Seriously?
“This allows the critics to stay at a remove from their readers, to stay in control. To pontificate from their high ivory tower of authority. It ignores the new order of the day, which brings critics onto a more equal footing with their readers.” Anne Thompson
When did the authoritative voice become a subject for disdain from the over-40s?
Many of us choose to engage often with our readers. But “the new order of the day?” Was there a manifesto I didn’t read? Was Jeff Wells emboldened by his Social Security checks?
How about this as a notion… the only reason the New York Times critics are taken seriously at all is not because they work for the Gray Lady, but because they aren’t out there slogging in the shit with everyone else as though they had nothing better to do?
These two are some of the last left who are allowed to just do their jobs and not be twitter monkeys, jumping on command, trying to appease the masses. God bless them. I wrote about what I thought was a bit of overreaching in their race piece. But apparently Anne – and many others – would have them opining on everything all the time… like the rest of us idiots have found ourselves doing.
I was here first. First daily movie column on the web. The only daily movie column anywhere other than Army Archerd’s industry-friendly Variety fixture. I knocked it out every day. 2000 words a day for years. I chose e-mails to run every day. Usually, I picked ones that challenged my perspective. Sometimes I responded. Sometimes I just allowed another perspective onto my turf. I engaged readers in such an open and aggressive way that it was occasionally frowned upon by Mr. Ebert and Ms. Dargis alike. I took them both very seriously. But I still battled. My nature, I guess. When blogging landed, I eventually launched the blog which soon ate the column. I’ve been through the transition in a way that very few can claim to have experienced. And I’ll just say, the longer the blogging thing goes on, the more I appreciate restraint.
Critics do not belong on an equal footing with their readers. No one is saying they are gods on high. But if they have no authority, why the hell would anyone read them? And this is coming from a guy who doesn’t read many critics at all. I expect a lot before I hand over the mantle of authority to someone… and never just because of where their shingle is hanging. Never.
I LOVE gathering opinions on the blog. Even the rage can be helpful at times. But while we should all respect differences of opinion, some have to stand up and say, “I know more about this than you. You can disregard me, but I will think you are wrong. Sometimes, I will have disdain for your ignorance.”
I’m not saying that people shouldn’t like or hate what they like or hate. This is mostly a subjective issue. But there are some objective standards and some people are conscious enough of them or able to parse them smartly enough to be worth extra consideration.
Roger, God bless him, has a huge advantage over any other film blogger. He’s f-ing Roger Ebert. Does Anne think she could sell crap from Amazon in her tweets and keep her credibility (or perhaps, her job)? But Roger is above. He’s earned the place. And he doesn’t throw off the robe. He looks good in it and while ever humble, he wears it daily.
How great is it that Manohla and Tony are going to take their time and consider their answers before vomiting them out onto the web? God! And consider the history. “Ask Manohla” was a big LA Times hit – same set-up – and grew Manohla’s web value… and they killed it will a content wall. There was a brief flirtation with it at NYT, but it too had wall issue. So now – ironically, within what may be months of the next wall – here we go again.
They should live and be well.
And I think Anne – and many others – long for the days of taking a deep breath before hitting “send” to their editors, to their colleagues, and then, days, weeks, or months later, to their readers. Yeah, sometimes the soup was so filtered that it had no flavor. But man, wasn’t it great to let the soup cook long enough so the flavor could mature? Not enough of that these days.
yeah… but they are wrong sometimes – wrong on agreed-upon facts and they should take their hits like everyone else when they get it wrong.
“I LOVE gathering opinions on the blog. Even the rage can be helpful at times. But while we should all respect differences of opinion, some have to stand up and say, ‘I know more about this than you. You can disregard me, but I will think you are wrong. Sometimes, I will have disdain for your ignorance.'”
and this
“When you grow up, you will come to understand that opinions that differ from your own do not necessarily require ignorance of something.”
THIS IS WHY YOU ARE FUCKING BAFFLING!
Bob, it’s not as if there is absolutely no recourse for readers to express their disagreements with critics. People have been able to write letters to the editor since the beginning of newspapers. A few years ago I had some quibbles with an A.O. Scott piece about the state of the modern romantic comedy. So I sent the times an email that raised some points I felt Scott intentionally overlooked to make his argument. A few days later, my letter was printed. Simple as that. There was no response from Scott acknowledging my concerns or defending his point of view, but I didn’t care. I expressed my peace and would rather see him focusing on selecting little-scene classics to highlight for his Critic’s Picks video series than getting into mudslinging fests with movie geeks.
IO… you acting like a jackass is not what I love, nor is it my responsibility to tolerate it when you write out of your ass.
True enough, Bob… though what is “agreed upon” is often a matter of opinion, no?
“Do not necessarily” are the key words in David’s second quotation, IO. I think you prove his overall point. Whatever happened to reading things carefully before you judge?
lisa, slightly OT and don’t feel obliged but if you are so inclined, what points did you raise to A. O.? i only ask because i’ve been down that road a couple times here, just wondering if we were perhaps on the same or similar roads.
Danielle, his opinion about damn near all genre fare (and those who love it), has continually read like a bitter man who watched the movies he loved get pushed aside for films he finds unworthy, so I am not exactly perceptive to his sentiments in this area.
David, you just need to hire a fact-checker because obviously you have no clue what you put on this blog. Now go put on your Maul mask, go out into the fucking night, and find BANSKY! Sanj wants a fucking DP/30 with that collective and you might as well try to get one for her!
Long time listener, first time poster. I couldn’t agree more with what host David says here. Dargis and Scott are THE two critics I most enjoy reading, whether I agree with them or not. Their writing is vibrant, thoughtful, and their arguments are generally cogent (and when not, still entertaining). I think both have done a marvelous job cultivating whatever their images may be. Dargis’ relative anonymity in the world of criticism allows her personality to be formed solely by her considered writing. A.O. takes a more public path, but even his byline is a construction.
My point is, with social networking, we are all manufacturing our persona on a day-to-day basis and when those personas are so precisely and delicately controlled and considered their appeal can be mythic and have more impact. The stop-gap between brain and publication is THE ENTIRE POINT OF WRITING. It’s why writing can be so valuable. It’s not just brain to paper. There will always be a place in this world for people who think before they speak or write. When those people open their mouths people listen, because it matters, not because they’re loudest.
Even The New York Times sometimes falls victim to barking loudest, reporting patently false information with the desire to be FIRST AND NOW (see the minute-to-minute reporting of the Virginia Tech shooting, Heath Ledger’s death, etc…). Ms. Dargis and Mr. Scott stand in opposition to that. They and we are better off for it.
leahnz, it was a couple of years ago, but as I remember it was 2008 and in the article Scott was citing the mediocre quality of current romantic fare such as “27 Dresses,” “Dan in Real Life,” and Kate Hudson’s entire post-“Almost Famous” starring pretty but bland leads whose narratives carry neither wit nor suspense. Scott looks longingly at the verbal tennis matches of “His Girl Friday,” and “The Lady Eve” while citing modern critical hits like “Knocked Up,” “The Devil Wears Prada,” and “Juno” as the exception and not the rule. Other modern exceptions he cited were “When Harry Met Sally” and “Jerry Maguire.” While I agree in many ways that a lot of modern romantic comedies suck, I felt Scott’s listing of current romantic films left some glaring omissions.
In my letter (remember, this was 2008), I felt that Scott neglected two very glaring examples of smart, punchy romantic comedy pairings in recent times. First, I cited Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant in Two Week’s Notice (if I had thought more deeply about it I could might have cited the entirety of Grant’s collaboration with Richard Curtis, which was bizarrely absent from Scott’s entire assessment. I guess the Brits don’t count. Also weird he would leave out both of the Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks films of the 90s. Not to mention My Big Fat Greek Wedding). The other big omission I cited in my letter were the Drew Barrymore/Adam Sandler collaborations. Sure, their banter wasn’t the kind of venom exchanged between the likes of Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, but Sandler and Barrymore displayed a genuinely quirky chemistry together to while inhabiting worlds that were anything but bland. This omission, I think had more, to do, I think, with a lack of imagination on Scott’s part. It’s like the Baby Boomers who whine there hasn’t been any good music since the 1970s.
And while we all like to look back and remember classic screwball comedies fondly, I’m sure there are scores of equally silly, frivolous, and insipid films that have rightly been forgotten by history.
But yeah, the Richard Curtis omission is really weird. I would put Love Actually and Bridget Jones’s Diary (ignoring the sequel) up with the best of them.
Love Actually is one of the few romantic movies that I genuinely loved.
(actually, I think it’s the *only* romantic movie I’ve genuinely loved – but hey, superhero movies aren’t everyone’s bag either)
Good I hate Love Actually. It’s not that it doesn’t have moments. I love Billy Bob Dubya getting schooled by Tony Grant but the whole Keira Knightley angle sort of kills it for me. Seriously, they should have just gone the full nine, and had her leave her husband. It’s not like that sort of thing has not happened before because of love, and it would have made a more realistic LOVE STORY portion of the movie. Yeah, I might be bothered too much by this, but it does bother me.
So FS, no love for any Nora Ephron films? Hell my fave romantic movie is Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist because that’s how I roll (THE POWER OF VAMPIRE WEEKEND COMPELS YOU!), but Sleepless in Seattle gets me every time.
i don’t read NY Times – i get all my news from TMZ and ONTD
hey DP – how about a DP/30 with the TMZ guys – yes i’m serious.
also i hated Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist – one of the worst of that year
I think the whole Love Actually works well because it shows the whole gamut of love – love for a family member (Laura Linney), love for a family (Thompson), selfish love (Rickman), fantasy love (Marshall), love crossing social barriers (Grant), love overcoming language barriers (Firth), unexpected love (Freeman), childhood love (Brodie-sangster), tragic love (Neeson), love of friends (Nighy), fairytale love (Knightley), and unrequited love (Lincoln).
Yeah he gets the short end of it, but not all love runs smooth. And the movie does well to show that love, actually, is… all around.
Blankets, what a thoughtful, well-articulated response: “The stop-gap between brain and publication is THE ENTIRE POINT OF WRITING. It’s why writing can be so valuable. It’s not just brain to paper. There will always be a place in this world for people who think before they speak or write. When those people open their mouths people listen, because it matters, not because they’re loudest.” Despite some occasional quibbles, what endears me most to the NYTimes critics is something extremely tiny: their snarky commentaries to often arbitrary film rating, which for me feel like a throwback to George Bernard Shaw and Dorothy Parker in the Algonquin Round Table Days.
Still, are are two items that do occasionally piss me off about the Times critics: 1. As David and I have suggested, sometimes they have a tendency to make sweeping generalizations when attempting to use the state of [insert genre] to act like sociologists. 2. They have a nasty habit of giving away the endings to films they review. While this choice is there prerogative, and I would hate to see them add “spoiler alert” in the middle of their pieces, what it means is I rarely make them the first critics I read if I’m thinking of seeing a particular film. Instead, I go to them after I’ve seen the film to get a different perspective.
P.S., Does anyone but me ever feel a little bit bad for Stephen Holden? He never seems to get any love.
~Projection alert~
IO writes: “[David’s] opinion… has continually read like a bitter man who watched the movies he loved get pushed aside for films he finds unworthy.”
Moments like this remind me of why Freud was such a genius.
But back to the main topic: I think the reason Manohla and Tony are so well respected is that they are such great writers. In this case, the most prestigious paper in the US seems to have used its money and prestige to hire two of the three or four best critics in the country. Manohla is Pauline Kael with more discipline (with the positives and negatives that implies) and Tony is Roger Ebert’s heir apparent. (Sometimes authority comes from being able to say incredibly smart things in smart and witty ways, even if others don’t always agree with your basic take on the film–or whatever–in question.)
Daniella, I really like your comparison between A.O. Scott and Roger Ebert. It’s obvious, but for some reason I hadn’t thought of it before. Your insight made me remember how influential the NYTimes movie section was in my formative years as a movie buff. Scott was my first introduction to serious film criticism as a teenager, and i can remember every Sunday looking forward to my Dad bringing home the Arts and Leisure to see what Scott would write about next. While today I often take issue with some of his viewpoints as I get older, I credit him with inspiring me to expand my film horizons beyond the confines my Ohio hometown.
It really made sense to me when someone told me that Tony’s mother is the feminist historian Joan Scott. She obviously raised her boy well. He’s arguably the best male critic out there in terms of dealing with gender issues in film.
Daniella, seeing as I am down with just about everything, sans most horror films, your comment is nothing more than pointless snark. Seriously, if you want to be clever then have a reason to be clever. If not, realize I have been here a hell of a lot longer than you, and have a reason for that particular statement.
FS: Yeah but that’s love as well. People marry the wrong people and leaving them for someone else, who they truly love. So, the film does not capture that sort of love, and that alone pretty much makes it an exercise in some what cute futility.
IO, how was Daniella’s comment in any way snark? She was just observing that Scott brings a thoughtful perspective when writing about gender and film. Snark would be if she also took the opportunity to bash a particular male critic who may operate with different tactics.
Lisa, IO was referring to my earlier comment. But if he doesn’t come across as “bitter” that Chris Nolan gets “pushed aside” at awards season (both this year and in 08–yes, even though I only recently started posting, I’ve been skimming the hot blog for years) for what he thinks is “lesser work,” etc., etc. then I’m Julia Roberts. I’m just saying, people in glass houses shouldn’t be throwing stones at people who seem far more even tempered…
David Poland, the Voice of One Crying in the Wilderness.
You may have been first, you have never been best, and when most of your BAFFLING (thanks IO) rants get few or even no responses do you ever wonder why everyone has left you with no marbles?
To even write some long post arguing that critics will ever matter again is the funniest shit I have read in a while. And I read a lot.
He thrusts his fists against the post and still insists he sees the ghosts!
See what I mean about just vomiting out your bile on the web without any thought or self-restraint?
It’s sad to watch, no?
There was plenty of thought. You mocked two people whose ass you aren’t fit to wipe. It is bile. It’s scorn. You think you matter. You are a self important buffoon.
All you have left is bile and scorn, Don.
My question was rhetorical. It IS sad to watch.
How much I matter or don’t matter is immaterial to what I write. The issue of whether critics matter wasn’t even addressed in this piece. But I do believe that what we put out there matters… and I include you in “we.”
As for your ongoing obsession over “two people whose ass (I’m not) fit to wipe,” I continue to conclude that you are full of shit and that you are, disgustingly, using them as an excuse for your personal (and still unknown to me) issue with me.
If your decency – which I have witnessed – was in charge of your brain, we could have put this drama behind us a long time ago. But it’s all bile and scorn and all the fake emotions you exhibit so often and so publicly. You don’t want the wound to heal. You linger in it. You think you thrive from it. You’re addicted to it.
We are surrounded by self-important buffoons, Don… even the ones in the mirror.
His issue (I think) with you DP is that you made fun of someone being nearly killed on the set of T3.
Blog wars. Yes they’re fun for a day but when they become to define you then maybe it’s time for some introspection.
The only thing that really matters is what those close to you feel when you shuffle off this mortal coil. All the rest is just window dressing isn’t it.
Thing is, JBD, is that Don has acknowledged that it’s not actually that, but something else. But he won’t tell me what.
Danielle, you are once again playing into the trap that you can define me by one comment. Sorry, you can’t. I might not be the biggest fan of the Miserable Coens (Better than fucking because their work just leaves me feeling miserable most of the time), but that doesn’t make True Grit a huge piece of shit. It’s just not on the same level as something like Inception. It’s just not, so your analogy, is still you being snarky to me. Excuse me for still not appreciating it.
ETA: David, I believe he has issues with you stemming from something to do with the first Transformers movie.
DP that leaves only his wife’s movie, Polanksi and Avary. You comment on any of those?
But back to the point of this thread…
You know, great writing aside, I agree with David that a critic’s stature can only suffer when he or she gets into a pissing match with someone online. I once sent Roger Ebert an angry email after he made what I thought was an unfair and ignorant statement about academic film studies–this was when I was in graduate school studying film theory. He basically called it hogwash and I went off on him. In retrospect, I’m glad it wasn’t on a blog that would have led to a back and forth that wouldn’t have done any good for either one of us. He never replied, but I learned that later he somewhat softened his stance on film theory–from something like “it’s nonsense” to “well, I just don’t get it.” That suggests I (or others like me) did cause him to rethink his glib dismissal, but without a mud fight having to occur for everyone to read. He retained his stature (which, disagreements aside, he deserves), and I didn’t get worked up into acting like someone with an anger management problem.
(Even as smart and diplomatic a guy as Jonathan Rosenbaum ended up coming across like something of a fool trying to respond, in real time, to the firestorm his disrespectful obit for Ingmar Bergman caused a few years ago.)
Am I the only one who remembered the three threads in a row where David and Don were engaged in an argument? I could have sworn that was about David bullshiting some Transformers numbers, that really pissed Don off. I could have sworn that’s where the heated started.
I don’t want the NYT critics to take less time writing their reviews or speed up their output or anything that would make them less erudite and thoughtful. Of course not. Nor do I want to strip them or myself of whatever authority we have gained over the years.
But if the NYT wants Scott and Dargis to engage with their readers, then they should really do it. Roger Ebert is genuinely interested in what his readers have to say. From what I gather, Scott is more open to reader feedback than Dargis. Many critics, god bless them, really don’t care what other people think. The NYT seems bent on preserving the on-high status of its critics.
What’s changing today is how critics interact with their readers. My problem with the NYT approach is that while they know that engaging online is a good thing, they protect the critics and maintain their distance. What are they afraid of? Scott and Dargis are smart and strong enough–as Ebert is–to deal with what any reader can dish out.
IO you must realise you sound a bit borderline right? Your opinions are just that. Nothing else. Ie GRIT is not in same league as INCEPTION. Crazy talk. In my opinion INCEPTION is one of the dumbest films to be released lately. It’s the Prestige of movies. It’s a big bunch of curtains and mirrors and a whole lot of stupid ideas. It’s really quite amateurish. Im not baiting i honestly think its poorly thought out. That’s just my opinion.
JBD, seriously, you go on about opinions then post that bullshit? Really? Come on, that’s the problem with the lot of you, you don’t get how your own shit stinks, and True Grit is not on the same level as Inception. It’s just not. Excuse me for having a veracity of opinion but someone around here has to, because the rest of you act as if being assertive is similar to punching someone in the face. Seriously, it’s stink in here. Go spray some air freshener.
ETA: True Grit is 3/4 of a movie, Damon should have gotten a nomination, and that Bridges performance is a big ol’ OOFA. Seriously, the ending sucks, but that film has seemingly launched the career of Hailee Steinfeld. So it accomplished something.
IO Nolan should have filmed the comic chaos inside your head if he wanted to mess with the audience.
I’m not disagreeing with you about GRIT. Something about that film feels unfinished and its not fit to lick the dust off Lonesome’s emotionally heavy boots. All I was stating is that you can’t state your opinion as FACT.
JBD, YES, I, CAN! Seriously, I can’t call it as I see it now? Who the fuck do you think you are? It’s a fact according to me and if that bothers you, then bugger off Mr. Spiritual Filmmaker.
ETA: Comic chaos? Really? Why don’t you just admit who you are Mr. Spiritual Fillmmaker, and stop hiding behind an absolutely disgusting nick. Wow. You go by the name of a poor dead screenwriter. Aren’t you fucking clever.
Well no you can’t call it as you see it. You are less than the sum of your parts. You’re the mosquito in the tent of life. And kiddo, doesn’t it get old being Lex’s obnoxious & sillier 17yr old kid brother?
Look if you stop being so annoying I’ll let you bring Kirk Cameron his coffee on the next shoot.
Only on the hot blog could someone state that someone else could not have an opinion. What a fucking piece of work you are Spiritual Filmmaker, but you are known for posting cock shoots to blogs, so I guess we should not expect anything more than that from the likes of a COMPLETE AND UTTER FUCKWAD WHOSE NICK MOCKS A DEAD SCREENWRITER!
“ITS A FACT ACCORDING TO ME”
This gem alone gets you 2 free visits to any shrink in cow country.
Bye IO, I have to go make another million.
Lets skype soon.
Air kiss.
JBD, seeing as most facts can be and are distorted all the time, I have no idea why me calling things the way I see them as being so criminal but like the jagoff that you are, you run off because you just wanted to start shit but lacked the ability to finish it. Good grief. Can I trade you for Jeff McMahon? He at least had his moments of sensibility and did not come across as cockshot sharing douche.
I liked Love Actually. In fact, the atrocity of Valentine’s Day really made me appreciate Love Actually.
Good call on Sandler & Barrymore. Wedding Singer and 50 First Dates. They should team up again.
I liked the few months Scott & Phillips had on At the Movies, but I must admit I’m digging the chemistry with Lemire & Vishnevetsky. And no commercials. As much as I disliked Scott & Dargis’s predictable “oh how white the Oscars be!” article, this thread’s reminding me I want to read Scott more often.
If the Best Picture race was down to Inception and True Grit, I’d pick Inception.
David and Anne: There’s no way to state this without sounding or elitist, but here goes: The New York Times is a classy publication/website. And when I go to a classy publication/website, I really don’t want to read the semi-illiterate, rating-and-raving, Internet-brave posting that passes as commentary all too often on blogs, political sites, Amazon.com recommendations – and, yes, other publication/websites. If the New York Times wants to pick and choose among e-mails, and post only those that are reasoned and erudite, and have their critics respond only to them – fine. No offense, IO, but I don’t want someone like you posting trash to A.O. Scott in the middle of a thread about a classic Truffaut film or a recent South Korean import or even the next Batman movie. And Lex, I really don’t want to read your complaints that neither Jeanne Moreau nor Nathalie Baye has ever given you a boner.
Anne, you say editors should want their critics to interact with readers. Well, frankly, I’m not so sure all readers would agree with you. Maybe a lot of readers go to the NYT largely because it is, well, different. And David, I think you might agree with me to a certain extent when I say: Most of the Internet is a playground, but The New York Times is the grown-up’s table. You can have a lot of fun at the playground, watching the kids playing — and taking part in the fun and games yourself, mixing it up like everybody else. Indeed, you might want to spend most of your time at the playground — because, deep down, you know you are a kid, too. But there are times when you want to be with the grown-ups. Part of the appeal of The New York Times: It’s a haven for grown-ups.
Anne: when you feed the chimp all it does is encourage him.
Actually, there are a couple of typos in my posting above. Should read:
David and Anne: There’s no way to state this without sounding elitist, but here goes: The New York Times is a classy publication/website. And when I go to a classy publication/website, I really don’t want to read the semi-illiterate, ranting-and-raving, Internet-brave posting that passes as commentary all too often on blogs, political sites, Amazon.com recommendations – and, yes, other publication/websites…
Seriously, David, this… http://www.gq.com/entertainment/movies-and-tv/201102/the-day-the-movies-died-mark-harris?printable=true¤tPage=1 .
Thoughts.
Thank you for this, IO. Seriously. I use Mark Harris’ Pictures at a Revolution as a textbook for one of my film studies courses. This will be assigned reading for my students. Again: Thanks.
Joe, the one thing he fails to bring up, are video games. It’s not Top Gun that changed everything. IT’S VIDEO GAMES and Hollywood are clearly going after the video game audience. Who, are men, usually under 25 (actually skewing older every year) that are accustom to playing games that are similar to the movies Hollywood wants to make.
If Hollywood just realized that the video game industry is more smoke and mirrors than they are, then things might change. If not, then, no more middle of the road dramas that the rest of the world are continuing to make no matter if we make them or not.
Let me just add that the whole BRAND thing is what video game marketers do well. Unlike movies though, every game they sell, they sell as a NEW BRAND, and this is not just limited to the big titles. A game like LIMBO, became it’s own BRAND. The studios just need to figure out how to BRAND non tent-pole movies and if they can do that, then we might get more TSN’s and what not. TSN being a movie whose marketing was basically sold ON A BRAND!
The thing that Hollywood and Video Game developers seem to miss is that BRANDING everything does not always work. Yeah, duh, but they keep doing it and while people go on and on and on about Hollywood’s ever increasing marketing budgets. Do any of you people have any idea by how many multiples more VG Developers spend to sell their games? Seriously, it’s making even the standard solid earner game a more difficult proposition, and do you start to see the correlation here?
The thing is: Hollywood just needs to accept that we have video games and do not always need to see those video games turned into movies. Seriously, a producer of the Mummy movies bought the rights to a Dead Island and that game has been delayed for THREE YEARS! Yet, it has an effective trailer that blows up on twitter and BOOM! A game studio sells it’s movie rights the next day.
What is he trying to do? Capitalize off of a brand, a known quantity, and Dead Island is not even a known quantity! It’s a three year old game, that’s been beaten to market by two Left 4 Deads and two Dead Risings, and it has a trailer where the dude’s daughter becomes a zombie. Do you really think the game will have it as an option where you can’t save your family? It’s cool that there is a zombie game coming where the others players in the game can be turned, but come on, this game has had it’s MOVIE RIGHTS PURCHASED, and NO ONE KNOWS HOW IT FUCKING PLAYS OR IF IT’S ANY GOOD! That right there is a problem.
Where all this leads up to, who knows? Oh we do know. It leads to shit changing and unlike Hollywood, VG Developers/producers at least accept their audience is maturing. They still don’t sell to women because apparently women are too difficult to sell to for the fucki VG Developers and Hollywood. Fucking nonsense.
That aside, it’s not like people are applying for AARP but the first generation of video game players are slowly creeping up on 50 and the second gen on 40. If these folks want to keep on making money, they have to appeal to the long time gamers, and they usually do. Sure, the results are mixed, but that’s what you get a lot of the time these days, and that’s what we get in the cinema as well.
It’s a mixed bag but it’s always been a mixed bag. No one ever wants to concede as to why the 70s were so revolutionary because THE GOD DAMN 50s and 60s CAME COMPLETE WITH A BUNCH OF SHIT TURDS THAT AN ENTIRE GENERATION OF MOVIE-GOERS NEEDED SOME REALISM TO WASH DOWN!
Now we get articles like this, ignoring the gaming boom and how it has changed Hollywood, acting as if Top Gun killed the movies. Shit, nothing can kill cinema, but you know what kicked it in the nards? Fucking Mario, Luigi, and Prince Toadstool. That grey box changed everything and now Hollywood is chasing the tail it created. Unfortunately they are ignoring that while the two audiences crossover, one audience does not need films to cater to it. They have games for that. When Hollywood wakes up from it’s coma and realizes as much, then we will get more moderately successful mid-level dramas. Which are apparently super important or something along those lines.
Actually, IO, it can be argued that music videos in general and MTV in particular had already done permanent damage to attention spans long before the video game explosion. Indeed, Harris may be off by three years when assigning the blame to Top Gun. I remember interviewing one of the producers of Flashdance (1983) — sorry, I honestly can’t remember whether it was Bruckheimer or Simpson — and being told that the movie was pitched specifically at a youth audience accustomed to MTV-style imagery. And that Paramount bought way more TV ads than newspaper ads to hype the movie, because (a) the frenetic visual quality couldn’t be demonstrated in a print ad, and (b) young people didn’t read newspapers. Not surprisingly, my editor trimmed THAT part of the interview before it ran in The Houston Post.
Joe, kids can play games that last 90 hours. It’s not the attention span. It’s Hollywood trying to give movies to a group of people, who already are getting that fix from VIDEO GAMES! Hollywood is just trying to double up on an audience instead of realizing that the future is… EVERYONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Remeber when television in the 1950’s was going to be the death of movies? Then MTV. Now video games.
In fifty years it’ll be “The Holodeck is killing movies.”
T’was FLASHDANCE killed the beauty.
Christian, that’s funny.
Krill, all of these articles come from people who have too much nostalgia for their past and believe the current trends in cinema mean the death of the films that they love.
Great movies still come out every year. The problem seems to me to be that the bad movies are more likely to hit it big (TRANSFORMERS), and the great ones to come and go without much notice (CHILDREN OF MEN). Krillian and IO are right. I remember when Pauline Kael wrote a famous essay about the death of movies. It was in 79 or 80, well before TOP GUN or FLASHDANCE, and she was making a similar argument to the one you hear today. But since it would sound elitist to blame the audience for not going to the good stuff and swallowing the crap, the articles take the same old approach. (Kael, for her part at least gave the audience some of the responsibility to seek out the good stuff.)
That’s where I think social media can help, with people going to see the good stuff. It’s out there and it’s abundant and true, it’s a lot more likely that Dark of the Moon will make more than a lot of great 2011 movies combine, but that does not change the fact that those movies exist, and that people will find them in their own time, at least I hope they will.
Daniella
What constitutes “great”? What you say? What I think? If David “Kingo” Poland and Brian Orndorf say that the latest Sandler film is great, does that make it so? I personally know about two dozen kids and teenagers for whom Transformers is their Star Wars. Is it? Well for them it is, thank you very much and for them Transformers is great. When #3 tops a billion worldwide in 3D who will be right? Them? Or you?
The problem comes when you have people with half information (hello Dave)writing posts that first off, show up his ignorance and second, attack people like Jeff Welles and Ann Thompson. Anne knows the business twenty times better than Poland ever will. Jeff is nutso, but gloriously so. I would rather read paragraphs of him hating on his Latino neighbors than I would want to spend seconds watching a DP/30 with its safe, fluffy questions. Based on the counters, so would most people.
He can accuse me of bile and pork all he wants. What he hates is that I know the truth.
I don’t really like having Don as a stalker. I’m not sure why anyone would.
The sexual tension between you two — it’s almost palpable. Sorta like the electricity generated between LexG and Leah.
“what constitutes great?”
i’ll field this one.
not transformers. nor star wars.
that was easy.
Not sure that leaving an opinion in the comments sections constitutes stalking.
No, actually, I am sure it does not.
Yeah but what you constitute as great, I may not see as great, and boom goes the dynamite.
honestly, i totally get don on that vibe.
it doesn’t have to be great, it just has to be successful. But when you try to justify successful as ‘great’ you end up soundling like an idiot.
Transformers will never be ‘great’. I’m fine with ‘cool’, ‘huge’, ‘epic’, ‘successful’, or any other adjective that describes it as the useless popcorn film it and it’s huge sequel were.
but let’s not do that thing where we talk about something so adequately written, acted, and staged and act like it’s quality because lots of people saw it.
Lots of people saw the Star Wars Prequels, The Pirates of the Carribean sequels, The Matrix Sequels, The Mummy films, and the Harry Potter films….
Would we call any of those ‘great’?
Yes, Don, it’s this generation’s Star Wars i.e. a thinly plotted FX spectacle that sends kids to the toy store. My 10 year old nephew has been getting Transformers Christmas presents from me every year for the last 4 years and he can never get enough. I bought him one last year that was a robot that transformed into a toaster… a fucking toaster, and the kid thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Still doesn’t make it great.
But it doesn’t have to be Don. You know that. Christ, you should know that better than anyone i have ever conversed with in a blog. Who gives a fuck if it’s great?
“What constitutes great?” is a question for critics, film geeks, and film fans. I would think “what constitutes great” is the license to print money this franchise is.
Don: I am old enough to recall a time when millions and millions of people thoughtLove Story and Smokey and the Bandit were great. Know what? I don’t hear too many people saying much about either film anymore.
Joe, the fact that there was a time where anyone thought Burt Reynolds was anything other than awful baffles me.
It’s so weird that someone at a Hollywood Studio would ever write a check for millions of dollars for some half assed Burt Reynolds film, much less do so for like a decade…
madness.
But you know, Joe, if those films were released – not as remakes, but just done again – in this period, they’d be hits again.
Love Story is done over and over. And if Ed Zwick hadn’t gotten caught behind the Viagra thing, that film would have been a hit for a heavily female audience.
Give me Vince Vaughn as The Bandit, Rachel McAdams as the Sally Field, and Kevin James as Smokey and you have a $100 million-plus movie.
The originals may feel old and shopworn now, but they are iconic stories that people really loved… for better or for worse.
And I take Don’t side in that the second set of Star Wars films and the Transformers films are mile from the teat for many kids. They are films that were watched over and over and over and over x10.
It’s no one’s job to police what other people love. There is plenty of movie meat for everyone of every stripe.
anghus: I thought Burt Reynolds was great in Deliverance, White Lightning, Semi-Tough, Starting Over, The Man Who Loved Women and Boogie Nights, off the top of my head. Won’t defend lots of his other stuff, however.
But what’s so weird about Hollywood cutting multi-million dollar checks to make half-assed films, whether with Burt Reynolds or anyone else? It’s pretty much par for the course, isn’t it?
David, I must respectfully disagree. Especially when it comes to Love Story. That is a classic case of a movie being in the right place at the right time. So right, in fact, that even Time Magazine over-estimated its importance.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,876859,00.html
BTW: Is it my imagination, or can it be that this and the Film Lives thread are two of the best threads we’d had here since this one:
http://moviecitynews.com/2008/07/more-great-news-for-paramount/
Anghus, you hate SW and Burt Reynolds. You must have been the most miserable kid in the world from the 70s to the mid 80s.
Yancy: White Lightning was pretty damn good. And Ned Beatty has never been more menacing as a badass.
I’m not arguing that Love Story was IMPORTANT.
But the big sappy melodrama, often with someone dying, is still a major staple of the movie business.
Yes, Love Story was an insanely big event in its time. But those are much more rare now than they were… like the cover of Time Magazine being important.
Nicholas Sparks is still big business, even if it isn’t seen as HUGE!
The movies that are most analogous is the Twlight series. Love Story is a better movie, in my opinion, than any Twilight so far. But similarly ill-fated lovers, death, true love, loss… high melodrama that is seen as world beating.
Okay I’m glad people started defending Reynolds. I would add that Burt’s also great in Robert Aldrich’s THE LONGEST YARD, a great counter-cultural comedy that’s funny, sophisticated, sophmoric yet mature. Burt is and will aways be a God.
Also, there are very few movies as flat-out fun as SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT. It was one of Hitchcock’s favorite movies too, allegedly.
And yes, WHITE LIGHTNING kicks all kinds of ass.
David: But, oddly enough, Love Story was important. It evidently kept Paramount open for business, if you can believe Robert Evans. But was it really a better movie than An Affair to Remember? Or even A Walk to Remember?
Burt Reynolds is awesome. Period.
David, of course I enjoy the Twilight saga more than Love Story, but you pretty much nailed it with that analogy. Good show, sir. Good show.
Joe: Twilight is important for Summit, those books and movies have spawned or will spawn books and films geared at a particular demographic, and have created three stars David does not find particularly profitable. So that’s something.
I don’t hate Star Wars. I think it’s boring. I understand it’s cultural significance. I was there when the films were the most massive thing in pop culture.
the phenomenon is far more interesting than the actual movies. what star wars has wrought is more entertaining than the sum of 15 hours of movies.
I think most people are Burt Reynolds apologists. He had moments of being watchable, but they are overshadowed by decades of awful, awful phone-it-in garbage.
And Burt Reynolds was the Adam Sandler of his era. Different. Good looking, etc. But he could make the most awful films and they would still be oddly fun and people would go see them. Then every once in a while, Reynolds would do what Sandler hasn’t been able to… make an arty film that was terrific and successful. But mostly, it was crap… just entertaining crap.
It really ended with Stroker Ace. Reynolds was 46. He turned down Terms of Endearment. And when he tried to make a good film again, The Man Who Love Women just didn’t work. And he was pretty much done. City Heat was terrible and felt like a desperate gimmick.
Stick and Heat were good books that made horrible movies. Switching Channels was just okay. He tried “old man” in Breaking In and it just wasn’t special enough to be great. Boogie Nights was a breakthrough, but he didn’t trust it and still seemed to think he was BURT REYNOLDS the year before in the horrid Striptease.
He’s never seemed to be able to reconcile being in his 60s and 70s.
No, Joe, it wasn’t.
But the business and the art don’t necessarily match… or have much to do with each other.
Love Story was important to keeping Robert Evans in charge at Paramount, but was it culturally important? Well, it was a massive hit as a book… like Twilight. So was Sidney Sheldon. As Grisham would be.
I don’t think we’re really disagreeing… except that Love Story couldn’t really happen in today’s system… but it’s because the system changed, not the movie.
sums it up nicely. people like burt reynolds, but they don’t like burt reynolds movies. my father was like that. he loved burt reynolds. i don’t think he could name more than 5 burt reynolds film but he’s probably watched 30 or more.
i guess some things are generational…
maybe in 20 years we’ll be discussing Shia Lebouf
Reynolds like Adam Sandler? Huh.
Anghus, seriously that post just hurts my head. Slamming SW like that and Burt Reynolds? Wow.
Again you don’t have to share but Pixar, SW, and Burt Reynolds do nothing for you. What does do something?
ETA: Burt Reynolds did interesting movies. Even Sandler’s one interesting movie is interesting in spite of Sandler! There’s a more apt comparison out there besides Sandler.
Well, here’s the thing: Keeping Robert Evans in charge of Paramount actually may have been culturally important. Believe it or not, that’s what my master’s thesis was all about: Evans’ roles as a cultural “gatekeeper” in the 1960s and ’70s.
BTW: Burt Reynolds was great in Hawk, perhaps the only TV cop show ever made in which the lead was a Native American.
Um, HUSTLE. HOOPER. SHARKY’S MACHINE. STARTING OVER. And obviously Deliverance. Don’t undervalue Burt Reynolds. Underrated actor who was in plenty of good-great-AWESOME movies. Fuck, I used to even watch PATERNITY 500 times a month on HBO in ’82, so huge a pop cultural juggernaut was Burt. Neck and neck with Clint throughout most of the ’70s, and, sure, you can ride Burt for making too many moonshine movies (GATOR POWER) and potboilers (FUZZ POWER, SHAMUS POWER, both AWWWWWWWESOME) and palling around with Jerry Reed, Jim Nabors and Hal Needham instead of worrying about his legacy…
But there’s one thing Burt absolutely HAD that almost NOBODY had then or now– dude was a GOD to both men AND women alike. I don’t know how old Anghus is, I don’t really care, but BURT was just SO at the right time and place in that lazy, hazy, good-time ’70s CB radio man’s man Three’s Company era, he could be a sex symbol for the ladies in that stache-rocking JOHN HOLMES mode, then still had all that action and sports credibility that the guys all wanted to hang out with him. I’m sure Clint’s always had female fans, but even Eastwood couldn’t navigate back and forth so deftly between hard action (ALDRICH) and light romantic comedy. Clint couldn’t have pulled off ROUGH CUT or the Sally Field banter in SMOKEY I… And no one today, really, navigates the two words as convincingly (not THAT many guys would put Brad Pitt posters up on their wall like they did THE BANDIT)…
Except, oddly, maybe Sandler as DP suggests, and… Clooney. Laugh as you will, mock his filmography, but Burt was like a Clooney if Clooney ever actually MADE MONEY with his movies. But in terms of being able to cross genres and be equally convincing to both halves of the audience, they’re a lot alike.
YOU WILL BOW TO REYNOLDS, one of the greatest movie stars of ALL TIME. Jesus CHRIST, I can’t even believe the blasphemy I’m reading in this thread.
REYNOLDS = GOD.
Also LOOOOOOVE that bit in SHARKY’S MACHINE where Burt’s talking shit to asshole villain Vittorio Gassman: “You’re fuckin’ up my city. And you know the worst part? You’re from out of state.” BURT.
Man, seems like that movie’s been almost entirely forgotten with the sands of time, save for that weird era a decade back where someone had the idea to remake it with Mark Wahlberg, which obviously never happened. Even the ever-trusty VIDEO MOVIE GUIDE once lumped it in with Dirty Harry and 48 HRS as one of the best cop movies ever made. That skyrise finale where they’re skulking around the top floors chasing Henry Silva probably doesn’t seem like much today, but to a 9-year-old kid in 1982, that was the HEIGHT of excitement, like my hair would be on end and I’d go to bed dreaming about one day making movies where I got to chase guys around skyscrapers and ballparks and stuff.
It’s also, along with Body Heat and Blade Runner, one of the few enduring movies that still always have that AWESOME Ladd Company logo with the primitive graphics TREE against the white backdrop, which seemed positively futuristic back then.
That Ladd Company logo is still so fucking awesome.
Lex putting our differences aside for one minute.
I want to down some shine and go wrassle a gator or two with you, Jerry and Burt. Your Reynolds comments above make me want to turn into a Kstew clone for 24hrs just so I can pleasure you. (now there’s some ammo for Leah)
The comments from those above who don’t understand just how unique Reynolds (and his films through association) was are just unfathomable. The guy had every man and woman in the whole world for a decade wanting to desyphon his python.
I love the guy so much I have even seen Skullduggery twice.
He is beyond a GOD. He is EVERYTHING.
Man, going with the deep cuts with Skullduggery. You’re making me feel like looking for that copy of WW AND THE DIXIE DANCEKINGS I taped off Fox Movie Channel in 1998 and never remembered to watch.
Goddamn even the Tropi wanted to have sex with Burt!
http://www.moviepostershop.com/skullduggery-movie-poster-1020435019.jpg
For a brief period in my life, I didn’t think there could be a better film than HOOPER ever made. It was DELIVERANCE that cemented it but I was too young to see it cinemas until a few years later but I managed to see STARTING OVER and he was the meat in the Clayburgh/Bergen manwich. I just remember watching him and Deluise just non-stop laughing during CANNONBALL credits and wanting to Reynolds be my uncle.
I’d love for anyone to name one star who had more natural onscreen charisma than Reynolds for that decade of 72-82. No one comes close.
I just saw WHITE LIGHTNING a year or so ago, and this is from a review I posted on another forum: “This is not as jokey as Burt’s later good-ol’-boy romps, and he gives a fine performance, nicely layered with humor, charm, bravado, menace and pathos, making it all look effortless.”
You’re right, Joe; Ned Beatty is at his best in that as the dour, xenophobic sheriff. Burt and Bo Hopkins have a great fight scene. I’m kind of a sucker for rural-set crime films, and it’s a good one. Joe Sargent had this and PELHAM back to back.
okay, not to bring down the party but the burt reynolds we all love from the 70’s-80’s is dead…what remains is an old, bitter, overly processed male version of Norma Desmond who will howl at the moon about how he’s been ‘maligned’ by the press and totally misunderstood by the public… while i agree that he’s one great ‘personality’ whose movies i loved as a kid, he was never much of an actor and, now, he’s just a dick……
Late to the party somewhat, but wanted to address a few things about the video game market. Games have marketing budgets several multiples LESS than movies. They expend a shitload more effort, but a lot of that is minimum wage “Community Managers” desperate to get into the business (and hugely devaluing some actually talented community managers), whereas flicks spend a shitload on expensive TV spots.
The brand is also really important. When West and Zampella (who I believe are now repped by WME) got kicked from the Modern Warfare development, everyone predicted that the franchise would plummet through the floor. Then Black Ops rolled around and broke records for sales again.
There’s a large divide between the mediums still – one of the opinions (which I agree with) is that the gamer crowd don’t want to watch the equivalent of someone else playing a game, there needs to be something else there to hook them in. Whatever you may think of Bay in terms of quality of storytelling, he is fantastic at visualising elements which hook audiences into the film. Good for him.
“The movies that are most analogous is the Twlight series. Love Story is a better movie, in my opinion, than any Twilight so far. But similarly ill-fated lovers, death, true love, loss… high melodrama that is seen as world beating.”
Ummm…The lovers in TWILIGHT aren’t ill-fated. Every major character in that series gets what they want in the end.
YEP YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP
DAKOTA FANNING TURNS 17 AT MIDNIGHT TONIGHT
SET YOUR CLOCKS FOR THE STROKE OF MIDNIGHT.
LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOK
AT….
HERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
D-DAY ONE YEAR AWAY.
Only Burt Reynolds could make Ebert gives thumbs up to Cop and a Half.
When I say “great” I mean smart, literate, made-for-adult films like MIDNIGHT COWBOY, THE GODFATHER, 2001, FIVE EASY PIECES. Sure it’s a value judgment, but I know most people get what I’m saying without me having to lay down a whole aesthetic credo here. Of course “crap” like THE TOWERING INFERNO and LOVE STORY made money, likely more money than the “great” films, but there was still a cultural understanding that all the smart people went to the “great” movies and talked about them, and they were part of a larger cultural conversation. BARRY LYNDON was on the cover of TIME magazine when it came out. Can you imagine an analogous film making the cover today?
I don’t know. In the last couple of months I’ve seen stuff like CARLOS, ENTER THE VOID, DOGTOOTH, EVERYONE ELSE, 127 HOURS, TRUE GRIT, THE KING’S SPEECH, SOMEWHERE, THE FIGHER and BLACK SWAN so it’s sort of impossible for me to feel we’re in a drought for quality modern movies.
In terms of the place of film in the culture, yes I’d say it’s bad but look at literature or even music if you want to see more niche-ification. It’s not that there aren’t people who care. It’s that everything now is so compartimentalized that we’re less one culture than a bunch of sub-sections and demographics within demographics. The fact that something analogus to BARRY LYNDON probably wouldn’t make the cover of TIME says more about TIME and our media landscape than what movies are made or how or if people enjoy/appreciate them. That said, yes the culture’s disinterest in, you know, actual culture is scary.
See why I love wading into these discussions? Opinions and assholes, everyone has one.
David is of course right that LOVE STORY was considered a GREAT movie by millions of more people in the 70s than any ten “classics” you could name. Was it great? Who is fucking JB Dr or anyone else to think their asshole is better than millions of people’s? (See, David and I can agree on stuff!)
And I guess it is all about what you saw when and how it affected you. The Towering Inferno is not a great movie, but 12 year old me LOVED it and thought that it was the greatest movie ever for years. Even now, the sheer cheese of it, I would rather watch that film than Barry Lyndon again. Robert Wagner and the hot chick in his dress shirt, “I’ll be back with the whole fire brigade”. Cheesy as fuck, but epic, rousing and great- at least for 12 year old me.
So I guess the point, which David wants me to stay on going forward, is that what is great to one asshole is not great to another.
And Lex, although you lost total credibility on the Well’s site last week, I’ll share with you this GREAT idea I had with a classmate back at Georgetown in the 80s. The STICK channel. A cable channel that ONLY played STICK. Not like A Christmas Story marathon- it ONLY EVER played STICK, a mediocre Burt Reynolds film. This way, you knew, ANY Time of the day or night, BOOM, you could watch a portion of STICK. Would have been brilliant.
“Love Actually is one of the few romantic movies that I genuinely loved.”
Ditto. I have, for years, tried to explain to people why that movie is a near-masterpiece and not just another derivative “romantic comedy”. You really have to get it. It’s a movie that celebrate love as reality, fantasy and a possibility. It’s a wonder.
The scene where that British dude walks finally makes it to America is one of the most perfect moments in all cinema. It spents time setteing itself up, then totally telegraphs itself a few seconds right before it happens and then it happens. Sheer bliss.
So much of the movie works for me that it’s very easy to overlook the parts that don’t.
These types of movies are hard.
Anyone else out there likes “French Kiss” and “Kate and Leopold”?
Don, no one wants STICK all day, but they would want bad action movies all day. STICK seems like an apt title for a bad action movie network. If you know some people, make that happen, because it would rock. STICK: BEATING YOU UPSIDE THE HEAD WITH PIERRE KIRBY AND MICHAEL DUDIKOFF MOVIES ALL DAY… EVERY DAY!
ETA: Love Actually a near masterpiece? Finally, whatever, but the Keira Knightley segment still ruins the movie and denies the part of love that led to Chet Haze. Seriously, if you can’t respect the aspect of love that created Chet Haze, then I want nothing to do with you.
Nahno. You’re wrong about that Keira Knightley segment.
It starts with the fact that it’s not even HER segment. Think about it. That’s why it works so well.
“i don’t read NY Times – i get all my news from TMZ and ONTD” – sanj
No shit.
And anghus, you’re a tough lay. Burt Reynolds was great, and if he had the aspirations, coulda been greater. SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT is just flat out terrific, still is, and watch Reynolds and Fields together, sexy, chemistry-laden banter and by gods, they are that rare thing, MOVIE STARS. Reynolds was probably a better comic than actor, but that was his skillset. And DELIVERANCE, LONGEST YARD, STARTING OVER, SHARKEY’S MACHINE! Sandler couldn’t do any of that. Not on his best day.
A Sandler version of Deliverance sounds amazing. Make it all-Sandler instead of Jack and Jill.
Most of Sandler’s films are comedic variations of DELIVERANCE.
Christian for the win with that last one.
Proman, yeah, I know, but Rita Wilson and Tom Hanks are a love story, that started that way. I just think that would have been a better and more realistic ending for that segment. Again, it’s not a piece of trash or anything, but it just has moments that bug me.
“Most of Sandler’s films are comedic variations of DELIVERANCE.”
Fifty First Squeals.
“Proman, yeah, I know, but Rita Wilson and Tom Hanks are a love story, that started that way.”
I’m not sure I follow. Could you elaborate a bit about that?
The funny thing about Burt Reynolds is, he’s had something like four or five different phases of his career. Some people forget that, early on, around the time he was a regular on Gunsmoke — taking advantage of Cherokee ancestry, he was a “half-breed” blacksmith named Quint – he played his first movie lead in Operation C.I.A., an impossible cheesy 1965 B-movie in which he played an American agent kicking ass and taking names in Saigon. (The movie – directed by Christian Nyby – actually was shot in Thailand.) I know about this one primarily because (a) back in the day, I saw any and every movie that had anything to do with spies (even though I was about 12 at the time) and (b) it’s actually one of the few US movies of the Vietnam War era actually set in Vietnam. I know I mentioned Hawk before – I remember it fondly. It last only half a season (it aired opposite The Dean Martin Show) on ABC in 1966, but I recall Reynolds was a way-cool NYPD cop who just happened to be an Iroquois Indian. Ten years after it ran, when Reynolds was at the peak of his pre-Smokey and the Bandit popularity, NBC aired reruns as a summer replacement for some other hour-long drama. And I was pleasantly surprised to see how well the show held up, and how many familiar faces – Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall, Elizabeth Ashley and others – were guest stars.
Has anyone here ever seen Fade In? It’s an early (1968) Reynolds star vehicle that, as I understand it, was filmed simultaneously with Blue, a Western starring Terence Stamp. (No, I’m not making that up.) The plot focused on a modern-day cowboy (Reynolds) and a film editor (Barbara Loden) who meet and fall in love while they’re on location shooting Blue. I’ve heard that it’s dreadful, but I’ve always wanted to see it, because I thought the basic concept was intriguing. Also, I am one of the few people I know who’s ever actually seen Blue.
Stick is a terrific Elmore Leonard book. Heat is a terrific William Goldman book.
Funny how they never seem to remake the horrible movies that were made from great source material. There must be some examples, but none are hitting me at the moment.
And Christian… do you forget… Sandler DID The Longest Year. Reynolds was even in it. But it lost all the edge.
Of course, he didn’t have Robert Aldrich directing his version.
Sad thing about Sandler is that if he worked with serious directors – not the art efforts, just rock solid action or comedy guys or gals – he would probably be 20% better instantly.
Of course, Reynolds’ blind spot as Hal Needham, who did well with Smokey 1, Hooper, and The Villain… which were all stunt movies that just required him to shoot stunts and to let his actors play. After that, all downhill.
The did make a Sandler version of DELIVERANCE.. Except Seth Green was in it.
The GROWNUPS poster was DELIVERANCE in this wacky alternate universe where people think Sandler is the equivalent of Reynolds? DP are you on crack? That’s the most asinine thing you’ve said on this blog. Yes both actors share the ability to win favour from both sexes but Sandler was and never will be A HAIRY FUCKING STICK OF SEXUAL DYNAMITE.
And Don Murph The Surf, why you lobbing bombs my way? I’ve expressed my opinion on films and actors. My opinion.
I’m loving how Reynolds has managed to become the neutral zone in the blog war zone between Christian, Lex and myself. That commands respect from folks like Anghus and Scooterz whose pathetic attempts to diminish Reynolds show that they’re just bitter men. Who gives a fuck if Burt is not the man he used to be? Lots of actors did terrible work late in their career but I don’t see them torn a new one.
Finally anyone who actually thinks the infuriatingly twee and banal LOVE ACTUALLY is romantic should have their genitals removed, because they are wasted on you. I went with my wife and she turned to me after 30m and said “this is the most manipulative cringe inducing saccharine piece of shit I’ve ever seen, lets go get drunk instead”.
Now that was romance.
FADE IN is available right now on Netflix streaming – exactly why I bow to the service. BLUE is MIA.
And I didn’t forget Reynolds was in Sandler’s TLY. I remember it like I do Michael Caine in Stallone’s GET CARTER.
I envision a revisionist comeo-western starring Adam Sandler that’s a cross between Wyatt Earp, Straw Dogs and a Fish Called Wanda.
It’s a movie where due to the most ridiculous identity mix-up imaginable a wrong person gets violated (the daughter or the son of the city’s most prominent banker, who, of course planned the entire thing) and this ragged team of Cowboys get sent on a mission to punish the person(s) who did the deed. Meanwhile, the one who was supposed to be attacked becomes the sheriff of the town. Needless to say, the son/daughter in question falls in love with their violator(s). Hillarity ensues.
Call it… “I Spit on your Tombstone”.
Come on, Don, let’s make this baby together. I’ll give you the screenplay for free in exchange for just the “Associate Producer’s” credit.
David: Hal Needham’s Megaforce (1982) has to be one of the worst action movies ever made, if not the very worst. (And remember: I’ve seen Operation C.I.A.) I think it single-handedly destroyed any chance for Barry Bostwick to ever have a movie career. And the really laughable thing about it is — excuse me, IO, while I borrow your caps — IT WAS SUPPOSED TO KICK OFF A FRANCHISE!!!!
On the other hand: You are so right about Hooper, a criminally under-rated movie with a bittersweet touch of melancholy to it. On the third hand: I screened Smokey and the Bandit for college students about three years ago. I was never much of a fan, though I agree Reynolds and Field had great chemistry. (And Lex: Remember Field’s bare feet? They even were featured in the poster art.) But the students were positively… underwhelmed.
Christian: Thanks. Seriously — thanks. For that alone, I will re-up my Netflix account.
Proman: By any chance, did you ever see Waterhole No. 3?
No, I haven’t. Was it as, ahem, epic as what I described though?
Joe I saw Waterhole #3 and remembered it affected me greatly as a kid. I found it really disturbing and highly sexual at the same time (which sounds abhorrent when you know the gist of the film). I went through a phase when Coburn was on a mantle with five other alpha males who dominated my moviegoing for a good twenty years.
Burt Reynolds
Clint Eastwood
Charles Bronson
James Coburn
Lee Marvin
I’d put Rod Taylor near the top of that list but apart from The Time Machine and that TV show about the car, I didn’t acknowledge his phenomenal charisma and machismo until the home video years.
Proman: Waterhole No. 3 was a 1967 comic Western that cast James Coburn as a roguish bandit who, in an early scene, rapes the daughter of a small-town sheriff. He later dismisses the crime as “assault with a friendly weapon.” (No, I’m not making that up.) The sheriff (Carroll O’Connor) is too busy looking for gold bullion hidden by the bandit to worry much about his daughter’s mistreatment. As JBD implies, it was a movie that seemed very funny back in the day — at least, it did when I was 15 — but I suspect would make me feel more than a little uncomfortable today.
Hmmm. It’s available on Amazon….
my childhood first and still fave burt reynolds flick is the absurdly brilliant paella western ‘navajo joe’. (i have it on VHS). i loved joe, and was crushed by what happened to him. years later when i saw ‘deliverance’, i was thrilled to see my joe alive and well… but the thrill didn’t last long. i had horrible dreams about drew’s elbow for the next decade or so.
(i have a theory that reynold’s acting ability is directly related to whether or not he has his mo’ – bare-faced burt = good perf. this is of course nonsense with no basis in reality)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciWHBT_Wlys
Proman, Tom met Rita while married, left his wife, and has been with Rita ever since, and that’s my point. Love is some times messy and dirty, and that film took the easy way out on the messy and dirty parts. Which is my problem with it.
JBD, I think the movie you were thinking about is called Slumdog Millionaire. Fits to a tee.
Nothing you wrote applies to Love Actually, which only has one dramatic thread that is handled realistically and with class. You’d know it IF you’d seen it.
And I cannot even begin to fathom what you expected after you saw *that* trailer and bought those tickets. A Ron Howard-like fim, perhaps? Not a jab, I mean that seriously? Is this the kind of film you expected?
It’s quite a feat that you found it both saccharine and manipuative though.
(the original version of this response was *angrier*).
I’m not sensing enough love, even in the Needham canon, for “Smokey and the Bandit II,” which as everyone points out is one of the most bizarrely audience-confounding follow-ups ever. Was surprised to check out a 1980 box-office chart not long ago and see that BANDIT II was not only a massive, massive hit, but did much more business than a slew of movies we now think of as immortal rewatch classics (The Shining, Caddyshack, Blues Brothers.)
But, yeah, especially today where sequels are a bigger-and-better run-through of the first’s best moments that are bioengineered to hit the same notes, gotta dig Burt just feeling sorry for himself and chugging beer in a dumpy motel room snapping at his “fans” and taking FOREVER to even hit the road, while Buford’s off doing his “Ohm!!!!” routine. Hey, that movie’s practically Burt’s “Stardust Memories.”
Also no matter how bad some of those movies might’ve been, Burt was like Danny Ocean with the awesomest posse going– Ned Beatty, Charles Durning, Dom DeLuise, Jerry Reed, Alfie Wise, Jim Nabors, Terry Bradshaw, etc.
On the Eastwood side, I always wonder if Geoffrey Lewis still always dials up Clint to annoy him when he’s on hole 9 at Pebble Beach to beg Clint to do “Only Which Way to Go,” and Morgan Freeman’s all, “Who’s that, Clint?” And Clint’s all, “Ah, Christ, it’s that idiot Lewis again asking me another GODDAMN monkey movie.”
(didn’t know where to put this so joe, i give up. i tried you a second time from my other email like i said i would, definitely to your right addy, perhaps it’s going into a junk folder or blocked by a spam filter? anyway, i tried)
How are you leah? What’s the sad story from NZ?
When I was at QT Fest 99, he showed NAVAJO JOE and declared Reynolds’ revenge-crazed Indian as one of the great purely physical roles. Which it kinda is — and the soundtrack has been recycled in ELECTION and KILL BILL natch.
SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT 2 is well nigh unwatchable. Dom Deluise, an elephant and Gleason in three roles.
Oh, and… bad movie or not, Burt’s MEXICAN PIMP getup, complete with medallion and gaudy jacket, from HEAT is the best thing ever. Especially his gravity-defying slow-mo kicks that bend limbs and kamikaze credit-card slicings.
That movie’s also a Peter McNicol tour de force. And isn’t Howard Hesseman in it? HESSEMAN POWER.
“Tom met Rita while married, left his wife, and has been with Rita ever since, and that’s my point. Love is some times messy and dirty, and that film took the easy way out on the messy and dirty parts.”
What the heck are you talking about? You are using *that example* to prove the movie took easy ways out? What you described is the very definion of an easy way out. I am not judging Hanks, but man, did you ever pick a wrong example.
And I’m sure it wasn’t easy and there were millions of obstacles. But they were overcome and the solution was a divorce. I don’t see your point, at all.
And reading responses here, I don’t think people really understand what the movie tries to do. At all.
Proman, don’t get fucking smart with me. I saw the god damn movie but it pisses me off because LOVE IS MESSY AND DIRTY SOME TIMES AND THAT MOVIE SKIPPED RIGHT OVER THAT PART! Seriously, Knighley’s character should have left her husband. It’s as simple as that but please, feel free to get snippy ove Love Actually. No really, please do.
ETA: Oh I understand what the movie tries to do but I think it’s hokey as all hell. I saw it in the theatre and then on cable, then Love Actually and I were finished professionally and romantically.
Knightley was SO FETCHING in that movie.
But on the flip side, I hate interracial hookups.
God damn it, Lexy! SHUT UP :P!
“I hate interracial hookups.”
Why, Buford?
just munted, christian, but thanks for asking. shattered. it looks like we might have a death toll in the hundreds, they’re still pulling people out and help is coming with more specialist search and rescue, so i guess it’s going to be a long haul. please send good vibes to those still trapped, and to those injured, grieving and homeless, we need all the help we can get.
re: burt in navajo joe, that’s a great description by tarantino. joe is a livewire of jumping, leaping, rolling, shooting, scalping intensity. morricone’s score is legend
IO, I’d semi-forgotten what an immature tool you are. You even read like a baby. Some times, IO reads like a baby. Some. Times. Here, have a piece of dirt.
And Leah, that’s because it reminds Lex that no one from a different race will EVER give him even a look. Sour grapes. Except, in his case, there are no grapes to speak of. Plus he thinks wanton racism is what’s hot on the internet.
Proman, Maxim, I am so hurt from a guy DEFENDING LOVE ACTUALLY! HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!
Proman, uh, dude, it was a joke. Christ. And as I’ve ranted here and elsewhere a zillion times: I’m a balding white guy pushing 40 who lives in L.A., drives a shitty American car, works in post production, has no bank account, and doesn’t know how to dress.
From all that, you can only know one thing about a man: He can only get Asian chicks. ZIIIIIIIIIING. In 15 years in L.A., I’ve never dated or even MET a white woman, as they are not available to post-house sadsacks who make under 50k. Take a stroll around Burbank, NoHo, Van Nuys or Glendale, and if you see a white guy walking hand-in-hand with a white chick, and not a Filipina with six kids? Congrats, you’ve just discovered the Treasure of the Four Crowns.
Long as I’m doing my HI-larious racial material:
I really don’t think many people in today’s day and age are actually, consciously racist anymore.
But there really SHOULD be a SNIGLET for that amusing, undeniable split-second twinge of subconscious, repressed bitter envy that all white men, no matter how liberal, experience when they see a really hot, skinny white chick (a la Keira Knightley) with a guy of another race.
Fuck, James Toback and Usher have both made a cottage industry pushing THAT button.
The Treasure of the Four Crowns. That’s a good way to put it Lex but you bring up a good point about this blog: motherfuckers thinking they know you and everything about me from THE COMMENTS ON A BLOG! Seriously, this motherfucker goes on about me being a baby and the nonsense about you, FROM A COMMENT ON A BLOG!
Some of you folks need to realize that this is not the sum of all of our parts but just words on a blog. If anything, you should get the jokes but you can’t even get that right, so, really… hug.
ETA: Lex, come to the South. Where racism and prejudice work on both sides. Good god, it’s headache inducing.
I haven’t seen SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT 2 since I rented it as a kid, but Lex’s description of it makes it sound like the greatest thing ever. ‘Burt’s STARDUST MEMORIES’
Since no one has brought it up, I think, I’ll mention that The Burt was also awesome in Mel Brooks’s SILENT MOVIE. This discussion has really made me want to dive into the stuff of his I haven’t seen, both the beloved and the not so much.
Finally, I think people forget that he actually had two great late 90s performances in great movies. Yes, he was fantastic in BOOGIE NIGHTS, but he was also incredibly funny in CITIZEN RUTH. I wish more of that era of director, guys and gals who probably grew up on his movies, used him like PTA and Payne did. As others have noted, he really was able to shift pretty effortlessly from drama to comedy, and had charisma most actors would kill for.
Burt’s big movie problem is that he clearly doesn’t see himself as an artist, which is how Eastwood segued from an orangutan sidekick to prestige Oscars.
And IO, the irony meter just busted past 11.
Christian, seeing as you followed Lex around with another nick and harassed him. I doubt you should ever post anything about me and irony ever ag’in.
We also need a BURT REYNOLDS collection. Seriously. Someone make this happy.
I posted under another name because YOU CAN DO THAT on the interwebs IOV3. Again, you believe all you read here while claiming nobody really knows anything about you.
Christian, Lex is people (and I could give a fuck what you or anyone else thinks about him), and he has proof. You also posted under your own name apparently and that’s dirty pool. Seriously, Big Perm was someone who already posted here, and that wuss used that nick to get their bile out. If you are known as someone then that’s who you are known as and remember: I started out as the Life and Death Brigade, but have remained the same nick even though I hate it.
If you changed your name and taunted someone, that’s lame, and you have absolutely NO ABILITY to ever call me out on anything ever again. Sure, try, but you may not have cursed someone out. You just did something worse.
I also am believing a guy that’s straight with me compared to a guy who gives me shit when he’s not exactly wearing a white hat himself. He also has proof so you know, you can’t get out of this one, but please feel free to try.
Of course, if we’re going to chart Burt Reynolds’ peaks, we should also plumb his depths. There’s the DTV Universal Soldier II (1998) and Universal Soldier III (1999), in which he embarrasses himself as a CIA agent with an affected Foreign Person Accent. But I think another DTV title is his absolute nadir: Crazy Six, a damn-near incomphensible 1998 action flick shot in the Czech Republic by the unfortunately prolific Albert Pyum. I actually watched this one while researching an article for DTV movie stars a decade ago. Rob Lowe looks like he borrowed Steve Zahn’s mustache to play the title role, a junkie who steals plutonium from a drug lord. I cannot remember what a drug lord was doing with plutonium in the first place. But I do remember that while Ice-T (cast as, oh, I dunno, some sort of badass) was his usual live-wire self, and Mario Van Peebles faked a French accdent, and sounded like he was faking a French accent, to play the drug lord, Reynolds appeared inconsolably glum while plodding around in a cowboy hat as a cop. Or a spy. Or, hell, I can’t remember, maybe a cowboy. Here’s the trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gNgwCkblII
IO, you take lex’s fantasies for truth. And of course, you have no harsh words for the actual vile left at my site. But since you’re the one who posts under a FALSE NAME daily, was banned and reposted under another FALSE NAME, the irony is all yours.
Anyway, back to Burt.
Joe if you were trying to put us off CRAZY SIX you just did the opposite. That reads like a 5 star review to these ears. I remember feeling embarrassed watching STRIPTEASE with that vaseline scene but was won over by Burts sheer enthusiasm for that nutty role. Would have loved to have seen a followup film with him as that character and no Demi Moore in sight.
What’s your site, christian?
C’mon guys — play nice. Let’s stick to movies, and this will have the makings of an epic thread.
In the category of Burt Reynolds Films That (Surprisingly) Don’t Suck: Switching Channels certainly can’t compare to His Girl Friday, but it’s much better than its reputation suggests. Also: It’s a melancholy reminder that Christopher Reeve could be a terrific light comedy actor. (Of course, with all due respect to BR — Michael Caine originally was slated to play the lead, and I think he would have handled it better.)
More important, here’s Burt on Chuck Nelson Reilly:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dvxh2S0uhNI
“Funny how they never seem to remake the horrible movies that were made from great source material. There must be some examples, but none are hitting me at the moment.”
LORD OF THE RINGS. THE HOBBIT.
I know the animated versions have some defenders though.
I remember seeing STICK at an exhibitors’ screening and thinking it was a hell of a terrific movie. Then Universal abruptly announced they were cancelling the release and “tweaking” it. When we saw it again nearly a year later, well more than half of it had been reshot, most of the comedic elements were gone (including much of George Segal’s performance) and it was almost impossible to follow, even though we’d seen it before. I would’ve bet any amount of money that someone deliberately tried to wreck the film for God knows what reason.
Christian, yeah THEY WERE ALL ME! You apparently were acting as someone else. Not cool man. Not cool.
Joe, what’s the point? HUG!
Hey, the first 10-15 minutes of STICK are really well done (Burt was actually a solid director), plus it features that AWESOME building patio-fall stunt. Kinda goes downhill when George Segal takes over. Now I want a 500-word defense of MALONE from somebody. Truth told, I sort of liked PHYSICAL EVIDENCE.
Remember when HBO used to promote the Mel Tillis opus UPHILL ALL THE WAY, and Burt’s cameo was the cornerstone of all the spots?
i do love the amount of bile swept your way when you say something like “i don’t like burt reynolds”
the emotional, passionate responses have been wonderful to read. i’m glad so many people found joy through his work.
me, i thought and still think he’s just awful and could probably waste a lot of time trying to validate that argument.
but it doesn’t matter. like don says, one asshole likes X, another asshole likes Y. that’s cinema for you. i still think he’s shit, but at least i have a good understanding of what you guys like. Joe’s right, this is a good discussion because it’s people talking in great detail about what they enjoy.
we could use more of that. An io, as for what i do like… hmmmm….
right now i’m watching a lot of festival films. my favorite films from 2010 were smaller stuff like Four Lions and Skeletons.
I don’t think i have anything like Star Wars that i love. No major franchise that i get all freaky about or watch religiously. I like Chanwook Park’s revenge films, and they do have action figures for those….
As for enjoyable trash, which i would compare to Burt Reynolds, i would say Nic Cage fills my ‘garbage quotient’. I can watch Face/Off or Con Air repeatedly. It’s wonderfully awful. I laugh through the whole movie. If Drive Angry is half as ridiculous, i’m in for some quality bad cinema.
Is Nic Cage our generation’s Burt Reynolds?
Looking at his filmography in anticipation of a Reynolds-athon, and I didn’t even know BEST FRIENDS even existed. BR and Goldie Hawn in a Norman Jewison film co-written by Barry Levinson…interesting and odd I’d never come across it.
You know he worked with some world class directors. Pakula. Aldrich. Bogdanovich. Stanley Donen. Boorman…and the list goes on. Also directed quite a few himself which signifies, to me, he did want a level of control over what he did, and was concerned with quality.
That’s interesting Anghus and that leads to another question: what kept you from embracing at least 10 or more TRILOGYS/SAGAS that have been released through out your life?
Again, I find it interesting that anyone could easily dismiss SW and Burt Reynolds, especially given the age that you are, that’s fascinating right there. Seriously, that’s fascinating to me.
BEST FRIENDS was one of those deals that was ALWAYS on HBO when I was like 11 years old, and some bit with Richard Libertini as a justice of the peace with a weird accent would send my mom into gales of laughter which I’d grudgingly join in on despite having NO idea why it was supposed to be funny.
Then Burt and Goldie were in a shower together and my mom would kick me out of the room for seeing bare shoulder.
“you apparently were acting as someone else. Not cool man. Not cool.”
How do you know this? You just said nobody knows who anybody really is here.
I saw STICK in the theater and thought there was a good movie in there…somewhere.
Christian, again, what reason would Lex have to lie? Brother is a lot of things, but he’s not a liar. Whateverthecase, it’s time to let things go, and… HUG!
JBD: Thought I had posted this earlier, but evidently I didn’t. (Alzheimer’s alert!) I, too, thought Burt was funny in Striptease. In fact, I liked that movie a tad more than most people. But Ving Rhames was the real scene stealer there.
http://www.houstonpress.com/1996-07-04/film/hold-the-creamed-corn/#
io, i saw star wars in the theater when i was 5. first movie i was ever taken to. when i was a kid i had the action figures. i remember really liking the first 20 minutes of Jedi when i was a kid and then zoning out until the final battle. I remember loving the Hoth stuff in Empire Strikes Back and kind of zoning out until the light saber battle.
I guess the saga/trilogy i enjoyed the most were the Indiana Jones films. I loved Raiders. loved Temple of Doom. I even loved Last Crusade even though everyone told me it was shit. So i guess that would be the big budget blockbuster saga i was into when i was younger.
I recall at one point trying to shoot an Indiana Jones style movie on a Super 8 camera.
“Brother is a lot of things, but he’s not a liar. ”
So you mean I am RICH and there’s no white girls in LA? Good lawd. Anyway. HUG.
How can you not love Raiders? Sean Connery = Instant Win.
There are absolutely no white girls in L.A… if you are below a certain level of income. This is a FACT.
There are like eight Caucasians in Los Angeles to begin with, so any white chick who’s hot is either banging a producer or a rapper.
See, Lex, you should have gone out drinking with me when I was in L.A. three years ago. I could have introduced you to a lot of white girls at the club.
He wasn’t talking about the color of their hair, Joe.
you saw my note to you above, joe (@1:06)? just so you know i’m a woman of my word and i do what i say i’m gonna
FS IS ON FIRE! BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!
It was a low blow, but I’m kinda distracted.
Everyone I’ve been in contact with over the last 24 hours is okay down in Christchurch, couple of people still haven’t checked in. It’s such a horrible tragedy; Australia and New Zealand have really been hammered hard the last few months.
Hope everyone you know are safe, Leah.
Yeah you have and I hope your people are okay, FS.
Thanks, it’s appreciated.
thanks foam. i’ve spoken to everyone i know personally down there now so that’s a relief, but my friend’s cousin’s uncle (or something like that) had to have his foot amputated to get him out of one of the collapsed buildings, not sure which one, and he’s now in hospital, so i guess all things considered he’s one of the lucky ones, really.
I still don’t quite understand Lex’s complaint: Is he saying he doesn’t want to fuck Asian women?
Just watched STARTING OVER. Reynolds is great in a really low-key, warm comic performance, as is Jill Clayburgh.
Fascinating collaboration between director Alan Pakula and writer/producer James L. Brooks too in the way their stamps are both so strongly on the movie. The sort of rambling but funny dialouge, the slice of life structure, the optimism and romanticsm are all so Brooks but the visual style is pure Pakula, long 1:85 takes in darkly lit rooms and a quiet, naturalism to the performances and tone. Wonderful stuff and a great start to the REYNOLDS-ATHON sparked by this great conversation.
I really loved Starting Over. Burt and Jill did have a great chemistry together — here, and in Semi-Tough.
And Leah and Foamy: You and yours are in my prayers right now. Seriously.
Yeah, stay safe guys. Not matter what BS there is on the web, the important thing is to be well.
thanks. foamy’s in australia so i imagine he’s pretty safe all things considered. but seismologists are saying that the quakes down south in christchurch could very likely have a flow-on effect for the fault line releasing pressure, for which the next critical slip strike zone at risk on the fault line is directly under wellington, so we’ve been put on notice. i must admit that scares me.
I was actually supposed to be back in Christchurch last weekend for an actors’ reunion, but couldn’t make it due to work commitments. Funnily enough (and tying back into Burt Reynolds) it was “Best Little Whorehouse in Texas”.
Lex should try heading to Japan:
http://www.charismaman.com/CMweb_2.98.jpg
Christ, I stay away for a few days and miss the Burt loveathon? On the Criterion thread the other day when someone mentioned they needed to see Battle of Algiers before Smokey and the Bandit all I could think of was SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT IS STREAMING. I watched it and the terrible sequel that night. I feel about Burt the same way I feel about Willis, great at what they do but damn I wish they would find more consistent material.
And why in the hell did Clint did not include Burt in Space Cowboys, he would have been perfect in the Tommy Lee Jones role (and more age appropriate).
And just want to shout out to Joe on Reeve’s comedy chops(though I didn’t like him that that mid-star Kippers farce). If you look at Deathtrap, Channels, and his Clark Kent schtick it seemed like he was a Tony Randall stuck in the body of Burt Lancaster.
Hcat, I believe Burt may have been offered a part in Space Cowboys, but it came down to money. I could be wrong but that seems to click the right memory tumblers in my head.
“I would rather watch [THE TOWERING INFERNO] than Barry Lyndon.”
I’m glad the NYT’s critical policy is more sophisticated than “opinions are like assholes…” What was it Joe said about being with the grownups?
And JillK, I think you and I are in complete agreement. It would be nice, however, to think that, say, TREE OF LIFE still had a chance at the cover of TIME, rather than HARRY POTTER 7.5. At one point Ingmar Bergman was on the cover. Sigh.
Daniella, what is your point with my pull quote? Barry Lyndon is the more well regarded movie. I would rather watch Bill Holden tied to a mysterious water tower on the roof. You would rather watch TREE OF LIFE along with 5 other people while hundreds of millions will line up or rent Dark of the Moon in a few months. Doesn’t make you wrong but it sure as shit doesn’t make you right. Harry Potter, by using the same cast for 8 movies, is a remarkable and successful series, one of the most successful ever, maybe second only to Bond. And the series is loved by millions of people of all ages. Daniella, you may be a groan up but you are inexplicably snobby and elitist.
There was lotsa best actor oscar speculation for Reynolds in STARTING OVER, so much so that SNL made a nice running gag of it when he hosted. Burt’s last great gasp of the 80’s was definitely BEST LITTLE WHOREHOUSE IN TEXAS, which folks forget was a big hit and probably the last successful musical of the decade. With of course, Charles Durning’s five minute show-stopper.
And Reeves is terrific as a sociopath in DEATHTRAP and it’s one of those HBO films I watched over and over.
I remember Best Friends being a big deal when it came out. Besides Reynolds people forget just how huge Hawn used to be. Looking at how BF performed it must have been a huge disappointment to Warners (though not as bad as City Heat).
And besides his age another thing working against Reynolds in the eighties was a sysmiec shift in culture. We went from a Dukes of Hazzard country to a Miami Vice country pretty quickly, Burt’s good ol’ boy act wasn’t selling and some SNL comic had usurped the ‘most recognizable laugh in moviedom’ title.
And I agree that Towering Inferno > Barry Lyndon.
Gee, I like THE TOWERING INFERNO and BARRY LYNDON.
I think the internets is turning our culture bi-polar.
Worse, Christian… because you have to LOVE Barry Lyndon and HATE Towering Inferno to pass the test. Or vice versa.
I have watched Eyes Wide Shut a whole lot of times. But last night, I watched an hour of Storage Wars, an hour of Glee, and 30 minutes of Raising Hope.
I’d watch Magnum Force faster than Million Dollar Baby… and Unforgiven ahead of either.
And Starting Over is not just a good movie, but a great movie… for me. Jim Brooks was unbeatable in that period. And unwatchable lately.
I can Netflix stream THEATRE OF BLOOD, ENTER THE VOID, GOG, A WOMAN IS A WOMAN, 11 HARROWHOUSE, NORTH DALLAS FORTY, FAUST, SOAP, etc. and not worry which could beat each other up.
I have to say I know HOW DO YOU KNOW was not a particularly popular movie but I really ended up digging it. It’s shaggy and messy but there is something to it which I found very appealing. I think it might be because it’s so brazenly personal, but I think it also deals with a lot of univeral themes that I could defintely relate to. There were also some really great scenes like Rudd getting broken up with, the delivery scene, the silent date and the last beat of the ending. It’s not perfect but that was part of it’s charm, at least to me. Also, Rudd and Witherspoon were very game and well suited for Brooks’s specfic quirk.
“How Do You Know” is easily James L. Brooks’s best theatrical film that he directed.
What are you gonna throw back at me, “Terms of Endearment”? With that treacly score? And you’d really rather watch Shirley MacLaine shot through a lint filter than look at REESE in her little booty shorts? Lies. THAT is one of the lamest Best Picture winners ever.
And until this INSANE flurry of dudes suddenly talking up “Broadcast News” because CRITERION! just put it out (as if it hadn’t been readily available on video for decades and is some newly-unearthed rarity, or that a 1.85 boxy relationship drama really benefits from THE BLU), NOOOO OOOOONE had watched or thought of that movie since 1989.
And Holly Hunter is the most annoying actress of all time.
Speaking of Brooks, I still don’t get the As Good As It Gets love. Some family members adore it so I’ve seen it a handful of times in recent years. I find it insanely overlong and extremely grating.
I love Broadcast News, I watch it annually on my Fox Hits VHS copy that I bought for $9 from tower records. It has this awful trailer at the begining with some jangly sixties tune (itty bitty pretty one, IIRC) that highlights the other movies available, and since they are mostly titles like Rhinestone, Oh Heavenly Dog and Two of a Kind you just sit there cringing.
It still amazes me that I pay the same amount for a blu-ray about five months after release that I used to pay for a pan and scan vhs that was released a full year after the theatrical premiere.
I have a FOX HITS VHS of MODERN PROBLEMS.
“Ah ha ha ha, IIIIIII like it!”
ya, another gem. The early 80’s was just a mess for them. For a studio that might be, pound for pound, the greatest of them all, they still go through long stagnent droughts.
I guess I’m just more worried about the anti-intellectualism of the Sarah Palins of the world–and those who uses the “opinions are like assholes” line as some sort of great, supposedly witty, cultural leveler–than I am about being called a snob or elitist. I mean if it’s all just opinion then a “snob” calling a TOWERING INFERNO fan is “a moron” is just as valid a proclamation (of opinion, of course) as anything else, huh? Once you say one should “play nice” you’re bringing a value system into the arena, and suddenly you have something more sophisticated, something that used to be called a grounded critical perspective.
Modern Problems co-stars a guy who ended up being a top publicist at DreamWorks… he played jerks for much of his acting career… but whenever I see him, Modern Problems leaps to mind. I miss seeing Mitch (now retired).
Watching Patti D’Arbanville in that film made it watchable. Her peak of on-camera heat. And Nell Carter hamming it up.
I do believe MODERN PROBLEMS was Fox’s big Christmas release in Dec. 1981.
Their big Christmas release of 2010 was “Gulliver’s Travels.”
Keeping up the proud tradition.
ETA: Yep, when I see Patti D’Arbanville ANYWHERE (a la Morning Glory), my first thought is MODERN PROBLEMS.
Though at age nine, I had no idea what Chevy was doing to her from across the room or why she was moaning.
Also the TUBES’ theme song RULES.
Daniella – I don’t know if it is still true but anytime I read Eberts blog things all the comments were thoughtgul and civil. Perhaps they’re edited, I don’t know but it is possible for there to be a place on the web that is not lowest common denominator (and for all the crankiness that gets thrown around here we are not even close).
And for all the talk the last few weeks over Sandler and whether or not he is a lazy star and all the posts above about how Reynolds was a once huge star who crashed and burned by going back to the same well too often, I can’t believe that Chevy Chase’s name hasn’t come up before.
Chase is killer right now on “Community” a top-notch sitcom that’s given him a character worthy of his considerable comedic talents.
I love him, despite the awful stuff he started to do in the 90s. I mean CADDYSHACK, FLETCH, VACATION, CHRISTMAS VACATION, FUNNY FARM, FOUL PLAY are all great and he’s great in them. He was great as both a smartass, coolest guy in the room type but also as a straight up bufoon. ALways wonder what it would have been like if he had done AMERICAN BEAUTY.
Oddly, I always connect COP AND A HALF and COPS AND ROBBERSONS in my mind since they are from roughly the same period, uniting Chase and Reynolds together for me.
I guess the difference from Reynolds/Sandler and Chase was that Chase really never seemed concerned about breaking away from what he was doing. I mean NOTHING BUT TROUBLE and MEMOIRS OF AN INVISIBLE MAN are surely strange (and I would defend both to an extent) but they aren’t really departures like the formers were/are willing to do.
I think Chase wanted MEMOIRS OF AN INVISIBLE MAN to be his break (and it’s Carpenter to boot!), and he gives a good performance but the studio clearly didn’t know how to market it and the script is all over the place.
Chevy gives a TERRIFIC performance in Memoirs of an Invisible Man. Think I said this in that Murray discussion last week, but Chevy was my absolute IDOL out of all the early SNL guys. Yeah, could be totally suave and detached in that hilariously smarmy way, OR could be PITCH-PERFECT as a suburbanized cauldron of seething rage. His work in FUNNY FARM might’ve seemed too close to Griswold-ville, but it’s some of his best work, especially the building jealousy over his wife’s successful writing career.
Of course, yeah, NO ONE can build a defense of, say, UNDER THE RAINBOW, and he could phone it in worse than literally anybody in the history of cinema… but when he was on, Chevy was a genuinely great actor and movie star.
foamy, if you’re around have you heard from all yer peeps now? hope so
Looks like all clear. The Court Theatre (oldest theatre in NZ) sounds a bit of a mess – one of my friends was in the green room when the earthquake hit.
Yeah, apologies for hijacking a thread but there wasn’t a byob at the time.
Cool re: FS and Leah. Blog bullshit aside, hope all is well.
Chevy’s great on Community, one of the best comedies on TV right now.
Why did Burt Reynolds ever agree to play Boss Hogg in the Dukes of Hazzard movie?
Who’s the current SNL who can break out in movies? Jason Sudeikis looks like he’s poised to succeed where Andy Samberg and Will Forte failed, depending on how Hall Pass does.
Chevy’s definitely found his niche again on TV.
I think it’s not that Forte and Samberg can’t or won’t break out but just that their starring vehicles so far, MACGRUBER and HOT ROD, while very funny, weren’t really mainstream and were kind of almost indie-ish in sensiblity. They’re more the type of movies that people discover and that gain a following over time than ones that are immediately beloved.
I’m kind of surprised Seth Meyers hasn’t led a movie yet. (He did co-write MACGRUBER.) I seem to remember his selling or developing a script about a swinger’s key party for him to play the lead but haven’t heard anything about that in a while.
Kristen Wig has her big star vehicle this summer after appearing 227 supporting roles in the last 4 years. Bridesmaid looks like it is over the top but still a regular comedy as opposed to stream-of-conciousness, lets see what sticks comedy of Hot Rod and MacGruber. I thought Hot Rod had a lot in common with early Sandler films, I am suprised he hasn’t been given a few million to try a followup.
good to hear, foamy (thanks lex. all is not well in christchurch, so many dead, the city – and probably our country – will never be the same. the shaky isles have lived up to their nickname once again)
apologies for the OT, back to regularly scheduled programming
I find myself one notch more interested in a movie if an Office alum is appearing. Pam’s in Hall Pass? Hm… Phyllis is in Bad Teacher? Cool. Erin is in Bridesmaids? Cool. Jim is in Something Borrowed? Still looks awful.
Forte also had Brothers Solomon, so that’s two flops for him. Hot Rod wasn’t bad, but it’s as though Samberg or people with money who talk to Samberg are shy to have him star again. (What was the movie where he was the cool gay brother high-fiving dad JK Simmons?)
Seth Meyers used to be one of SNL’s most versatile, but he’s lost something just doing Weekend Update.