It cannot get here soon enough.
Enjoy!
Monthly Archives: August 2022
A Blast From The Past: Year 1999 A.D. (dir by Lee Madden)
Produced by the Philco-Ford Corporation in 1967, Year 1999 A.D. is an example of one of my favorite genres, a film that attempts to predict what was then the future but which today is the past! When this film was released, 1999 was 32 years away. Now, of course, it’s 23 years in the past.
That said, this film does a better version than most when it comes to predicting the future. It may have been off by a few years, as much of what it shows was only in its beginning stages in 1999 and only came to be commonplace in the 21st Century, but it gets a lot of things right. We do shop online. Remote learning has been a reality for a while now. There are apps that can do everything that’s shown in the film. Towards the end of this film, even YouTube makes an appearance. What the film gets wrong is its assumption that everything in the future would still be as bulky and space-consuming as it was in the film’s present. The movie got a lot right but it came nowhere close to predicting iPhones and laptops. It predicted email but it didn’t predict Twitter, which is perhaps why everyone in the movie seems to be so happy.
The film has kind of a strange tone at the beginning. The scenes on the beach feel oddly melancholy and the music that plays as the mother and son leave the beach made me wonder if they were about to stumble over the remains of the Statue of Liberty. The movie is supposed to be a celebration of the wonderful future that humanity has waiting for itself but that opening music makes it seem as if maybe technology has gone too far. Have we sacrificed our souls for comfort?
My friend Mark introduced me to this film. He’s also pretty confident that Soon-Tek Oh appears in the party scene and I think he may be right. If nothing else, it certainly sounds like he’s one of the guests speaking to the owner of the house. The singer at the end was apparently Bobby Capo, a Puerto Rican singer who died of a heart attack in 1989.
As far as vision of the future are concerned, Year 1999 A.D. wasn’t that far off. Director Lee Madden did a lot of industrial films but he’s best-remembered for directing biker films like Hells Angels ’69 and Angels Unchained. It’s hard not to notice that there aren’t any bikers in his vision of the future.
Artwork of the Day: The Wickedest Man (by Lu Kimmel)
by Lu Kimmel
He looks really wicked to me. I guess that’s why he’s the gentleman from Hell.
Music Video of the Day: Midnight Mover by Accept (1985, directed by ????)
Midnight Mover is the Accept song that wasn’t Balls to the Wall. I actually prefer Midnight Mover to Balls to the Wall as both a song and video but Midnight Mover was never featured on Beavis and Butt-Head and is lesser known as a result.
The song is about a drug dealer, one who moves his product at midnight. The video is mostly interesting as an early example of the “bullet time” technology that would later be made famous by The Matrix. Accept did it first!
Enjoy!
Here’s The Trailer for A Jazzman’s Blues
To be honest, the trailer for A Jazzman’s Blues looks a bit better than the average Tyler Perry film but…. well, it’s still a Tyler Perry film. Perry seems like a genuinely nice man and he’s given valuable opportunities to a lot of actors and technicians. But, as both a writer and a director, he has a tendency towards being more than a little heavy-handed. He’s one of those filmmakers who, because of his personal qualities, you always hope will eventually make a great film but it’s debatable whether he’s even made a good one yet.
We’ll see how he did with A Jazzman’s Blues when it drops on Netflix in September.
Here’s The Trailer for White Noise!
Earlier today, the trailer for Noah Baumbach’s upcoming White Noise dropped. This film, which is an adaptation of Don DeLillo’s novel, is expected to receive a major awards season push from Netflix. It’s a film that not only reunited Baumbach with Marriage Story‘s Adam Driver but which also co-stars Greta Gerwig, who has yet to receive an acting nomination despite directing two films that have been nominated for Best Picture. It’ll be curious to see how Baumbach does with White Noise. DeLillo is one of our most acclaimed novelists but other filmmakers have often struggled to capture the essence of his prose on film.
Here’s the trailer. Judge it for yourself.
Live Tweet Alert: Join #FridayNightFlix for The Cutting Edge!
As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on twitter. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We tweet our way through it.
Tomorrow, at 10 pm et, I will be hosting #FridayNightFlix! The movie? 1992’s The Cutting Edge!
It’s figure skating, hockey, and love! D.B. Sweeney is a former hockey star. Moira Kelly is a figure skater with a reputation for being a diva. Terry O’Quinn and Roy Dotrice are the distinguished character actors who are brought in to class the joint up. Can Sweeney and Kelly win the gold and fall in love at the same time!?
If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 10 pm et, and use the #FridayNightFlix hashtag! I’ll be there tweeting and I imagine some other members of the TSL Crew will be there as well. It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.
This movie is a personal favorite of mine and I can’t wait to play host tomorrow night!
Artwork of the Day: Amazing Stories (by James B. Settles)
by James B. Settles
This is from 1943.
Music Video of the Day: Dystopia by Megadeth (2016, directed by Blair Underwood)
Just to clear up some confusion that apparently shows up online, the Blair Underwood who directed this video for Megadeth is not the same Blair Underwood who co-starred on L.A. Law. Considering that Blair Underwood the actor reportedly based his L.A. Law character on a young Barack Obama and Dystopia was undoubtedly Dave Mustaine’s commentary on America under Obama, the collaboration would have been an unlikely one.
It was for Dystopia that Megadeth won their first Grammy. Unfortunately, during the Grammy ceremony, the house band played Metallica’s Master of Puppets when Dave Mustaine and the band went up to accept the award. Mustaine, who was famously kicked out of Metallica before then forming Megadeth, said that he didn’t take it personally. That doesn’t really sound like the Dave Mustaine that most people know but let’s take his word for it.
Enjoy!
Here’s The Trailer For Empire of Light!
This is the time of year when the haze around the Oscar race starts to clear up. On paper, Empire of Light certainly looks like it should be contender. It’s British. It’s a period piece. It’s a love story. It stars Olivia Colman. It was directed by Sam Mendes. And judging from the trailer, which was just released today, the film looks like a visual treat.
Will the actual film live up to the hype? We’ll see. As a filmmaker, Sam Mendes can be inconsistent but he’s certainly improved quite a bit since he somehow won an Oscar for the abysmal American Beauty. I am looking forward to seeing and judging Empire of Light for myself.
Through the Shattered Lens 