Today’s music video of the day is for a song that epitomizes the 80s for a lot of people. I don’t know how many John Hughes’s film featured Hold Me Now but it seems like everyone one of them should have. This was not only the group’s first big hit but the video was a popular one in the early years of MTV. This was one of those videos that proved that even a performance clip could be more than just a video of the band on stage.
Enjoy!
This song is the epitome of Oasis. They set out to be rock ‘n’ roll stars and they succeeded.
The video was filmed at the band’s Live By The Sea gig at Southend-on-Sea. The clips of the band offstage were filmed at Southend Pier. The bowling alley that the band visits later burned down. It’s a fairly simple video from veteran director Nigel Dick. Anyone who has ever been a rock ‘n’ roll star has been directed at least once by Nigel Dick.
Enjoy!
As Butt-Head once put it, while watching this very video, “His teeth are whiter than white.”
As far as commercial success goes, Winger had a brief but good run in the late 80s. Then grunge came along and the musical landscape changed for the better. Winger later found fame as the favorite band of Stewart Stevenson on Beavis and Butt-Head. It was rumored that Winger became Stewart’s favorite band after Kip Winger complained about his videos being criticized by Beavis and Butt-Head. It’s always better to laugh at yourself than to complain because being associated with Stewart is what really robbed Winger of whatever credibility they had. Of course, it didn’t help that Lars Ulrich was seen throwing darts at Kip Winger’s face in the video for Nothing Else Matters.
This video is typical Winger stuff. Kip sings that he’s headed for a heartbreak and you don’t believe him for a minute.
Enjoy!
I have to give credit for Guns N’ Roses. No matter what else may be said about the band, they were responsible for two of the best covers of the 90s, Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door and Live and Let Die. Both of these covers treat the original version with respect while also sounding very much like the type of music that Guns N’ Roses was known for.
The video for Live and Let Die features footage of the band in concert, mixed in with pictures of them in their younger days. This was also the last Guns ‘N Roses video to feature Izzy Stradlin as being a part of the band. This video was put together by Josh Richman, an actor who was also a friend of the band.
Enjoy!
When Kirkland (George Kennedy) appoints veteran cop Jake Quinn (Ed Asner) to command a division of the Massachusetts Metropolitan Police, one of Quinn’s main duties is to root out corruption. Everyone knows that Captain Jerry Clemente (Ray Sharkey) is crooked but no one’s been able to prove anything. This has led to Clemente getting so cocky that he tries to pull off the biggest bank robbery of all time. Working with two other corrupt cops (played by Steve Railsback and James Keach) and some ex-cons who owe him a favor, Clemente masterminds the theft of $25,000,000 worth of jewelry.
Unfortunately, stealing that much brings in not only the FBI but it also makes Quinn even more determined to expose Clemente and all of his crooked associates. As well, the Mafia wants their part of the action and the members of Celemente’s gang aren’t as smart as their leader. Soon the walls are closing in. Will Clemente get away with his crime or will he end up getting arrested and eventually writing a book about the theft that will eventually be turned into a television movie?
Though the title seems more appropriate for a comedy, The Cops Are Robbers is a drama based on a true story. It actually could have used some comedy because the movie itself is pretty dry and straight forward. Ed Asner and George Kennedy give their usual competent performances, cast as the type of characters that they could have played in their sleep. Unfortunately, Ray Sharkey is nowhere near as effective as the man they’re trying to put behind bars. When he first started out, Sharkey made a name for himself by giving convincing performances as characters who were tough and streetwise but also sometimes neurotic. He received Emmy and Golden Globe nominations before he became better known for his trips to rehab than his acting ability. I think that. as an actor, Sharkey’s downfall was that he saw himself compared to Al Pacino so many times that he started to buy it and he eventyally started to attack every role with the same method-style intensity. Sometimes, like when he played Sonny Steelgrave during the first season of Wiseguy, it worked. Most of the time, though, it just led to him overacting and bellowing all of his lines. That’s the case with The Cops Are Robbers. Sharkey is so loud and perpetually angry that it’s hard to believe that he’s managed to get away with his crimes for as long as he has.
For those of us who don’t live in Massachusetts, the most interesting thing about watching The Cops Are Robbers is trying to keep track of who works for what agency. When it was mentioned that Clemente works for the Metropolitan Police, I immediately assumed that meant he was a Boston police officer. Only later did I learn, via a review on the imdb, that the Metropolitan Police were actually a state agency. That Clemente was a state official and not just a city cop does make his crimes slightly more interesting, though not enough to really liven up The Cops Are Robbers.
Today’s music video of the day is one of the three videos that were shot for Iron Maiden’s Man On the Edge. This was one of the first Iron Maiden songs on which Blaze Bayley sang and it was also one of the first that he wrote for the band. The lyrics were inspired by the film Falling Down. That’s the film in which Michael Douglas plays an engineer who snaps. Bayley felt that the film worked as a parable for the frustration that comes from losing a job and the lyrics reflect that.
This video was filmed on location at Masada, Israel. It was directed Simon Hilton, who also directed videos for Robert Plant, The Chemical Brothers, Coldplay, Depeche Mode, Alice Cooper, David Bowie, and a host of others. Hilton was one of those directors who everyone seems to have worked with at least once.
Enjoy!
Last night, after I wrote up my review of the last In The Line of Duty movie, I checked and discovered that the first In The Line of Duty movie is now available on YouTube.
In The Line of Duty: The FBI Murders is the one that started it all. This was the first installment and it set the general format of all the In The Line of Duty films to follow. It was based on a true story. The movie was evenly split between the criminals and the members of the law enforcement trying to catch them. Here, the criminals were two bank robbers played by David Soul and, in an effective turn against type, Michael Gross. (When this film was released, Gross was best known as the wimpy father on Family Ties. Today, he’s better known as the survivalist from the Tremors films. He went on to play cops in two subsequent In The Line of Duty films.) The FBI agents pursuing them were played by Ronny Cox, Bruce Greenwood, and several other recognizable TV actors.
The FBI Murders was not only the first In The Line of Duty film but it was also the best. All of the subsequent installments, both good and bad, pale in comparison. Though the story is familiar and the foreshadowing is sometimes obvious (“Try not to get shot,” one FBI agent’s wife tells him), The FBI Murders still holds up today because of the strong cast and Dick Lowry’s direction of the final shootout between the cops and the criminals. No matter how many times David Soul gets shot, he keeps getting up and firing more rounds. Making this part of the film all the more effective is that it’s based on fact. During the actual incident, the real-life criminals played by Soul and Gross continued firing and killing even though they had been shot a tremendous number of times. Remarkably, it was discovered that neither had been on any type of pain-killing drug at the time. Instead, they were determined to just keep shooting until the end. Though the two men were outnumbered by the FBI, the agents were not prepared to go up against the military-grade weapons that the men were carrying with them.
The actors who play the FBI agents are all effective, especially Ronny Cox as the veteran who has seen it all. As with the other In The Line of Duty films, a lot of time is spend showing the comradery between the agents and how, even when they’re not at work, they’re all still together. In other In The Line of Duty films, the comradery could sometimes feel forced but, in The FBI Murders, it feels natural and scenes like Bruce Greenwood’s character finally getting a nickname and one of the older agents deciding to go on a stakeout just for old times sake carry a lot more emotional weight than you might expect. It makes the final shootout all the more powerful.
Eleven more In The Line of Duty films would follow but none of them would top The FBI Murders.
“You’re getting paid to wash dishes … not listen to that … rock and roll music!”
This video could properly be called Washing Dishes With Poison. When you wash dishes with KISS, the dishes don’t get done and your boss yells at you. When you wash dishes with Poison, the dishes not only get one but the boss doesn’t even know what to say when he sees how quickly you did them. What’s going on in this video? Did Poison wash the dishes for him? Is that Poison’s idea of a good time?
This video was directed by Marc Reshovsky, who is also credited as being the director of photography on videos by Seal, kd lang, Billy Joel, and Ice Cube. Those are all talented artist but none of them will wash your dishes.
Enjoy!
In 1997, NBC’s series of In The Line of Duty movie went out in a blaze of glory with Lori Loughlin and Bruce Campbell!
Lori and Bruce play Jill and Jeff Erickson, an attractive couple who finance their perfect life by robbing banks. Jeff wears an obvious fake beard and, because he’s played by Bruce Campbell, it is easy to initially treat his crime spree as being a big joke. Jeff and Jill use their money to buy a big house and to open up their own used bookstore. Their robberies start to get bigger and more elaborate and Jill goes from being a passive observer to an active participant. Jill gets such a rush from the robberies that she can’t stop. While the press treats the two of them like a modern day Bonnie and Clyde, FBI agent Tom LaSalle (Bradley Whitford) tries to bring them to justice before someone gets killed.
Blaze of Glory is based on a true story. The crime spree of Jill and Jeff Erickson also inspired another film, John McNaughton’s Normal Life, which starred Luke Perry as Jeff and Ashley Judd as Jill. Normal Life is told almost entirely from the point of view of the bank robbers while Blaze of Glory, like all of the In The Line of Duty movies, is firmly on the side of law enforcement. Both films tell the same story and stay fairly close to the facts of the case but it’s interesting to see how behavior that was presented as being romantic and tragic in Normal Life is portrayed as being dangerous and arrogant in Blaze of Glory.
Bruce Campbell and Lori Loughlin are the two main reasons to watch Blaze of Glory. Campbell plays Jeff Erickson as being a slightly smarter version of Ash. Jeff may enjoy running his used bookstore and talking to people about literature but he simply cannot stay out of trouble. He has the confidence necessary to rob a bank but he’s also so reckless that he doesn’t think much about what he’s going to do after he puts on his fake beard and fires his gun at the ceiling. Lori Loughlin, having finally escaped from Full House, gives an uninhibited and sexy performance as Jill, who is never happier than when she’s helping her husband to rob a bank. Eventually, she turns out to be just as reckless as her husband and even more willing to fight her way out of a police chase. Campbell and Louglin are so good that it’s too bad that half of the movie is Bradley Whitford as the lead FBI agent and Brad Sullivan as his father.
After sitting out Kidnapped, Dick Lowry returns to the director’s chair for the final In The Line of Duty and it’s one of the best of the series. The action scenes are exciting and Campbell and Loughlin burn up the screen. Blaze of Glory was the finale of In The Line of Duty but what a way to go!
In this video, Megadeth performs behind a wire fence while their fans attempt to get to the band. It doesn’t have much to do about the song, which is about a man sneaking back into his house after cheating on his girlfriend. But it probably is a fair representation of what it was like to be in a popular thrash metal band in the 80s.
Directing this video was Penelope Spheeris, who has previously celebrated metal in the documentary, The Decline of Wester Civilization Part II. Spheeris would later direct the film for which she is best remembered, Wayne’s World.
Enjoy!
Through the Shattered Lens 