Author Archives: Jedadiah Leland

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)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

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)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

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!

Colorado Ranger (1950, directed by Thomas Carr)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

The Shamrock Kid (James Ellison), Lucky (Russell Hayden), and the Colonel (Raymond Hatton) ride into the town of Cattle Junction.  They are on the trail of a group of outlaws who have been causing trouble but everyone in town mistakes them for being outlaws themselves.  Feisty ranch owner Anne Hayden (Julie Adams, beautiful as always) even locks them in a basement to keep them from causing trouble!  Far more serious, though, is Jim Morgan (Stephen Carr), who tries to hire the men to force the ranchers off of their property.

This is a typical homesteader vs ranchers film.  The story behind the making of the film is more interesting than the film itself.  It was one of six films that the director and the cast shot concurrently over the course of a handful of days.  Each day, the cast and crew would set up at a different location and shoot scenes for all six films.  The other interesting thing about this film is that Elllison and Hayden were better known for playing Hopalong Cassidy’s sidekicks than for being leading men.  Like Fuzzy Knight (who appears in this film), Ellison and Hayden were born sidekicks.  They were likeable but not particularly convincing as being tough lawmen.

This film has all of the familiar faces who usually appeared in these films, actor like Fuzzy Knight, George Cheseboro, Tom Tyler, and Bud Osborne.  Fans of the B-western genre will be happy to see them but the overall film is memorable only for Julie Adams.  I wonder if this movie was a hit in Colorado.