As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in hosting a few weekly live tweets on twitter and occasionally Mastodon. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of Mastodon’s #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We snark our way through it.
Tonight, for #MondayActionMovie, the film will be 1977’s Speedtrap, starring Joe Don Baker! I picked it so you know it’ll be good.
It should make for a night of fun viewing and I invite all of you to join in. If you want to join the live tweets, just hop onto Mastodon, find the movie on YouTube or Tubi, hit play at 8 pm et, and use the #MondayActionMovie hashtag! The live tweet community is a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.
Today’s scene that I love comes from Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate.
You know what? I’ve read that some people consider this scene with the skating fiddler to be an example of Cimino’s tendency towards self-indulgence. The oft-made claim is that it’s a scene where Cimino is more interested in showing off than moving the story forward. That may be true but still, I don’t care what anyone says, I like this scene. It captures the communal joy of the settlers before the arrival of the mercenaries who have been hired to force them out of their homes. To understand why the settlers fight, you also have to understand what they’re being expected to give up.
4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
Today, it is time to celebrate the birth of one of the most intriguing (if uneven) filmmakers of the 20th Century, Michael Cimino! It’s time for….
4 Shots From 4 Michael Cimino Films
Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974, dir by Michael Cimino, DP: Frank Stanley)
The Deer Hunter (1978, dir by Michael Cimino, DP: Vilmos Zsigmond)
Heaven’s Gate (1980, dir by Michael Cimino, DP: Vilmos Zsigmond)
The Year of the Dragon (1985, dir by Michael Cimino, DP: Alex Thomson)
Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Sunday, I will be reviewing the Canadian series, Degrassi High, which aired on CBC and PBS from 1989 to 1991! The series can be streamed on YouTube!
This week, Claude shows that in yourself, you must believe.
Episode 1.11 “All In A Good Cause”
(Dir by Eleanore Lindo, originally aired on January 16th, 1990)
There’s a wonderful moment in this week’s episode in which Claude tells Caitlin that they have a moral obligation to vandalize a factory that is being used to make nuclear weapons. (Yikes! In downtown Toronto!? Really, Canada!?) Claude says that Martin Luther King, Jr. didn’t let the law stop him.
Caitlin agrees.
The Chicago Seven, Claude continues, didn’t let the law stop them from protesting for what was right.
“Who are the Chicago Seven?” Caitlin asks.
Claude gets frustrated. “They were seven guys from Chicago.”
“What did they do?”
Claude, after a pause, “They were totally radical!”
Of course, Claude is incorrect. The Chicago Seven were not seven guys from Chicago. They were seven (originally eight) guys who came to Chicago from all over the country and they were arrested during the 1968 Democratic Convention. As for whether or not they were totally radical …. well, it depends on who you ask. Abbie Hoffman thought they were radical. Bobby Seale thought all of them were poseurs with the exception of himself. Jerry Rubin went on to become a businessman. Tom Hayden went into state politics and married an Oscar winner. As for the other members …. well, who cares? There’s a movie about them if you really want to subject yourself to it.
Claude is like a lot of young activists. He’s passionate and he’s convinced he’s going to save the world but he’s also totally shallow and given to hyperbole. Claude’s plan to vandalize the factory amounts to spray painting one anodyne anti-nuke message on a wall in the middle of the night. Caitlin serves as his lookout. When the cops arrive, Claude runs and leaves Caitlin behind. That stupid hippie!
Catilin does the right thing She dumps that pretentious douchebag! Good for her. Don’t get me wrong. I get it. I went through a period of time where I had a weakness for passionate activists as well. It was between my first bad boy phase and my second bad boy phase. But Claude was just so annoying and, even worse, Caitlin dumped Joey for this loser. Joey may not have known much about politics but Joey also would never have abandoned Caitlin to the cops.
This was a really good episode. Along with the Caitlin/Claude fiasco, this episode also features Kathleen finally reporting her abusive ex-turned-stalker Scott to the police and getting a restraining order against him. Good for Kathleen! (Rebecca Haines really did a good job portraying Kathleen’s ordeal with Scott and, in the best Degrassi tradition, she showed the audience that there was more to Kathleen than they may have originally assumed.) Even Arthur got a decent storyline this episode. Eager to show that he could be just as dangerous and daring as Yick, he and Yick toilet-papered Raditch’s house. What was funny about this plotline is that Arthur wanted to impress Luke. This is the same Luke who gave Shane the PCP that caused him to fall off a bridge. Get better heroes, Arthur!
This was an excellent episode. It’s tempting to hope that Caitlin learned a lesson from this experience but those of us who have watched Degrassi: The Next Generation know better.
I’m going to keep this week’s update kind of short because I’ve been dealing with allergies and sinus pain and I need to get some rest. Consider this to be a mini-week in review.
First, and most importantly, my thoughts go out to everyone who has been effected by the two aviation disasters that occurred this week. It’s just tragic and my heart breaks for the families and friends who have lost those close to them.
The Sundance Film Festival came and went this year. I usually follow these things pretty closely but there was really next to no interesting news out of Sundance this year. I even signed up for a membership so I could attend a few online screenings but, because I’ve been feeling sick, I didn’t go to any of them. To be honest, none of the films available really appealed to me.
After getting 13 nominations (more than The Godfather), Emilia Perez‘s Oscar momentum has apparently been destroyed by the fact that someone finally got around to running a Google translate on all of Karla Sofia Gascon’s old tweets. Because last year was a difficult one for me and my family and I didn’t have as much time as usual to watch things, I haven’t gotten around to watching Emilia Perez so I don’t know if it’s as good as some say or as terrible as others say. (I do know that, as someone who has family on the border and who is a fourth-Spanish, I do have to wonder why Jacques Audiard decided to set his story in Mexico as opposed to Marseille.) But I will say that I always think a film should be judged on its own merits. Of course, that never happens but I remain an idealist at heart.
First released in 1932 and featuring Cary Grant in his first leading role, Hot Saturday is a film about gossip and love.
Ruth Brock (Nancy Carroll) is a young bank teller living in a small town. It’s the type of town where everyone knows everyone else. For instance, everyone knows that every man in town wants to date Ruth but that Ruth, for her part, is not in any hurry to settle down and get married. She’s having too much fun going to dances, drinking with her friends, and enjoying life. Everyone knows that playboy Romer Sheffield (Cary Grant) is interested in Ruth but then again, Romer appears to be interested in everyone. Romer has scandalized the town by allowing a woman named Camille (Rita LaRoy) to live at his mansion.
Ruth has a date with one of her coworkers, Conny Billop (Edward Woods), but, when Conny refuses to take no for an answer, she gets away from him and ends up at Romer’s estate. Ruth and Romer spend the night together, just talking. Still, thanks to Conny and Eva (Lillian Bond), the daughter of Ruth’s boss, the whole town is soon convinced that Ruth is Romer’s lover. The town is so scandalized that Ruth even loses her job.
Fortunately, Bill Fadden (Randolph Scott) has returned to town. Bill is a geologist. He grew up in town, with Ruth. He’s spent the last seven years on a surveying expedition but now he’s back and he wants to marry Ruth. How lucky is Ruth? She not only has two good men in love with her but one of them looks like Cary Grant and the other one looks like Randolph Scott! However, when Bill hears the rumors, will he continue to love her or will he be yet another person who gives in to the curse of small town gossip?
Hot Saturday is a film that truly took me by surprise. It’s a pre-code film and it’s one that has all of the usual tropes that one usually associates with the pre-code era. Everyone’s obsessed with sex. There’s a lot of kissing. There’s a lot of drinking. There’s an emphasis on legs and lingerie. There’s even a scene where Ruth gets into a wrestling match with her younger sister when she discovers that her sister has taken her new panties. I’m one of four sisters so I could certainly relate but it’s still not the sort of thing that one necessarily expects to find in a film from the 1930s. But that’s one reason why I love the Pre-Code era. Allowed to police itself, pre-code Hollywood made films that were more realistic and open about their subject matter than the films made under the production code but which also still had their own unique innocence to them. Hot Saturday has an ending that would have never been allowed during the Code era, one that is, dare I say it, rather empowering.
But, beyond all that, Hot Saturday is an intelligently written film that strikes a good balance between drama and character-driven comedy. Nancy Carroll is beautiful and likable in the lead role. Cary Grant and Randolph Scott are both as handsome and charming as can be. Hot Saturday is both a look at the reality and dangers of small town gossip and a touching love story. I enjoyed it.
4 (or more) Shots From 4 (or more) Films is just what it says it is, 4 (or more) shots from 4 (or more) of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 (or more) Shots From 4 (or more) Films lets the visuals do the talking.
*tick tick tick* TIME!
4 Shots From 4 Time Travel Films
Beyond The Time Barrier (1960, dir by Edgar G. Ulmer, DP: Meredith Nicholson)
Back to the Future (1986, dir by Robert Zemeckis, DP: Dean Cundey)
12 Monkeys (1995, dir by Terry Gilliam, DP: Roger Pratt)
Today’s scene — or really, I should say scenes — that I love comes from 1960’s The Time Machine.
Watch as Rod Taylor travels from 1900, all the way to the very far future. As you’ll notice, this upload is just of the scenes of Taylor watching the years fly by while sitting in his machine. Taylor does leave the machine twice — once to see Britain in 1917 and a second time to experience 1966 but those scenes aren’t included here. That said, the time travel effects are simple but hold up well and Taylor’s disillusioned feelings about witnessing “a new war,” were ones that were undoubtedly very relatable to audiences in 1960.
Through the Shattered Lens 