TSL’s review of Highway to Heaven will not be posted tonight so that we may bring you this special presentation….
My retro television reviews will return next week but until then, enjoy this blast from the past. 1973’s Rookie of the Year stars 11 year-old Jodie Foster as Sharon Lee, who causes some controversy when she joins her brother’s little league team. I picked out this program specifically for my sister, Erin, who loves baseball the way that I love movies!
It’s strange to think, while watching this, that Jodie Foster was just three years away from creating even more controversy with her Oscar-nominated role in Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver.
“Pulp Fiction” was as peak 1990s as much as these two:
Or this Archie’s Comic live action show
While “X-Files” attracted big audiences 60-40% male and the reverse for “90210”, “Pulp Fiction” captured 1994: Jocks, Nerds, Guys, Women, Girls, Boys, Boomers, X-ers, Older Millennials, you name it – Everyone was into Pulp Fiction. Tarantino described this art as a number of cliches: the mobster attracted to the mob wife, the boxer who tricks the mobsters into giving him money and NOT throwing the fight, and the killer who finds God. The cliches dig into DNA. WHY? Because they have the same motivations as our caveman ancestors: the unobtainable mate, a sense of honor, and redemption. These themes are the basic building blocks of what make us human beings and why these stories echo through the millennia – our ancestors fears are the same as ours today. Some might claim that “Reservoir Dogs’ was better- they are incorrect– Pulp Fiction was WAY more entertaining.
Even though this was released and written in the 1990s, it had an older feel to it. First, everyone smoked indoors. I remember the 1990s, smoking was on the OUTS big time! Second, man did he like to use a certain racial slur. OOF. But then again, I’m not from Los Angeles. Maybe, it’s like Alabama there? I have no idea! I can say that the film did hold up as re-watched it today. It was still relevant and maybe that’s because it was difficult to pin down the time period; in fact, the music was mostly from the 1970s and the story time jumped- A LOT! The Miramax producer who worked on the show also jumps a lot, but mostly in the shower.
The story begins with two mobsters Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield murdering two guys to get a magical briefcase back to their boss Marsellus Wallace, which feeds into the next storyline of Butch an aging fighter who’s about to rip off the mob, which feeds into Mia Wallace – Marsellus Wallace’s wife overdosing on heroin, which feeds into Butch on a quest to retrieve his great-grandfather’s watch, which feeds into a pretty graphic man on man scene of sexual violence and revenge, which feeds into Jules finding God, which feeds into cleaning brains out of a car, and finally ending in a diner being robbed by Tim Roth. Yes, the film requires attention. It’s not “Dazed and Confused”. You gotta pay attention.
I recently watched a show with Lisa Marie that time jumped – oh no, were their Germans around who got too close at a family reunion off camera?!
I still believe this is Quentin’s Opus and you cannot convince me otherwise because it connected to everyone and launched and re-launched A LOT of careers. Pulp Fiction’s legacy was that it empowered a 1990s writers to work in humor with their grittiness like in Halloween H20, which I reviewed here
It’s kind of a strange thing to say, but watching Quentin Tarantino films has become a special family affair at my house. I shared in a previous post that my son and I drove about 4 hours to Dallas to attend the “Roadshow” version of THE HATEFUL EIGHT back in 2015.
Well, back in 2019, our family was on a vacation in Perdido Key, FL when ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD was released. Of course we planned to go see it on one of the days while we were there. None of us wanted to have to wait an extra week to see the movie. So, in between days on the beach, visiting the local golf courses and showing off our putt-putt golf skills, we made our way to a theater over in Pensacola to see Quentin’s latest. We loved it!! I didn’t get a picture at the theater, but afterwards I took the kids to a restaurant to have a dinner of fresh seafood by the ocean. I snapped the picture below after we finished up.
That was a wonderful day, and it centered around the love of a family and an excitement and appreciation for Quentin Tarantino. Happy Birthday, Mr. Tarantino!
It’s Opening Day! The Rangers played their first game of the regular season today, facing off against the Red Sox in Arlington. I watched the game and I was really hoping that we might start the season with a win. It didn’t happen. The Rangers went into the Ninth Inning 2-2 and they ended things trailing by three runs. Congratulations to the Red Sox on their 5-2 victory and especially to Wilyer Abreu on his two home runs. (That second home run brought in three runs in the 9th and won the game for Boston.)
I love baseball but it’s a lot more fun when your team wins! Luckily, it’s only the first game and there’s 161 left to go. There’s not a baseball team in existence that has ever had an undefeated season and that will never change. If a team ever does win 162 games in a row, they should just cancel baseball all together.
I love my team. My heart hurts that they lost but I know it’s going to sing when they get their first win of the 2025 season!
Today, it can be easy to forget what an impact Quentin Tarantino had on pop culture in the 90s. The one-two punch of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction inspired a generation of young and aspiring filmmakers to believe that anyone could make their own film. Suddenly, you didn’t have to be a film school graduate to call yourself a filmmaker. You could just be someone who loved movies and who was willing to keep hustling until you had something you could slip into Sundance. That was the feeling, anyway. The 90s were full of films about eccentric criminals who talked a lot and who loved pop culture, only three of which were directed by Quentin Tarantino. Some of them were good. Most of them were not.
Destiny Turns On The Radio was one of the first films to rip-off Pulp Fiction and it felt more cynical than most because it was directed by Jack Baran, who wasn’t even a video store clerk. He was a producer of films like The Big Easy and Barfly, an industry veteran ripping off two films directed by someone who was, at that time, still an outsider. The film tells a story that had plenty of Tarantino elements, including Quentin Tarantino himself. Tarantino signed to play Johnny Destiny right after Pulp Fiction won the Palme d’Or at Cannes.
Johnny Destiny is a gambler who is apparently also a God. He emerges from a lightning-filled pool and his dialogue is full of pseudo-philosophy. He is driving through the desert when he picks up Julian (Dylan McDermott) and gives Julian a lift to Las Vegas. Johnny Destiny is taking prison escapee Julian on a ride so that Julian can face his destiny. Julian wants to recover some money from a bank job that he pulled off with Thoreau (James Le Gros) but it turns out that, when Johnny Destiny emerged from that pool, he also stole all the money. (There’s no specific reason for Thoreau to be named after the famous philosopher, beyond the film trying to make itself seem deep by drawing in everyone who read Walden in AP English.) Julian wants to get back together with Lucille (Nancy Travis), a singer who performs songs more appropriate for a 20s speakeasy than a Las Vegas lounge. Lucille is involved with a gangster (Jim Belushi). Belushi sings Vivia Las Vegas but otherwise, this is one of his more boring performances.
Like so many of the Pulp Fiction rip-offs of the 90s, Destiny Turns On The Radio is all self-conscious attitude and cool style, full of references to pop culture that fall flat because there’s no real thought behind them. Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction were full of style but they also told compelling stories. Destiny Turns On The Radio is all style and little else and the cast never comes together the way that the actors in Tarantino’s first two movies did. Watching this film, I realized why Dylan McDermott and Nancy Travis both found more success on television than in feature films. The film posits Tarantino (as Johnny Destiny) as the epitome of cool but it then burdens him with the type of dialogue that he would have cut by the time he started a second draft.
Coming hot on the heels of the success of Pulp Fiction, Destiny Turns On The Radio actually led to a few years where many critics assumed Tarantino would be a two-trick wonder. It was thought lightning struck twice but it would never strike a third time and Tarantino would spend the rest of his career as almost a parody of his earlier success. Luckily, Tarantino proved them wrong and Destiny Turned On The Radio turned out to be not his career’s destination but instead just a detour.
Malibu, CA will not be reviewed tonight so that we might bring you this special presentation….
My retro television reviews will return next week but, for now, why not enjoy something even better than me discussing my hatred of Malibu, CA? 1982’s Wait Until Dark is a videotaped record of a stage production of Frederick Knott’s classic play about a blind woman who is menaced by three criminals. (I assume it was filmed for PBS. According to Lettrboxd, this aired on television on June 20th, 1982.) This play was famously adapted into an Audrey Hepburn film in 1967. The production below gives us a chance to see how the suspense plays out in a theatrical setting. The cast, including Katharine Ross and Stacy Keach, is excellent!
It took me a while to really appreciated Jackie Brown.
I was nineteen and in college when I first watched the movie. A friend rented it and we watched it with the expectation that it would be another Tarantino film that would be full of violence, fast music, and stylish characterizations. And, of course, Jackie Brown did have all three of those. But it was also a far more melancholy film than what we were expecting and compared to something like Kill Bill, Jackie Brown definitely moved at its own deliberate pace. That’s a polite way of saying that, at times, the film seemed slow. It seemed like it took forever for the story to get going and, even once it became clear that Jackie Brown (Pam Grier) and Max Cherry (Robert Forster) were going to steal from Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson), it still felt like an oddly laid back heist. Robert de Niro, the film’s biggest star, played a guy who seemed to be brain dead. Bridget Fonda brought an interesting chaotic energy to the film but her character was disposed of in an almost off-hand manner. The whole thing just felt off. I appreciated the performances. I appreciated the music on the soundtrack. But I felt like it was one of Tarantino’s weaker films.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to better appreciate Jackie Brown. First released in 1997 and adapted from a novel by Elmore Leonard, Jackie Brown finds Quentin Tarantino at his most contemplative. Indeed, Tarantino wouldn’t direct anything quite as humanistic until he did Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. If the heist seemed rather laid back, that’s because Jackie Brown really isn’t a heist film. It’s a film about aging, starring two icons of 70s exploitation. Robert Forster was 56 when he played bail bondman Max Cherry while Pam Grier was 48 when she was cast as Jackie Brown, the flight attendant turned smuggler. Jackie and Max two middle-aged people faced with a world that doesn’t really make much sense to them anymore. (Obviously, it’s easier for me to understand them now than it was when I was nineteen and I felt like the future was unlimited.) Max bails people out of jail and it’s obvious that he still has a shred of idealism within him. He actually does care about the people he gets out of jail and he’s disgusted by Ordell’s callous attitude towards the people who work for him. Jackie is a flight attendant who, when we first see her, looks like she could have just stepped out of a 1970s airline commercial. Ripping off Ordell isn’t just something that she’s doing for revenge or to protect herself, though there’s certainly an element of both those motivations in her actions. This is also her chance to finally have something for her. Jackie and Max are two lost souls who find each other and wonder where the time is gone. All of those critics who have wondered, over the years, when Quentin Tarantino would make a mature movie about real people with real problems need to rewatch Jackie Brown.
Of course, it’s still a Quentin Tarantino film. And that means we get a lot of scenes of Samuel L. Jackson talking. This is one of Jackson’s best performances. Ordell is definitely a bad guy and most viewers will be eager to see him get his comeuppance but, as played by Jackson, he’s also frequently very funny and definitely charismatic. One can understand how Ordell lures people into his trap. Jackson loves to watch video tapes of women shooting guns. He allows De Niro’s Louis to crash at his place and the scene where Ordell realizes that Louis is thoroughly incompetent is brilliantly acted by both men. And then you have Bridget Fonda, as a force of pure sunny chaos. Jackson, De Niro, and Fonda are definitely a watchable trio, even if the film rightly belongs to Pam Grier and Robert Forster.
The older I get, the more I appreciate Jackie Brown. This is the film where Tarantino revealed that there was more to his artistic vision than just movie references and comic book jokes. This film takes Tarantino’s style and puts it in the real world. It’s Tarantino at his most human.
Clocking in at 37 minutes (largely because the majority of the film’s script was either not filmed or the footage itself was lost), My Best Friend’s Birthday tells the story of …. well, it’s not easy to say exactly what it tells the story of.
Clarence (Quentin Tarantino) and Mickey (Craig Hamann) are two pop culture-obsessed radio DJs. Clarence tries to snort cocaine while on the air but it turns out to just be itching powder. The two of them spend a good deal of time talking about the movies that they love. There’s a scene where Clarence has a conversation with an older man (played by Allen Garfield, who was Tarantino’s acting teacher at the time) who appears to be some sort of exploitation filmmaker. It’s not always easy to keep track of what Clarence and Mickey are doing, largely because the film’s soundtrack is noticeably muddy. Mickey is dumped by his girlfriend, Pandora (Linda Kaye), right before his birthday. (Mickey comes home to find Pandora gathering up all of her belongings.) Clarence, looking to give his friend a birthday that will cheer him up, ends up hiring a sex worker named Misty Knight (Crystal Shaw), who got into the business after being inspired by Nancy Allen’s performance in Dressed To Kill. Misty has a pimp named Clifford (Al Harrell). Mickey keeps getting interrupted whenever he tries to take a shower. The movie is full of scenes that are linked by everyone’s shared love of pop culture but it never really comes together as a truly coherent story. Again, this could be because the film was meant to 70-80 minutes long but only 37 minutes appears to have been filmed.
It’s not a totally hopeless film. Taken individually, the scenes are are generally blocked out well. Director Quentin Tarantino, who was still working as a video store clerk when he and his friends attempted to make this movie, obviously had a good instinct for camera angels and editing even before he hit it big. That said, the film is still undeniably amateurish. The sound quality is terrible. The actors, most of whom were not professionals, struggle with their dialogue. Tarantino gave himself a big role and, to put it charitably, Tarantino has always been a better director than actor. Not surprisingly, Allen Garfield does well in his fast-talking role and Tarantino himself is better in the Gardfield scenes that he is in the rest of the film. Crystal Shaw is likable as Misty Knight, bringing some much needed energy to her scenes.
This is a film that one watches solely because of who directed it. If the film has actually been completed, it would have been Tarantino’s first movie. By most accounts, the film was shot over four years and, eventually, everyone got bored with it and moved on. It’s perhaps for the best as My Best Friend’s Birthday, with its grainy black-and-white imagery and it sometimes forced humor, feels more like a Kevin Smith film than a Tarantino film. (Or at least, that’s the feeling one gets from the surviving footage. Clarence and Misty’s relationship is a lot like the relationship between Clarence and Alabama in True Romance so who knows where My Best Friend’s Birthday would have ended up going.) That said, if you’re a fan of Tarantino, this film makes for an interesting watch. It’s a chance to see Tarantino when he was young and still finding his voice. It’s a project that doesn’t work but there’s enough hints of Tarantino’s talent to make it must-viewing for fans of his work.
Today’s song of the day was not specifically written for the Kill Bill soundtrack but that’s still the film that I’ll always associate it with. Here to help us celebrate Quentin Tarantino’s birthday, it’s Tomoyasu Hotei and Battle Without Honor or Humanity.
With today being Quentin Tarantino’s birthday, I almost feel like I have no choice but to pick this scene from the explosive finale of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood as my scene that I love for the day.
When this film, there was a lot of controversy by Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) using a flame thrower to set a hippie on fire in his swimming pool. Never mind that the hippie in question (played by future Oscar-winner Mikey Madison) was specifically in Rick’s bungalow to try to kill him. On twitter, there were cries about how this scene proved that Tarantino misogynist. On TV Tropes, someone actually wrote, “You have to feel a little sorry for the hippie at the end….”
No, actually, you don’t have to feel sorry for her in the least. In this scene, Madison is playing Susan Atkins, a.k.a. Sadie Mae Glutz. In real life, Susan Atkins was the most enthusiastic of Charles Manson’s band of hippie killers. She was the one who personally stabbed Sharon Tate to death while Sharon, 8 and a half months pregnant at the time, begged for the life of her baby. I won’t quote what Atkins said to Sharon while killing her but you can find it in any of the books written about the case. How do we know what Atkins said? Because she bragged about it in prison. She didn’t show a shred of remorse until after she realized she was going to spend the rest of her life in prison, which is when she suddenly decided she was born again and started claiming she was brainwashed. In real life, Sharon Tate, only 26 years old, died in 1969. Susan Atkins lived to be 61, saved just because the Supreme Court temporarily suspended the death penalty in the 70s.
So, as far as I’m concerned, turn those flames up, Rick. In Tarantino’s world, Sharon lived and had her baby. If the choice is between Tarantino’s alternate reality or the world in which Atkins spent 40 years having her food and housing paid for by the same California taxpayers that she wanted to kill, I know which one I’m going with.
Through the Shattered Lens 