John Leone was a New York-based artist who was best known for his illustrations and paintings of the American west. Since the legends of the old west are uniquely American, it feels appropriate to share a sampling of his work on President’s Day.
Monthly Archives: February 2017
What Lisa Marie Watched Last Night: FANatic (dir by Jean-François Rivard)
Around 2 a.m. this morning, I watched the latest Lifetime Movie Network premiere, FANatic!
Why Was I Watching It?
Okay, so technically, I didn’t watch this last night. It premiered last night and I recorded it because I was watching the latest episode of The Walking Dead. However, I don’t think What Lisa Recorded Last Night has quite the same ring to it.
As for why I watched it at 2 in the morning — well, I fell asleep last night around 11:00. And then I woke up at one. Seeing as how I had already gotten my usual two hours of sleep, I decided that I might as well watch a movie!
What Was It About?
Nikki Myers (Katy Breier) has finally landed her dream job. She’s working as an assistant to Tess Daniels (Betsy Brandt), a highly acclaimed actress who happens to be the star of Nikki’s favorite show! It’s an enjoyably silly sci-fi show, one on which Tess co-stars with her husband, Hunter Clay (Benjamin Arthur). When the show started, Tess and Hunter were equals and Tess considered her role to be empowering. But, over the past few seasons, things have changed. Tess now finds her role to be demeaning and limiting. While Hunter gets to play the hero, Tess’s role becomes more and more about providing fan service for the show’s male viewers. Tess wants to leave the show…
But if Tess leaves the show, where does that leave Nikki!? Nikki’s spent the last few weeks bragging to her two friends about her job! If the show ends, how will Nikki be able to continue to steal props from the set? And how will she be able to continue to lie to her friends about the imaginary affair she’s having with Hunter!?
Seriously, when you look at things from her point of view, can you blame Nikki for becoming a little bit homicidal?
What Worked?
Yay! If nothing else, FANatic showed that the Lifetime-Degrassi conduit still exists! Perhaps because so many Lifetime films are produced in Canada, it’s not unusual to see former Degrassi actors pop up in supporting (and, sometimes, lead) roles. On Degrassi, Jake Epstein played the lovable, bipolar, drug addicted musician/photographer Craig Manning. In FANatic, he plays a slightly less likable character, a misogynistic television producer. Still, it’s always good to see Jake.
Anyway, FANatic was a lot of fun to watch, mostly because of the loving detail that was put into creating Tess and Hunter’s irresistibly silly sci-fi show. What’s interesting is that, if that show actually was on the air, it probably would be, at the very least, a cult hit. I knew more than a few people who would probably watch every episode.
Katy Breier did a good job playing the fanatic of the title. A film like FANatic is only as good as its villain and Breier brought a lot of life to the role.
What Did Not Work?
Seriously, why are redheads always crazy in Lifetime movies? Of course, that’s really not something that didn’t work. That’s just something that I, as a member of the 2% of the world’s population who has red hair, always notice.
But back to the question — hey, it all worked!
“Oh my God!” Just like me moments!
It’s hard for me to imagine myself ever becoming obsessed with any show to the extent that Nikki does. Then again, if that show starred James Franco…
Lessons Learned
You can’t spell “fanatic” without “fan!”
Artwork of the Day: Grand Old Game
By Andy Thomas
Music Video of the Day: America by Kurtis Blow (1985, dir. Claude Borenzweig)
This is another one where I will let the people involved do the talking. In this case, it’s editor Glenn Lazzaro whose work we have already seen several times on here. You can click his name in the tags section to see the music videos I have done so far that he worked on. Credit goes to 99Tigers for putting up a post up containing the following:
Posted by Glenn Lazzaro for his series “Adventures in Television”
National Video Center, New York City, 1985.
In the early ’80s when hip hop & rap were first noticed by the mainstream, most of the music videos were dance tracks and for the most part, devoid of political messages. Then Kurtis Blow released the single “America” and all that changed. It was a political rant about everything that was happening during the Reaganomics-Cold War-Anti-Russian era in America. Claude Borenzweig, then working at Polygram Records, was editing & directing internal projects when he got the chance to direct the “America” music video. Claude came up with the idea of a classroom filled with kids where Kurtis would teach them the “real” history of America. David Brownstein and Len Epand produced the shoot for Claude on the main stage at National Video. They shot on videotape using the giant, old-school studio cameras that were usually used to shoot “Sexually Speaking with Doctor Ruth.”
Claude did a rough cut using the classroom footage he directed, and a second cut using stock footage that we would combine in the edit. As usual, we went into the edit room over the weekend so we’d have all the time and equipment we needed. We needed time because we had no edit list, no After Effects, no digital storage, no tracking marks. Just an old Ampex ADO and lots of “crossed fingers” that we’d match the motion between the camera moves and the composited footage. Sometimes it matched. Most times it didn’t.
Needless to say, the special effects seem crude compared to what is possible today. But at the time they were considered state-of-art. We also used the then very popular technique of running the footage thru a black & white monitor to distort it.
Claude hadn’t shot any footage for the Pledge Of Allegiance section of the song, so I was enlisted to lie under the title camera and lip-sync the part. Yes, that’s my ’80s mustache you see inserted into the blackboard starting at 18 seconds in.
Shortly after we finished the video, I worked with Frank Zappa on a week’s worth of programming called “Porn Wars” for the music show “Night Flight.” Zappa would appear at the PMRC Senate hearings in Washington during the day, then come to National Video in New York to tape his segments for “Night Flight.” One night I showed him “America.” He was really excited that the rap world was finally getting political and asked for a VHS copy. I was very proud.
Here is also an article written on it for Optic Music Magazine.
According to mvdbase, Claude Borenzweig only went on to do a handful of music videos. According to IMDb, he is, or was working as a Psychotherapist.
Producer Len Epand appears to have worked on around 20 videos.
I can’t find any information on David Brownstein.
John Kraus shot the video. I can’t find any other credits for him.
Here’s an excerpt from Billboard magazine from November 23rd, 1985 concerning Claude Borenzweig:
Here’s an excerpt from Billboard magazine from May 24th, 1986 about how the video was nominated for several awards:
Enjoy!
TV Review: The Walking Dead 7.10 “My New Best Friends” (dir by Jeffrey F. January)
Oh my God!
Is it possible that we’ve actually had two good episodes of The Walking Dead in a row!?
Indeed it is. In fact, I would say that tonight’s episode of The Walking Dead was the high point of the season so far. I don’t know if the show’s production team has been listening to the complaints that many fans had during the first half of the season but, with both this episode and last week’s, it’s hard not to feel that the show is trying to correct some earlier mistakes.
For instance, there was no Negan in this episode. Now, don’t get me wrong. Negan can be an intimidating bad guy. But, like many great villains, Negan is at his most effective when he’s off screen. The big mistake that the Walking Dead made during the first half of season 7 was going for an all-Negan, all-the-time format. With each appearance, Negan became just a little bit more cartoonish and, as a result, he became less and less intimidating.
However, though this episode largely dealt with people trying to figure out what to do about the Saviors, Negan was still kept in the shadows. As a result, Negan’s becoming a threat again.
Tonight’s episode followed two storylines, which is a definite improvement over the plodding pace of the first half of the season. Both storylines were equally interesting, though I think everyone’s heart was invested in Daryl and Carol.
So, let’s get Rick out of the way. Last week, I assumed that Rick had come across the Oceanside community but it turns out that I was wrong. (And that’s not a bad thing because the Oceanside community kinda sucked.) Instead, this is a community of people who live in a junkyard. In many ways, they’re just as ritualized and borderline ludicrous as Ezekiel’s Kingdom. The only question is whether or not the Junkyarders, like Ezekiel, realize how silly their little community is. Are all of their rituals designed as an escape from grim reality or are they all just crazy?
The Junkyard is run by Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh), who seems to have a permanent smirk and who speaks like an evil Queen in an Italian Hercules film. But, and this is largely due to McIntosh’s performance and her chemistry with Andrew Lincoln, Jadis is still likable. When she and Rick finally formed their alliance, I was happy because Jadis looks like she’s going to be a valuable ally in the inevitable battle with the Saviors. Seriously, who doesn’t want to see Jadis kick Negan’s ass?
Of course, before Rick could talk to Jadis, he had to defeat an armor-covered walker that the Junkyard crew appeared to be using as a gladiator. That was exciting and it’s nice to see that The Walking Dead is trying to think up new things to do with their undead.
But, ultimately, this show was all about Carol and Daryl. Daryl has been hiding out at the Kingdom. When Richard told Daryl that he had an idea for how they could convince Ezekiel to go to war with the Saviors, Daryl was all ears until he discovered that Richard’s plan involved leading the Saviors to Carol. “She’s going to die anyway!” Richard exclaimed.
Obviously, Richard doesn’t know Carol!
After giving Richard the beat down that he deserved for underestimating Carol, Daryl went to Carol’s cabin and seriously, their time together was everything. For once, we got a moment of joy in this relentlessly grim series.
I always love the scenes between Carol and Daryl. I love the way that both Daryl and Carol drop their guard when they’re together. At its best, The Walking Dead has always centered around the question of how people can keep their humanity, even in the worst of circumstances. Tonight, Carol and Daryl provided that humanity.
This was a good episode, one that reminded me why I watch this show in the first place. Let’s hope that the rest of season 7 is just as good!
A Movie A Day #50: Survival Run (1979, directed by Larry Spiegel)
This poster for Survival Run reflects absolutely nothing that happens in the movie.
“We are young/ We are free/ Anyone know a better place to be?/ Takin’ it easy/ My baby and me….”
So goes the deceptively mellow opening theme song of Survival Run. In this one, teenager Chip (Vincent Van Patten) and his five best friends take off for the weekend. When their van breaks down in the middle of the desert, they light a campfire, sing a song, and have sex.
Takin’ it easy, my baby and me.
When they later decide to search for help, they stumble across a group of men in the valley. The men are being led by Peter Graves, who tosses one of the teens a beer and says, “This’ll put hair on your chest, kid.” The kid looks down at his chest, says, “Where’d it go!?,” and then touches him armpits. “There it is!” he says.
We are young, we are free
The men say they’re prospectors but they’re actually drug smugglers. When the same teen who couldn’t find his chest hair is murdered, a fight for survival begins. Despite that killer opening song, Survival Run takes forever to get started, the action scenes are poorly directed, and the teens are too stupid and poorly written to be sympathetic. However, Survival Run does feature Peter Graves and Ray Milland as the two most unlikely drug smugglers in the world. Peter Graves wears a red ascot and an all khaki outfit with rapidly spreading sweat stains. Ray Milland wears a suit while sitting out in the broiling desert. Milland, who was 72 at the time, spends most of the movie sitting. One of the teenage girls thinks he’s intriguing.
Infamous international drug smugglers Ray Milland and Peter Graves
When I was growing up in Baltimore, Survival Run used to frequently come on TV in the afternoon. I’m still not sure why but I imagine a lot of fans of the Biography Channel were tricked into tuning into this one, just to watch in shock as Peter Graves killed teenagers in the middle of the desert. Ray Milland did this 35 years after winning an Oscar for The Lost Weekend. As for Vincent Van Patten, he was the Van Patten who didn’t appear in Mel Brooks films or win an Emmy for his work on Boardwalk Empire.
Peter Graves and Ray Milland vs. the least known member of the Van Patten family.
Anyone know a better place to be?
Film Review: The Twin (dir by Max Derin and Fred Olen Ray)
According to the imdb, Fred Olen Ray is, as of this writing, credited with directing 148 films. Few of those films have necessarily been acclaimed by the mainstream critics but almost all of them are a lot of fun when taken on their own terms.
Take The Twin for instance, on which Ray shares a directing credit with screenwriter Max Derin.
Now, in many ways, The Twin is a ludicrous film. It’s very, very melodramatic and the whole film’s central issue (i.e., which twin is which) could have been very easily resolved if just one person in the movie had used a little common sense.
But you know what?
Criticism like that misses the entire point of the film. The Twin is a lot of fun and it’s certainly not a film that’s meant to be taken seriously. This is not a serious look at mental illness, young love, sibling rivalry, or anything else for that matter. This is an over-the-top and rather silly piece of pure entertainment and, if we can’t enjoy something like that, what hope is there for the world?
The film deals with Tyler (Timothy Granaderos), who would seem to be almost perfect. He’s handsome. He’s intelligent. He’s compassionate. He’s a wonderful boyfriend, always polite and considerate to his girlfriend, Jocelyn (Jess Gabor). Even Jocelyn’s overprotective mother, Ashley (Brigid Brannah), seems to like him.
However, Tyler has a secret. Years ago, his parents were killed in a car accident. The accident was caused by Tyler’s brother, Derrick. As you may have guessed from the film’s title, Derrick is Tyler’s twin. And we all know that, whenever a movie is called The Twin, that means that there’s going to be a good twin and an evil twin. It turns out that Derrick is the evil twin and that accident was no accident.
Derrick has spent the last few years in a mental asylum. When Tyler shows up to visit his brother, the staff tells Tyler that Derrick has picked up a strange new habit. He’s telling everyone that he’s actually Tyler and Tyler is Derrick. Oh well, Tyler shrugs, that’s what happens when you’ve got a sociopathic twin.
Later, when Tyler is alone with his twin, he’s shocked when Derrick attacks him. Derrick knocks him out and then switches clothes with him. Claiming to be Tyler, Derrick walks out of the hospital and into the lives on Jocelyn and Ashley. Meanwhile, Tyler is stuck in the hospital, begging for someone to just give him a blood test so that he can prove who he is….
Anyway, you can probably guess what happens next but that’s part of the fun. Derrick (as Tyler) spends a lot of good, quality time with Ashley and Jocelyn, both of whom are surprised by how different “Tyler’s” personality seems to now be. Ashley, of course, is more suspicious than Jocelyn. (This film premiered on Lifetime so you better believe that overprotective mom is eventually proven right.)
It may be predictable but, like I said, it’s all a lot of fun. I don’t know which parts of the film were directed by Derin and which parts by Fred Olen Ray but, as a whole, the film is cheerfully content to be a B-movie and you have to kind of love it for that. At a time when everyone is taking everything so seriously and so many filmmakers are giving into portentous pretension, it’s nice to see a thriller that’s pure entertainment.
Plus, Timothy Granaderos is a lot of fun as both Tyler and Derrick. Tyler is nice but kind of dull. Derrick is exciting but totally batshit crazy. Granaderos seems to be enjoying himself as he switches back and forth between being good and evil. An evil twin movie is only as good as its twins and Granaderos is pretty good.
So, keep an eye out for The Twin. Melodrama this enjoyable should not be missed.
Artwork of the Day: The Brass Bed
by Robert Maguire
Music Video of the Day: Open Letter To A Landlord by Living Colour (1989, dir. Drew Carolan)
Full credit goes to Songfacts for these quotes. I would paraphrase, but I don’t think that would be right. Here’s the background on both the song and the music video from poet Tracie Morris, who helped write the song, and director/photographer Drew Carolan.
“At the time we were talking about tenements and other buildings being torn down for buildings that would be inhabited by ‘Yuppies.’ I remember a great deal of alarm in the BRC (Black Rock Coalition) when The Gap first opened up a store on St. Marks’ Place. We saw the downtown/boho lifestyle changing before our eyes. The song focused on the displacement of residencies of course, but I think we were considering how entire neighborhoods were beginning to shift.
The idea of landlords and slumlords getting tenants out to reap financial rewards isn’t new, especially in New York. We certainly felt at the time that much of the motivation behind the riots was to gentrify the East Village.
Now of course we hear about gentrification at a more extreme level taking place all over NYC, not just in Manhattan but all over Brooklyn and all the boroughs. In some ways, ‘Open Letter’ was a precursor to the wholesale expunging of the regular people that have made New York City great since the beginning.”
–Tracie Morris
“The live footage was shot at Toad’s Place in New Haven before a live audience. The band was getting ready to go out with the Rolling Stones on the Steel Wheels tour. We invited 500 people in early for some playback coverage and then the rest of the crowd for an actual show.
The cutaway material was shot in New York, DC and LA. In ’89 the housing situation was bad in most urban cities. People were being forced out of places they had lived in for generations. Living Colour knew that. They hailed from Brooklyn, The Bronx and Staten Island. They saw it everywhere they played. I was from the Lower East side. I saw the writing on the wall. Gentrification was sweeping up the cities and taking the working class with it. We see the band walking through decimated neighborhoods where they used to play. A street called Hope. A little girl on a swing disappears. Empty. Gone. Peaceful protests and shouts melt into the droning sound of the mass transit system.
I just watched it and it rings true today as well. Sad but true.”
–Drew Carolan
Enjoy!
Film Review: Britney Ever After (dir by Leslie Libman) #FreeBritney
Earlier tonight, I watched the latest Lifetime celebrity biopic, Britney Ever After.
Ever since that ill-fated Aaliyah movie, Lifetime biopics have had a reputation for being hot messes and I’m sure that a lot of people will say the same thing about Britney Ever After. Britney Ever After is about Britney Spears, following her from her first tour with *NSYNC through her relationship with Justin Timberlake through her marriages to both Jason Alexander and Kevin Federline and finally concluding with her well-publicized breakdown in 2008. As usually seems to happen with these biopics, the whole story is framed by interviews with a documentary crew. From what I saw, the twitter reaction was pretty savage and I’m sure that there will be all sorts of snarky reviews tomorrow.
But you know what?
As far as Lifetime celebrity biopics go, Britney Ever After was not that bad.
It suffered from some obvious problems. Since neither Britney nor her management had anything to do with the making of the film, none of Britney’s original music was heard. That means there was no Oops! I did it again! There was no Baby One More Time. No Toxic. No If U Seek Amy. There was no Work Bitch, which incidentally is both the greatest song that Britney’s ever done and my favorite song to sing while stuck in traffic. I think it was mentioned, at one point, that Britney was working on a song called Womanizer but I may have misheard. When the actress playing Britney sang, it was only to cover songs by other artists. In the film, Britney performed I Love Rock and Roll and a bit of Walking After Midnight.
For what I presume are legal reasons, the film had to be circumspect. Yes, Justin Timberlake (played by Nathan Keyes) was a character in the movie but he was portrayed so blandly that he could have been any hyperactive teenager with good hair. Jason Allen Alexander (Kelly McCabe) shows up just long enough to marry Britney and then be told that the marriage is going to be annulled. Amazingly, Britney’s entire marriage to Kevin Federline (Clayton Chitty) takes place over less than 10 minutes of screen time. Adnan Ghalib (Serge Jaswal) and Sam Lufti (Benjamin Arce) get more attention that Kevin but both of them are portrayed so negatively that they probably wish they hadn’t.
(Adnan and Sam both made the mistake of testifying about Britney in court, meaning that their douchebaggery was a part of the public record and free for Britney Ever After to portray.)
As for Britney’s “rivalry” with Christina Aguilera (which, early in their careers, pretty much defined both of their public personas), it goes unmentioned. Christina is only briefly seen in a long shot. For those of you hoping for any details about the dark side of life at the Mickey Mouse Club, Britney Ever After is not for you. Really, the film’s main problem was one of logistics. Britney Ever After had only 90 minutes to tell the story of a very dramatic and complicated life. If the film felt rushed, that’s because it had a lot to show and not much time to do it.
But, even with all that in mind, Britney Ever After was not the disaster that some seem to believe that it was. In the role of Britney, Natasha Bassett did far better than I was expecting. There were some issues, of course. Her attempt to duplicate Britney’s Southern accent led to her sounding more like Jessica Simpson than Britney Spears. During the film’s early scenes, she seemed almost too innocent to be believed but it quickly became apparent that this was intentional on the film’s part. One of the themes running through the film was how Britney’s image was continually shaped by her parents, her management, and her boyfriends. In the end, Britney is portrayed as having no control over her own life. When Britney suffers a break down in 2007, she’s at least trying to live her own life. When everyone around her panics, are they concerned about her health or are they concerned about her image and their investment in her career? This unanswered question hangs over the final 30 minutes of Britney Ever After. If Natasha Bassett never quite seemed to be Britney, she was still very believable as a character living the exact same life and dealing with the exact same issues.
Plus, there was an enjoyably silly scene where Britney ran into Justin in a club and they had an epic dance off. If only all relationship issues could be solved by a dance off!
That said, I was a bit disappointed that, at no point, was Crossroads mentioned.
(Seriously, a Britney movie with no mention of Crossroads!?)
But give the film some credit. It did a good job of capturing the suffocating experience of being hounded by paparazzi. And the film was even-handed and compassionate when it came to portraying Britney’s 2007 breakdown. Like Britney, I’m bipolar and I’ve always felt that I could understand what she was going through while the rest of the world was finding so much entertainment in her very public struggle. Since 2008, Britney’s father has had conservatorship over her life and control of all of her assets. For nearly ten years, Britney Spears has not been allowed to stand on her own and has essentially made a lot of money for everyone but her. During the documentary segments that provide a wrap-around to the film’s story, Britney Ever After obliquely hints at this sad reality. In those sequences, there’s a sadness to Bassett’s performance, an acknowledgement that Britney has paid a price for public stability.
Britney Ever After was on Britney’s side, which is more than can be said of many other biopics.
#FreeBitney!
Through the Shattered Lens 