To go along with Brad’s book review and my tribute to Ron Howard, I really wanted to share a scene of Clint Howard as Mr. Eaglebauer in the 1979 film, Rock ‘n’ Roll High School. Unfortunately, I really couldn’t find any Eaglebauer scenes on YouTube but I did find this upload of the Ramones performing at the end of the film.
If you look closely, you’ll see Clint Howard dancing to the song. His face isn’t visible but you’ll spot the hair easily.
I love this movie!
4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More 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!
Since Brad just reviewed Ron and Clint Howard’s new memoir, it seems like it’s time for….
4 Shots from 4 Ron Howard Films
Apollo 13 (1995, dir by Ron Howard, DP: Dean Cundey)
A Beautiful Mind (2001, dir by Ron Howard, DP: Roger Deakins)
Rush (2013, dir by Ron Howard, DP: Anthony Dod Mantle)
Solo (2018, dir by Ron Howard, DP: Bradford Young)
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Wednesdays, I will be reviewing the original Love Boat, which aired on ABC from 1977 to 1986! The series can be streamed on Paramount Plus!
Come aboard! We’re expecting you….
Episode 6.15 “The Captain’s Replacement/Sly As A Fox/Here Comes The Bride …. Maybe”
(Dir by Bob Sweeney, originally aired on January 15th, 1983)
First off, before I do anything else, I want to thank Case for covering the last three episodes of The Love Boat for me. The previous month was not an easy one for me or my family and having Case, Brad, and Jeff helping me out with my television reviews really helped out. Thanks, guys. You all did a wonderful job!
As far as this episode goes, I know there’s one question that is on everyone’s mind:
Julie appeared to be moderately coked-up in this episode, though not as much as usual. I’d say on the How Coked Up Was Julie Scale, this episode was right in the middle. Five out of ten.
Julie actually had a bit to do during this episode. Captain Donahue (McLean Stevenson) was on the ship, technically so that he could watch and learn from Captain Stubing. Gopher, however, suspected that Donahue was planning on replacing Stubing as the captain of the Pacific Princess. Gopher, Julie, Doc, Isaac, and Vicki all decided to pretend to be crazy in order to convince Donahue to stay away from the Pacific Princess. Julie, for instance, started to obsessively practice her “welcome aboard” greeting. I’m not sure what was so crazy about that. As far as I can tell, Julie’s entire job consists of greeting people when they board the ship. It seems like it would be a good idea to get some practice in. Still, Donahue is freaked out enough that he backs off from trying to steal Stubing’s position. Captain Stubing is relieved and so is the rest of the crew. Maybe they came across an episode of Hello, Larry and realized what was in store for them if McLean Stevenson became the new captain.
Julie also served as an advisor to Mary Frances Bellflower (Shelley Fabares), who boarded the ship with two suitors. Ben Phillips (Frank Bonner) and Henry Greg (Arte Johnson) spent the cruise bickering over who would make the best husband for Mary Frances. Mary Frances assumed that the two men only cared about her because she was rich and she owned a valuable foxhound. However, by the end of the cruise, Mary Frances realized that both of the men sincerely loved her. She promised Julie that she would return to the ship in the future with the man she had chosen. Julia, her nose red, suggested that Mary Frances give bigamy a try. Everyone had a good laugh.
Finally, Doc arranged for his old friend, Erica Dupont (Jenilee Harrison), to get a job serving drinks on the cruise. Erica, the daughter of an autoworker, needed the job so that she could help pay for her wedding to Robert Wallingford (Stephen Shortridge). Erica confessed that Robert and his parents both thought she was rich because her last name was Dupont. Erica immediately got to work serving drinks but — oh no! — Robert’s snooty parents (William Windom and Jane Wyatt) just happened to be on the cruise! Erica tried to avoid them but eventually, they saw Erica sharing a friendly dance with Doc and they got the wrong idea. They called Robert, who flew down to Mexico to meet the boat. Erica finally confessed that, while her last name was Dupont, that did not make her a Du Pont. The Wallingfords were disappointed to learn that Erica was not related to future murderer John du Pont. Still, Robert forgave Erica and I guess they got married after the cruise. Who knows? I would think that starting an engagement with a lie would be a problem for most people but whatever.
This cruise was mildly enjoyable. Jenilee Harrison and Bernie Kopell had a likable chemistry and it was hard not to feel that Erica should have just dumped Robert and declared her love for Doc. As for everyone acting crazy to fool McLean Stevenson, you could tell that the regulars were having fun. The storyline about Mary Frances and her two suitors was fairly weak but the other two stories made up for it.
I’m glad that I came aboard.
For the most part, I didn’t care much for Borderline but I did appreciate the way the film used today’s song of the day.
(Needless to say, this song was always used to brilliant effect in Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas.)
Every year, Hollywood publishes The Black List.
The Black List is a survey of the unproduced screenplays that are considered the “most-liked” by various studio executive and producers. It comes out the second Friday of December and it’s always the top news story for at least half the weekend. After the weekend, everyone promptly forgets about it.
Now, I will admit that some good movies have been made from Black List scripts. The King’s Speech, Hell or High Water, Argo, Promising Young Woman: they all appeared on the Black List. But, to be honest, I’m far more interested in the amount of forgettable and downright bad movies that appeared on The Black List, some of them often listed near the top of list. Anonymous, The Bucket List, Cedar Rapids, The Beaver, Broken City, The Ides of March: they all appeared on the Black List too. Appearing on The Black List is no guarantee of quality.
That’s bring us to Borderline. The screenplay for Borderline appeared on the 2020 Black List and evidently that appeared paid off because the script was put into production with screenwriter Jimmy Warden making his directorial debut. (Undoubtedly, it probably helped that Warden’s wife, Samara Weaving, agreed to star in the film.) The film was released in March of this year and, if you’re so inclined, you can currently watch it on Peacock.
Borderline takes place in the early 90s. Weaving plays a vacuous pop star named Sofia. Ray Nicholson plays Paul Duerson, who is obsessed with Sofia and believes that he’s destined to marry her. When we first see Paul, he’s stabbing Sofia’s head of security, Bell (Eric Dane), and then dancing around Sofia’s house. At the time, Sofia is out. However, when Paul returns 6 months later, Sofia is home. Paul somehow has managed to gather some crazy associates who are willing to work with him. Penny (Alba Baptista) is just as unstable as Paul and I’m going to assume that her character was meant to be an homage to Sandra Bernhard’s character in The King of Comedy. (Indeed, the film seems to owe a lot to The King of Comedy.) Sofia and a Dennis Rodmanesque basketball player named Rhodes (Jimmie Falls) finds themselves trapped by Paul and his fantasy of marrying Sofia.
It’s easy to see why this screenplay would get the attention of the studio execs who voted on the Black List. It mixes comedy, drama, and horror in a way that is very trendy right now. It also features a lot of crazed monologuing on the part of Paul. Unfortunately, as a director, Jimmy Warden doesn’t seem to know how to manage his own script’s frequent shifts in tone and the film itself drags to such an extent that it could almost be mistaken for a Project Greenlight film. (Seriously, remember The Leisure Class?) Add to that, the film features some remarkably bad acting. There are undoubtedly worst performance out there than Alba Baptista’s but I doubt I’m going to see more annoying one for a while.
For this film really to work, Paul would have to be at least interesting in his insanity. It’s possible to make a character like Paul compelling but having Ray Nicholson do an imitation of Christian Slater imitating Ray’s father Jack is not the way to go. Ray Nicholson bears a passable resemblance to Jack and he throws himself into playing Paul as being a nutcase. What Ray Nicholson doesn’t have is Jack’s screen presence. Ironically, that means that Ray Nicholson probably gives a pretty realistic performance as the type of anonymous loser who would fantasize about marrying his favorite singer but who wants to spend 90 minutes watching one of those people?
In the end, Borderline is another mediocre Blacklist film.
Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Tuesdays, I will be reviewing Pacific Blue, a cop show that aired from 1996 to 2000 on the USA Network! It’s currently streaming everywhere, though I’m watching it on Tubi.
This week, it all about bicycles and sex.
Episode 2.18 “Full Moon”
(Dir by Scott Lautanen, originally aired on February 23rd, 1997)
This week, Pacific Blue gives us the erotically-charged story of two people with no personality falling for each other. Don’t worry, though. Even though Chris and TC both put in for transfers so that they won’t violate Palermo’s “No Doing It On The Job” policy, they eventually realize that they’re not actually in love. After TC kisses Chris and they prepare to move into the bedroom, Chris suddenly says that she can tell that TC feels like he’s “about to have sex with your sister,” and TC nods, as if that’s a feeling that he’s extremely familiar with.
TC and Chris fall for each other while investigating a series of ATM robberies. The two robbers (Robert Kerbeck and Felicity Waterman) were at least convincingly sleazy. Cory kills one of the robbers. How humiliating it must be to be killed by someone who rides a bicycle for a living!
Meanwhile, Palermo was shocked to discover his name was in a madame’s little black book. Palermo, you hypocrite! Put that man in jail! But then it turned out that madame (played by Charlie Spradling) just put random names in the book so that she could use it for blackmail. That was pretty clever of her. Still, I find it hard to believe that anyone, outside of the bike patrol, would have had the slightest idea who Palermo was.
This was another episode that failed because not only are the characters not interesting but they’re all pretty much indistinguishable. Chris and Cory at least have differing hair colors. But, from a distance, Palermo, TC, and Victor all might as well all be the same guy. If you told me that this episode was actually about Palermo falling in love with Chris, I’d have to believe you because Palermo and TC are pretty much impossible to tell apart. Human drama only works when the characters are recognizably human.
Agck! That’s mean! Oh well, it’s late….
The iconic Fantasy Island theme was composed by Laurence Rosenthal. Here’s an interpretation of it from Henry Mancini.
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Tuesdays, I will be reviewing the original Fantasy Island, which ran on ABC from 1977 to 1984. Unfortunately, the show has been removed from most streaming sites. Fortunately, I’ve got nearly every episode on my DVR.
This week, we have two more fantasies that do not feature Tattoo. What even is the point?
Episode 7.8 “Random Choices/My Mommy, The Swinger”
(Dir by Bob Sweeney, originally aired on December 3rd, 1983)
Elaine Ashley (Florence Henderson) is divorced and raising two kids on her own. Her fantasy is to be a swinger for the weekend! Mr. Roarke arranges for Lawrence to watch the kids and then he sets Elaine up with tennis player Martin Avery (Robert Goulet). While Lawrence attempts to explain to the kids why their mother doesn’t want them around for the weekend, Martin offers Elaine a job. It’s a good job with a nice salary but it would require her to put her children in a boarding school. On the plus side, I guess Elaine would finally get laid again since that seems to be her main concern. On the negative side, no more kids.
Elaine is tempted. In fact, Elaine is so tempted that it actually make her into a really unsympathetic character. At first, Elaine takes the job but then, when she sees how upset her children are about no longer living with her, she changes her mind. Hey, Elaine — how did you think the children would react!?
This fantasy irked me. Of course, to be absolutely honest about things, Florence Henderson irks me in general. Maybe I’m still holding the last episode of The Brady Bunch Variety Hour against her but, whenever Florence Henderson appeared on this show or on The Love Boat, the characters she played always came across as being judgmental and self-absorbed. That’s certainly the case here. You take your children to a tropical paradise and then you abandon them with the butler? Really?
As for the other fantasy, it featured Jose Ferrer as a dying billionaire who needed to find someone who he could trust to give away his money to people who deserved it. Roarke determined that person was Eddie Random (James Read), an angry young man who felt his father had been cheated by Ferrer’s tycoon. The entire fantasy came down to Eddie proving himself by taking supplies to an Island and helping a crotchety old man come to terms with the death of his wife.
This second fantasy felt like a backdoor pilot. It literally ended with Eddie and the billionaire leaving to have many more adventures. As such, the fantasy itself felt rather incomplete and …. well, silly. Why would the tycoon need Fantasy Island to help him find the right person to give away his money? Why does he even need a person to do that? He should have just arranged for a big scavenger hunt and whoever found the most items would get the money. That would have been a lot more fun.
You know who always enjoyed fantasies dealing with money? Tattoo. I miss him.
Let’s just get this out of the way.
Snow White is bad.
I’m not talking about the original Grimms’ Fairy Tale and I’m certainly not talking about the classic animated Disney film, which is one that always make me smile whenever I watch it. For that matter, I’m also not talking about the majority of the Snow White remakes that have come out over the years. (There’s been a surprisingly large amount.)
No, I’m talking about the live-action remake of the Disney animated film. This the Snow White that finally came out earlier this year, after being delayed a countless amount of times. If it wasn’t the SAG-AFTRA strike that delayed the film, it was the PR nightmares caused by Rachel Zegler’s inability to promote the film without hectoring everyone about her politics. Even before that, the film was controversial because of a photo from the set that people interpreted to mean that the seven dwarves had been replaced by seven people of average size. In Disney’s defense, it turned out that the people in the photo were not meant to be the Seven Dwarves. Instead, the Seven Dwarves were created via CGI, which turned out to be an even worse solution. (Though Peter Dinklage famously complained about Snow White being a “backwards story about seven dwarves living in a cave,” it’s also true that there are plenty of actors with dwarfism who probably would have appreciated the work.)
Whenever there’s a film that gets totally slammed online before it’s even released, there’s a part of me that always hopes that the film will prove the naysayers wrong and turn out to be a masterpiece. I wanted Snow White to be good just because the online vitriol often seemed to go overboard. For example, I may not have agreed with a lot of Rachel Zegler’s comments and I think it was selfish of her to drag her own personal politics into the promotion of a film that a lot of people worked on but I still think it’s important to be able to set aside those feelings when judging the actual film. People who insist that they can only celebrate films made by people that they agree with are truly limiting themselves.
I was determined to ignore all of the bad publicity and watch the film with an open mind. And the first few images made me smile. The film opens with a bunch of animals opening up a storybook and that was such a cute image that I was briefly optimistic. Unfortunately, the rest of the film is pretty bland. Rachel Zegler can sing and Rachel Zegler can dance but, at least as far as this film is concerned, she has absolutely zero screen presence. (For the record, I wasn’t really that impressed by her in West Side Story either.) As a character, Zegler’s Snow White is boring. The only person more boring than Zegler is Andrew Burnap as Jonathan, the bandit who is this film’s version of the original’s Prince. They both give boring performances and they’re saddled with boring songs and neither actor seems to be sure how they should perform opposite the CGI dwarves. (As for the CGI dwarves, they look like cartoons and they’re distracting in a way that could have been avoided by simply casting actual actors in the roles.)
I have to note that much of the online criticism of Snow White has been directed at Gal Gadot, who plays the Wicked Queen with the magic mirror. The online film community insists that Gal Gadot is a bad actress despite all of the evidence to the contrary. (Many of the people who insists on criticizing her now were the same people who swooned when she first played Wonder Woman. Of course, that was before most of them went down the activist rabbit hole.) Reading the criticism of Gadot, much of it seems to have less to do with Gadot’s performance and more to do with the fact that she’s from Israel. If you’re that much of an anti-Semite that you’re going to judge someone’s performance based on where they were born, I don’t really know what to tell you. Personally, I found Gadot to be one of the few bright spots of the film. She understood the assignment and she thoroughly embraces the melodrama as the Wicked Queen. Good for her. It’s exactly the type of performance that the film needed.
I opened this review by saying that Snow White was bad and I stand by that. That said, it’s main sin is that it’s so bland that it’s not even enjoyably bad. After all the drama that went into the production, the film product is about as forgettable as a film can be.
Today, we wish a happy sixty-first birthday to the one and only Keanu Reeves!
Today’s scene that I love comes from the film that made Keanu an icon for a whole generation of moviegoers who had blocked The Matrix sequels from their collective memories, John Wick. In this scene, Keanu explains that it wasn’t just a dog that he lost.
There’s not a pet owner in the world who doesn’t understand exactly what John Wick is saying here. And it must be said that Keanu, who has definitely grown a good deal as an actor over the years, really sells the emotions in this scene.
Through the Shattered Lens 