Author Archives: Jedadiah Leland

The Black Hole (1979, directed by Gary Nelson)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

It’s the Future!  The USS Palamino is on a mission to explore deep space.  On the Palamino are Captain Dan Holland (Robert Forster), Dr. Alex Durant (Anthony Perkins), Lt. Charlie Pizer (Joseph Bottoms), Dr. Ellen McRae (Yvette Mimieux),  a trash can-looking robot named Vincent (voiced by Roddy McDowall), and a hard-drinking, out-of-place journalist named Harry Booth (Ernest Borgnine).

The Palamino has nearly completed its mission when it comes across a black hole.  They also come across the USS Cygnus, a ship that disappeared 20 years ago.  Boarding the Cygnus, they discover that it is ruled over by Dr. Hans Reinhardt (Maximilian Schell) and that the crew appeared to be made up of robots.  Dr. Reinhardt plans to direct his ship to fly through the Black Hole.  Dr. Durant is inspired by Reinahrdt’s determination to discover what lies on the other side.  The rest of the crew is suspicious of Reinhardt, especially after they meet Maximillian, the hulking red robot that serves as his bodyguard.

One of the studio’s first attempts to make a film for grown-ups, The Black Hole was also the first Disney film to receive a PG rating.  The Black Hole has a lot going for it.  The cast is stacked with talent.  (I haven’t even mentioned Slim Pickens as the voice of a beat-up robot.)  The plot is interesting and I think anyone watching will be able to relate to Reinhardt and Durant’s desire to explore what lies inside of the Black Hole.  Even when seen today, the special effects hold up fairly well.  Maximillian is actually frightening at times.   There are some violent moments that definitely earn that PG rating.

It’s just too bad that the movie is so damn boring.

The Black Hole is a movie that calls out for a director like Nicholas Meyer or even Douglas Trumbull.  Instead, the movie was directed by Gary Nelson, a television director who lets the story plod along at a slow pace. The movie goes through the motions but it never really captures the wonder or the excitement of being in space.  The journey through the Black Hole is visually impressive but it takes forever to get there and then it’s over too quickly.  Disney spent so much time on the special effects that they forgot to come up with a script worthy of them.

The Black Hole is a film that should have been much better than it was.  As long as Disney is remaking all of their old films, I say it’s time to remake The Black Hole.  Get the right director and make it the film that it should have been.

Pierce Brosnan Is Brendan Ingle In The Trailer For Giant

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Back in the day, my favorite boxer was Britain’s own Naseem Hamed, a flamboyant showman who always turned his entrance into a production but who could also back up his ego in the ring.  A lot of my friends couldn’t stand Prince Naseem, as he was known, and they used to watch HBO Boxing specifically hoping to see him lose.  In retrospect, he was one of the last of the genuinely entertaining boxers.

Giant, which has already been released to generally positive reviews in the UK, stars Amir El-Masry as Hamed and Pierce Brosnan in the role of Hamed’s trainer, the legendary Brendan Ingle.  Judging from the just-released trailer, Brosnan, who always been the most underrated of all the actors who played James Bond, is almost unidentifiable in the role of Ingle.

Giant will be released in the U.S. later this year.

Jeeves, RIP

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

When I first heard that Ask.com had shut down on May 1st, my initial reaction was to be surprised that it was still around.  I always figured that it had shut down in 2006, around the same time that it retired Jeeves as its mascot.  After I got over my surprise, I felt surprisingly sad.  Another part the early Internet is gone.

Kids today might not believe it but there was a time when people used several different search engines instead of just typing all of their queries into Google.  Yahoo was the big one but people also used Lycos, Altavista, DuckDuckGo, Infoseek, AllTheWeb, and several others.  And, if you wanted a personalized experience, you asked Jeeves.  Jeeves would not only answer your questions and give you links but he would do so in the voice of a dryly humorous British manservant.  Before AI, there was Jeeves.  And Jeeves made a lot less mistakes!

Jeeves is gone now and so is a large part of the Internet’s early history.  Today, we take Google for granted and no one calls this place the “information super highway” anymore.  Jeeves might not seem like a big deal to those who never met him but, for many of us, he represents a time when the Internet was new and exciting, when it was a collection of niche sites as opposed to a soul-sucking Behemoth.  Sadly, future generations will never know the joy of Jeeves directing them to the most comprehensive Simpsons fan site on Geocities.  I feel bad for them.

RIP, Jeeves.  Thanks for the memories.

 

 

Incident At Crestridge (1981, directed by Jud Taylor)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Robert (Sandy McPeak) and Sara Davis (Eileen Brennan) arrive in the town of Crestridge, Wyoming, just in time to not only witness a group of mobsters attacking the local massage parlor but also to see the local sheriff (Walt Field) refuse to do anything about it.  While Robert works at the local hospital, Sara runs for sheriff and is elected despite only having recently arrived in town.  The mayor (Pernell Roberts) is convinced Sara will be easy to manipulate but Sara is determined to expose not only his corruption but also the gangsters who secretly control the town.  What Sara doesn’t realize is that the Mayor only allowed Sara to win the election because he felt that the old sheriff was getting too sloppy in his malfeasance.  The same corrupt system that allowed Sara to become sheriff is also designed to take the position away.

Despite being made-for-TV, this isn’t a bad movie.  Eileen Brennan is believably tough as the sheriff but she never becomes a one-dimensional crusader.  Pernell Roberts is even more believable as a venal politician who has been in power for so long that he thinks he can get away with anything.  The movie’s plot has a few surprises and the ending is downbeat but believable.  I did have a hard time believing that someone could be elected sheriff within weeks of first arriving in a town but it made sense once I started to think of Incident at Crestridge as being a modern-day western.  Just as how Johnny Mack Brown, Charles Starrett, and Allan Lane used to ride into towns that needed someone honest to protect the citizens, Eileen Brennan drives into Crestridge.

No offense to the legacy of Suzanne Somers but this film is much better than She’s The Sherriff. 

Flat Top (1952, directed by Lesley Selander)

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During the Korean War, Navy Commander Dan Collier (Sterling Hayden) reminisces about World War II.  In 1944, he was newly assigned to the USS Princeton and dealing with a collection of hotshot pilots who had no idea about the realities of war.  His executive officer, Joe Rogers (Richard Carlson), was everyone’s friend.  Collier, however, had to be their commander.  At first, everyone in that ship resented Collier and his emphasis on discipline.  But eventually, the men came to learn that war wasn’t a game.

There’s little about the plot of Flat Top that will take anyone by surprise.  Of course, the stern and by-the-book Dan Collier is proven to be correct when it comes to the proper way to fight a war.  This film was made during the Korean War so there was no way it was going to suggest that the Navy could be incorrect about anything.  The film was produced by tiny Monogram Pictures, who actually found enough money to film in Cinecolor.  Monogram also got permission to shoot on an actual carrier, which brought some authenticity to the proceedings.  The film makes heavy use of stock footage.  A lot of the footage will be familiar from the countless number of World War II documentaries that have been put together over the years but it’s still seamlessly combined with the footage of the actors sitting in the cockpits of their planes.  It’s probably not a coincidence that the movie features the characters fighting in support of Douglas MacArthur’s return to the Philippines.  When this film went into production, Truman had just ended his hopes for reelection by removing MacArthur from command in Korea.

The cast is uniformly good and it’s full of familiar faces.  William Schallert, Todd Karnes, James Best, and Phyllis Coates all appear in supporting roles.  Sterling Hayden is believably gruff and no-nonsense as Dan Collier.  Thanks to them and the actual combat footage, Flat Top is watchable albeit predictable.

In A Class Of His Own (1999, directed by Robert Munic)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

At an Oregon high school, Rich Donato (Lou Diamond Phillips) is the most popular adult on campus.  He defies the school’s no music rule by dancing in the cafeteria.  He keeps discipline in the hallways and he counsels the school’s most troubled students.  He’s the adult that all the students come to for advice.  He’s the adult who everyone looks to as being a life coach.  However, Rich is not a teacher or a guidance counselor.  Instead, he’s just a custodian and handyman.  Rich is smart but he never graduated high school.  He doesn’t even have a G.E.D.

That becomes a problem when the school board announces that all employees of the district are now required to have, at the very least, a GED.  If Rich can’t take and pass the GED test in 30 days, Rich will lose his job.  Rich fails the test the first time he takes it but wife and the students at the school come together to try to help him pass.  Along the way, the special education teacher (Joan Chen) diagnoses Rich as having both ADD and dyslexia, helping to explain why Rich always had trouble in school.  Even though their parents say that Rich is just a janitor and not worth the trouble, the school’s students never stop believing in him.

Made for television, In A Class Of His Own is based on a true story.  It takes a typical “inspiring” approach to the material, which means there’s nothing surprising about this movie.  Everyone likes Rich, even the principal (Tom McBeath) who wishes that Rich would stop dancing in the cafeteria.  Luckily, Lou Diamond Phillips is likable as Rich and his performance suggests that he truly cared about the film’s message.  And it’s a good message!  If you have a dream, don’t give up.  And don’t be afraid to ask for help.

 

Q&A (1990, directed by Sidney Lumet)

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Al Reilly (Timothy Hutton) is the son of a New York cop and a former cop himself.  Having put himself through law school, Reilly is now an assistant district attorney.  When Reilly is assigned the case of Mike Brennan (Nick Nolte), a popular detective who claims to have killed a Puerto Rican drug dealer in self-defense, everyone assumes that Al will come down on the side of Brennan.  Instead, Al discovers that Brennan is corrupt and that the shooting is connected to a drug lord named Bobby Texador (Armand Assante).  Bobby just happens to be married to Nancy (Jenny Lumet), who is Al’s ex-girlfriend.

Nobody was better at capturing the hustle and the gritty language of New York City politics than Sidney Lumet and some of the best scenes in Q&A are the ones where characters like Al, Brennan, and even Bobby are just hanging out and being the New Yorkers that they are.  The dialogue in those scenes crackle with cynicism, as everyone knows better than to trust anything that anyone says.  Coming after Serpico and The Prince of the City, this was Lumet’s third film to focus on corruption in the NYPD.  It was a world that Lumet obviously knew well and he brings the eye for detail that a story like this needs to hold our attention.

Unfortunately, the plot of Q&A is often too dependent on melodrama and coincidence.  Asking us to believe that Bobby would just happen to be married to Al’s ex is asking a lot.  As opposed to the documentary feel of Serpico and especially The Prince of the City, Q&A feels like an extended episode of a cop show, with little of the moral ambiguity that Lumet brought to his best films.  Q&A is good but its never as good as it could have been.

As an actress Jenny Lumet doesn’t really have the depth necessary to make Nancy a believable character.  (Francis Ford Coppola wasn’t the only director to miscast his daughter in 1990.)  But the rest of the cast is uniformly excellent, with Luis Guzman, Fyvush Finkel, Lee Richardson, Paul Calderon, Charles S. Dutton, and Patrick O’Neal all turning in good supporting performances.  Of the leads, Hutton is often overshadowed by the more flamboyant performances of Nolte and Assante but, overall, he does a good job of anchoring the film’s story.  Nolte is excellent in the role of Mike Brennan.  It’s just too bad that the film eventually turns him into a standard movie villain.

Sidney Lumet would return to theme of New York political corruption with the underrated Night Falls On Manhattan.

Music Video of the Day: Been Caught Stealing by Jane’s Addiction (1990, directed by Casey Niccoli)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Today’s music video of the day is for a song that is perfect for May Day.

This video features people stealing from a grocery store in Venice, California.  The barking was provided by Annie, who was Perry Farrell’s dog.  The song was not originally envisioned as featuring Annie but, after Farrell brought her to studio with him, she insisted on getting involved.  It’s now impossible to imagine the song without her.

Director Casey Niccoli was Farrell’s then-girlfriend and has often been described as his muse during the early days of Jane’s Addiction.

Enjoy!