Music Video of the Day: Stayin’ Alive by Bee Gees (1977, dir. Bruce Gowers)

Posted on September 29, 2017 by Valerie Troutman

It’s hard enough when there are multiple versions of a video. It’s tough dealing with videos–officially posted or not–disappearing. This is a new one on me. Count it off!

1. The official beegees YouTube account posting:

2. The Rhino YouTube account posting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQwNN-0AgWc

3. The BeeGeesVEVO YouTube account posting:

They’re all the exact same video–no difference in runtime or quality. And yes, there is a second version of Stayin’ Alive as you might have gathered from the title of the VEVO account posting.

As for the content of the music video…this is a really upbeat song and the title is Stayin’ Alive…have them wander around abandoned sets at MGM Studios??? It reminds me of the video Gowers did for The First Cut Is The Deepest by Rod Stewart except there it made sense for him to be isolated on a staircase. They were probably just opportunistic since they filmed this video on the sets that were next-door to where Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978) was being filmed. At least that’s what Wikipedia says.

I do like that whatever the reason, the video is showing us the opposite of what comes to mind when you go to put this video on. Also, it’s a testament to Gowers’ talent as a director. Back in the 1970s, he could do something for the Bee Gees, Journey, The Rolling Stones, and he’s the one who did Bohemian Rhapsody for Queen. Cut to the early-1980s and you can still his style at work. Sometimes it made for a funny, but memorable video, like Eye Of The Tiger by Survivor. Other times you got Separate Ways (Worlds Apart) by Journey. I’ll talk about that video at some point since that also brings in ABBA, a famous Italian director, and Bohemian Rhapsody–at the very least.

Enjoy!

A Movie A Day #263: Running Scared (1986, directed by Peter Hyams)

Posted on September 28, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

Running Scared is weird but good.

Ray Hughes (Gregory Hines!) and Danny Costanzo (Billy Crystal!!!) are two tough detectives in Chicago. All they want to do is three things: retire, open a bar in Florida, and bust Chicago’s most ruthless drug dealer, Julio Gonzalez (Jimmy Smits). Their captain (Dan Hedaya) wants them to leave for Florida as soon as possible but they are determined to take down Julio first.’

There are two strange things about this otherwise formulaic crime film. First off, the two tough cops are played by Gregory Hines and Billy Crystal. According to the film’s Wikipedia page, director Peter Hyams realized that Running Scared‘s plot was nothing special so he decided that the only way to make the movie stand out was by doing it “with two actors you would not normally expect to see in an action movie.” The other strange thing is that Hyams’s gambit worked. Gregory Hines may have been best known as a dancer and Billy Crystal as a comedian but both of them were surprisingly believable as Chicago cops. Running Scared is actually one of Billy Crystal’s best performances. For once, he’s believable as being someone other than a version of himself. Even his frequent one liners seem like something that a detective would say instead of Crystal recycling punch lines from his act. Whether they are chasing down perps and firing their guns at a moving vehicle, Hines and Crystal are never less than credible as action stars. Lorenzo Lamas has got nothing on the team of Hines and Crystal.

Predictable though it may be, Running Scared is one of the better late 80s cop films. The action scenes are exciting and Hyams does a good job capturing the grittiness of Chicago. Jimmy Smits is a good villain and Joe Pantoliano, Steven Bauer, and Jon Gries all shine in supporting roles. Keep an eye out for the always underrated Darlanne Fluegel, playing Danny’s ex-wife.

Artwork of the Day: Astonishing Stories

Posted on September 28, 2017 by Dazzling Erin

by Milton Luros

Music Video of the Day: Hovas Vittne by ABBA (1981, dir. ???)

Posted on September 28, 2017 by Valerie Troutman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCjkM1G-mCw

In 1981, it was Stig Anderson’s 50th birthday. They wrote a song and performed it in his honor since he was their longtime manager. You’ll notice that they are wearing the same outfits that they wore in the music video for Waterloo.

ABBA’s career took off after winning Eurovision in 1974 with the song Waterloo. Anderson co-wrote it.

The title of the song is a reference to Anderson’s hometown of Hova and “Vittne” translates to “witness”.

Courtesy of the book, ABBA: Bright Lights Dark Shadows by Carl Magnus Palm:

…on January 25, the celebratory mood continued when Stig turned 50 and threw a lavish party. To mark the occasion, Björn and Benny wrote the tune for a song called ‘Hovas vittne’ (‘Hovas Witness’, a pun on his place of birth) as a special gift for him.

The affectionately satirical lyrics, penned by the four ABBA members, Michael Tretow and Rune Söderqvist, referred to all sorts of quant characteristics exhibited by Stig. One example was his habit of switching on a vacuum cleaner when he decided it was time for his parties to end. “When he got tired of his guests–no matter who it was–he would bring out the vacuum cleaner and announce loudly: ‘The taxi cabs are here!’ Because he had called for cabs as well,” recalled Rune Söderqvist “of course, it was a bit embarrassing to stay then.”

…

Also, on the day before Stig’s birthday, a special video, featuring ABBA singing ‘Hovas Vittne’, was made. In the video they were wearing their 1974 ‘Waterloo’ costumes, as if to remind everyone of the moment in time when they and their manager had been at their most unified.

A few years down the road, things would get hostile between the group and Anderson. You can read about that here.

Enjoy!

ABBA retrospective:

A Movie A Day #262: Downtown (1990, directed by Richard Benjamin)

Posted on September 27, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

Alex (Anthony Edwards) is a patrolman assigned to the nicest neighborhood in Philadelphia but, after he gets in trouble for pulling over a wealthy businessman (David Clennon), he is told that he can either be suspended or he can take a transfer downtown, to the Diamond Street precinct. Alex takes the transfer, even though everyone on the force says that “not even the Terminator would go to Diamond Street.” Alex gets assigned to work with seasoned Sgt. Dennis Curren (Forest Whitaker), who is still emotionally scarred by the death of his former partner and does not want to have to babysit a naive white cop from the suburbs, especially one who is obsessed with the Beach Boys. At first, Alex struggles with his new assignment and his new partner but, when an old friend is murdered by a notorious hitman (Joe Pantoliano), Alex is determined to crack the case and bring the killer to justice.

Downtown is a combination of other, better cop films: Alex’s situation is Beverly Hills Cop in reverse and his partnership with Dennis is lifted straight from Lethal Weapon. Art Evans is the captain who is always yelling at Alex and Dennis and telling them to drop the case and the character is so familiar that I had to check to make sure that Evans had not played the same role in Lethal Weapon. As the bad guys, Clennon and Pantoliano could just have easily been replaced by Beverly Hills Cop‘s Steven Berkoff and Jonathan Banks and no one would have noticed. The only real difference is that Downtown is neither as exciting nor as funny as those two films. Downtown was directed by Richard Benjamin, who will never be known as a particularly versatile filmmaker and who struggles to balance the fish-out-of-water comedy with some surprisingly brutal violence. Beverly Hills Cops had Eddie Murphy and Lethal Weapon had Mel Gibson and Danny Glover. Downtown has Anthony Edwards and Forest Whitaker, who are both good actors but who both seem to be woefully miscast here. (If Downtown were made today, Whitaker could play Dennis but, in 1990, he was too young to be the cop who was “too old for this shit.”) Of the many Lethal Weapon ripoffs that came out in late 80s and early 90s, Downtown is one of the most forgettable.

The Main Event: Kirk Douglas in CHAMPION (United Artists 1949)

Posted on September 27, 2017 by gary loggins

cracked rear viewer

Kirk Douglas slugged his way to superstardom in director Mark Robson’s CHAMPION, one of two boxing noirs made in 1949. The other was THE SET-UP , helmed by Robson’s former RKO/Val Lewton stablemate Robert Wise. While that film told of an aging boxer (Robert Ryan) on the way down, CHAMPION is the story of a hungry young fighter who lets nothing stand in his way to the top of the food chain. The movie not only put Douglas on the map, it was a breakthrough for its young independent producer Stanley Kramer .

Douglas is all muscle and sinew as middleweight Midge Kelly, and a thoroughly rotten heel. He’s a magnetic character, a classic narcissist with sociopathic tendencies drawing the people around him into his web with his charm. Midge has no empathy for others, not even his loyal, game-legged brother Connie (Arthur Kennedy in a solid performance), after…

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Artwork of the Day: The Astounding She Monster

Posted on September 27, 2017 by Dazzling Erin

by Albert Kralis

Music Video of the Day: On And On And On by ABBA (1980, dir. Anders Hanser)

Posted on September 27, 2017 by Valerie Troutman

That’s exactly how I feel with this retrospective. On and on and on. At least I can take comfort in the fact that some great stuff is coming.

Agentha…

ends up doing a video that is like Fifty Shades Of Grey (2015).

Benny…

and Björn…

will bring us a rock opera with at least one well-known song.

Finally, we get to see Frida…

become a private detective of sorts to expose the guy that I’m just going to assume is the same one who ends up in the Agnetha video, seeing as both songs were written by the same person.

But before we get to Frida and her panda…

we still have some more ABBA videos made prior to the break up.

The song shares a similarity with Let There Be Rock by AC/DC. You might recall that Bon Scott screwed up and introduced “sound” before “light”. You can hear it that way in the video and on the album. It was intended to be the other way around, which you can hear in live performances. In the case of this video, they used an earlier version of the song that included an extra verse involving Humpty-Dumpty. That one didn’t get a stereo release until 2011.

The photographs used to make up this video were taken from a concert they did in Las Vegas in 1979.

Except for the information above, the Wikipedia article is pretty slim, and I was lucky it had any information in it to begin with or that an article even existed. I guess why they felt the need to reintroduce people to the members of the band will remain a mystery to me for the time being. It doesn’t even kick in with the line, “He said, “Who am I and who are you and who are we?”

For me, this is one of the weakest videos in the ABBA collection so far. I enjoy the song, but like the video, I’ll forget about it pretty quickly.

IMDb lists ABBA’s late-70s photographer Anders Hanser as the director. Mvdbase lists Lasse Hallström. I decided to go with Hanser. It seemed to make the most sense. You can read a bit about him and his relationship with the band here.

Enjoy!

ABBA retrospective:

A Movie A Day #261: Tropical Heat (1993, directed by Jag Mundhra)

Posted on September 26, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

In India, a maharaja is killed when an elephant steps on him. His widow, an American named Beverly (Maryam d’Abo) stands to receive five million dollars but the life insurance company wants to make sure that the maharajah is actually dead before paying. Luckily, insurance exec Carolyn (Lee Anne Beaman) knows the world’s stupidest private investigator, a man named Gravis (Rick Rossovich). Gravis is busy house sitting a friend’s mansion and says he does not want to go to India but, after having sex with Carolyn in the pool, he changes his mind. Once he arrives, he casually investigates the maharaja’s death whenever he is not busy having sex with Beverly. During the course of his “investigation,” Gravis meets a young Indian woman (Asha Siewkumar), who thinks that there is more to the maharjah’s death than just a rogue elephant. Gravis has sex with her, too. Eventually, the movie runs out of people for Gravis to have sex with and it ends.

Though it often seems like it should be, Tropical Heat is not a comedy. An American-Indian co-production, Tropical Heat is a softcore neo-noir, the type that used to dominate late night Cinemax. By the standards of Skinemax, Tropical Heat is still pretty bad, with both Rossovich and d’Abo looking like they would have rather been anywhere other than this movie. Filmed on location, Tropical Heat highlights all of the ugliest, most crowded urban areas of India and then, for some reason, has Gravis telling everyone that he meets that he cannot believe how beautiful the country is. All of the hilariously bad dialogue sounds as if it was written by someone who learned how to speak English from watching someone else play Leisure Suit Larry.

If you want to see a good show about self-centered Americans in India, stick with that episode of Seinfeld where everyone goes to India for Sue Ellen Mischke’s wedding.