And, earlier today, I watched episodes of CHiPs, Degrassi High, Baywatch Nights, Monsters, Malibu CA, Check It Out, and Friday the 13th: The Series and I wrote up reviews that will post over the course of the upcoming week. It’s always nice to have a head start on all of that.
On Tuesday, Erin and I watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. Charlie Brown really was way too nice about Peppermint Patty inviting herself over to his house and then getting upset over being served popcorn. Myself, I love the fact that Snoopy had a fully cooked turkey that he basically hid from everyone else until it was just him and Woodstock at the house.
On Wednesday, I watched the latest episode of Hell’s Kitchen. I was not surprised to see Lulu eliminated. I hope Brandon wins this season.
I watched bits of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and also the four football games that were played on Thursday. My cousins were really into the football games. I said I thought it would be nice if everyone could win and I got booed and accused of being a commie. As for the parade, it just made me wish that I was in New York to see it in person. Maybe next year!
On Friday, I watched episodes of two old 90s shows — Rollergames and Happy Hour. They were both enjoyably dumb.
December brings us to Awards Season so the Oscar race is about to become much clearer. Until the precursors start pouring in, here are my current predictions!
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.
Tonight, for #ScarySocial, I will be hosting Lucio Fulci’s Manhattan Baby!
If you want to join us on Saturday night, just hop onto twitter, start the film at 9 pm et, and use the #ScarySocial hashtag! The film is available on Prime and Tubi! I’ll be there co-hosting 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!
Manhattan Baby (1982, dir by Lucio Fulci, DP: Guglielmo Mancori)
I love watching movies that are filmed in my home state of Arkansas. There’s something cool about seeing places I’ve been before showing up on the big screen, and if I haven’t been there before, I can go visit. We’ve had our share of big stars show up in the Natural State. Burt Reynolds, Billy Bob Thornton, Bill Paxton, Robert De Niro, Dennis Quaid, Matthew McConaughey, Tom Cruise, and Andy Griffith have all filmed really good movies here. Heck, Martin Scorsese directed one of his very first movies in southern Arkansas. It’s going to be fun revisiting some of my favorites and sharing them with you!
I’m kicking off #ArkansasMovies with WHITE LIGHTNING, the 1973 film from director Joseph Sargent that was filmed almost entirely within 30 minutes of my house in central Arkansas. Burt Reynolds is Gator McKlusky, a good ol’ boy who happens to find himself serving a stint in prison for “stealin’ cars, runnin’ cars, and runnin’ moonshine whiskey.” One day a cousin comes to visit him in prison and tells him that his younger brother Donny has been killed in Bogan County. Suspecting foul play, Gator first tries to escape. When that doesn’t work, he agrees to go stool pigeon and work with the federal authorities to infiltrate the world of illegal moonshining in Bogan County and provide them the names of the big money people in the area. This includes the crooked county Sheriff J.C. Connors (Ned Beatty), who Gator immediately zeroes in on as the key person responsible for his brother’s death.
In my opinion, WHITE LIGHTNING is one of the best of the good ‘ol boy, southern redneck films that were so popular in the 1970’s. One of the main reasons I like WHITE LIGHTNING so much is that while it does has some of the clowning that’s expected in these types of films, the tone gets deadly serious as McKlusky zeroes in on what happended to his brother. Reynolds is especially badass when he stops his signature laughing and goes into vengeance mode. And Ned Beatty is perfect casting as the small-town sheriff who is completely and irredeemably evil. The opening scene shows Beatty boating a couple of bound and gagged young men out into the middle of the lake, shooting a hole in the their boat, and then casually paddling away as the boat sinks. If you came up on him a little later, you’d think he was just heading in from a day of crappie fishing. For a guy that doesn’t look menacing at all on first glance, we know just how dangerous Sheriff J.C. Connors is. And so does Gator. We have a rooting interest in seeing Gator get his revenge.
The primary filming locations in WHITE LIGHTNING are practically in my backyard. My wife and I got married at the Saline County Courthouse in downtown Benton, which is featured very prominently in the film. It’s a beautiful courthouse, with a distinctive clock tower. They decorate it so beautifully for the Christmas season (see picture below). Burt also spends time at the “Benton Speedway” in the film. This is actually the old I-30 Speedway that was in operation in Little Rock for 66 years. Sadly, the Speedway held its final race on October 1, 2022, which is almost 50 years after filming completed. The rest of the locations used were also in central Arkansas in the towns of North Little Rock, Keo, Scott, Wrightsville, and Tucker. FYI, I don’t recommend poking around Tucker if you’re into film tourism. Tucker is the primary prison unit for the Arkansas Department of Corrections. If you do head that way, just don’t pick up any hitchhikers!
All in all, WHITE LIGHTNING is a movie I whole-heartedly recommend, and it’s especially meaningful to me since it’s so close to home. Billy Bob Thornton would be back in this same area in 1996 to film SLING BLADE.
As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on Twitter and Mastodon. 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.
Tonight, at 10 pm et, #FridayNightFlix presents Jackie Chan in Drunken Master!
If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 10 pm et, and use the #FridayNightFlix hashtag! It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.
Drunken Master is available on Prime and Tubi! See you there!
The first Hong Kong actor I ever heard of was Bruce Lee. After that, it was Jackie Chan. I remember in the mid-90’s when RUMBLE IN THE BRONX opened in America and became the number 1 movie at the box office on its opening weekend. Jackie Chan had been trying out for U.S. stardom since the early 80’s with BATTLE CREEK BRAWL, THE CANNONBALL RUN movies and THE PROTECTOR. Now, all of a sudden he was a hot property. Some of Chan’s older movies, like OPERATION CONDOR (1991), SUPERCOP (1992) and DRUNKEN MASTER (1994) were being dusted off the shelves and re-released in America. The entire world was witnessing just what an amazing talent Jackie Chan truly was.
But long before he became a star in America, Jackie Chan was already one of the biggest stars in Asia. In DRUNKEN MASTER from 1978, Chan plays the martial arts hero Wong Fei-hung. Although Wong Fei-hung was a Chinese martial artist, physician & folk hero in real life, in DRUNKEN MASTER he’s played as a mischievous & arrogant young man who thinks he knows way more than he actually does. He’s such a pain in the butt that his dad, Master Wong, sends for his Uncle So to train him. Uncle So has a reputation as a master teacher who has been known to physically cripple his students in order to teach them the discipline it takes to learn his drunken kung fu. One day, after constantly rebelling against his uncle’s teaching, Wong escapes and runs into the mysterious assassin, Thunderleg. Not realizing who he’s dealing with, the disrespectful young man gets his ass kicked and is thoroughly humiliated. It’s so bad that he goes back to his uncle’s house and submits to his teaching. He finally realizes just how much he has to learn. Wouldn’t you know it, it’s also about this time that Thunderleg is commissioned to kill Master Wong. It seems a greedy guy named Mr. Lee wants access to land under Master Wong’s control for the sole purpose of removing its natural resources without regard for how it affects the other people in the area. When Master Wong says no, he unknowingly signs his death sentence. Will young Wong Fei-hung be able to learn the secrets of drunken kung fu in time to save his dad from the man who had soundly defeated him a short time ago? You’ll just have to watch and find out!
Jackie Chan is amazing as Wong Fei-hung. I’ve read about the rigorous training and harsh conditions that Chan himself endured in the Peking opera school that he attended as a child and teenager. The positive from that difficult situation is that he learned a brand of acrobatics and martial arts that helped make him an international movie star. As a 24 year old at the time of filming DRUNKEN MASTER, he’s in peak physical condition. As great as he is in his later American movies like RUSH HOUR and SHANGHAI NOON, his athleticism is off the charts here. When you combine Chan’s physical talents with the martial arts director Yuen Woo-ping, you can expect special results. The fight scenes are the primary draw here and they deliver. There’s a reason that filmmakers like the Wachowski’s, Ang Lee & Quentin Tarantino would ask Yuen Woo-ping to choreograph the martial arts in movies like THE MATRIX, CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON, and the KILL BILL’s.
DRUNKEN MASTER would be a huge financial success and its combination of action and comedy would be the blueprint for success throughout the rest of Jackie Chan’s career. It’s one of the best of its kind.
It’s been a while since I shared any songs about the end of the world. Will you be watching Inception when the Earth swallows us? I’ll probably be watching It’s A Wonderful Life for one last time.
Through the Shattered Lens 