hanging from a meat hook? Or maybe my memory is playing tricks on me. That image somehow implanted itself in my consciousness for lo these many years: probably explains why I’m so ****ed up, lol.
My personal madeleine is buttery popcorn mixed with Pom-Poms (anybody remember those? they were the better Milk Duds). I used to eat them together at every Saturday matinee as a kid.
“Speaking of nostalgia and butchered movies, in Los Angeles in the 70s and early 80s they used to have the “3:30 Movie” on the local ABC affiliate – KABC.”
Didn’t most L.A. stations do themed weeks like that back then? I remember channel 5 KTLA showing week-long blocks of Hitchcock movies, for example.
Ah memories. I saw WHIFFS (with Elliot Gould/Eddie Albert) at the military theater as a kid when we lived on the base. Trailers that night were for LIPSTICK and BLACK CHRISTMAS. Holy shit I was terrified. WHIFFS was even scarier. And where’s that DVD with commentary?
And what are the chances that I actually have the Franis Lai soundtrack for HANNIBAL BROOKS on my ipod and was listening to it today? Oliver Reed and Michael Pollard on elephants — movie star TNT!
Damn, Christian. I think that even trumps my having an orignal vinyl recording of Lai’s soundtrack for Michael Winner’s I’ll Never Forget What’s’isname (another one of my ’60s faves, which played on a double bill with Albert Finney’s Charlie Bubbles for about 3 months at the Gentilly Art Theatre in N.O. in the late ’60s).
DEMENTIA 13, maybe?
That didn’t have a coed on a meathook, sounds more like a Hammer or Amicus movie.
>>>Didn’t most L.A. stations do themed weeks like that back then? I remember channel 5 KTLA showing week-long blocks of Hitchcock movies, for example.
KTLA used to have a weeknight movie at 8:00 I think. I remember being introduced to Preston Sturges during a Sturges week and making a point to catch the Marx Bros. week everytime they did it.
The other thing I remember is that on weekends Ch. 9 or 13 would alternate the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movies with the Charlie Chan movies.
Ch. 13 and 11 had noontime classics every weekday and Ch.9 had the Million Dollar Movie. Not to mention that all the stations showed old films throughout late night
BTW: They used to have the 90-minute weekday afternoon movies on WWL-TV in New Orleans while I was growing up. I remember looking forward all week to seeing a Friday telecast of Revenge of Frankenstein. But the movie was pre-empted because… well, because it was Nov. 22, 1963. No kidding.
Speaking of 1963: “13 Frightened Girls,” directed by William Castle. Only trouble is, it was shot in color.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056796/
also here in l.a.: one of the local stations ran ‘the million dollar movie’…. it was the same film for five week-nights and then replayed four times over the week-end….. as a result, i was the only nine-year-old in the neighborhood who could recite/sing entire scenes/songs from movies of the 30’s and 40’s………
RIP Roy Scheider.
RIP indeed. Was it really so long ago that we were talking about All That Jazz on this very blog?
http://movingpictureblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/rip-roy-scheider-1932-2008.html#links
I just dropped in to lift a virtual glass to Roy and am glad I was beaten to it. Good to know he’ll be remembered. One of my all time favorites and a genuinely good guy in real life. We’re gonna neeed a bigger boat.
Except for the fact that it was apparently in color, not b&w, “13 Frightened Girls” sounds like it might be the mystery movie I’ve been dreaming about (it’s got a # in the title, etc.).
The Maltin book mentions a Swiss boarding school setting (which would explain the coeds I’ve fixated on). Could I have been imagining the meat hook scene all these many years?
Guess there’s no way of ever really knowing for sure since chances of TCM showing it are nil. And I don’t see an imminent dvd release looming on the horizon, lol.
Thanks for all the helpful suggestions, guys!