I know I originally said that my Retro Television Reviews would return this week but I’m actually going to need another week, both for my health and also so I can get caught up on some other things that I’ve been putting off taking care of. So, Retro Television Reviews will return on Monday, June 9th!
Thank you for your patience and understanding!
Painting by Dave Walker
Films I Watched:
I’ve always liked this cover version of the classic Britney Spears song. Plus, I actually got to see these guys perform in London a few years ago!
Here is today’s song of the day.
For Marilyn Monroe’s birthday, I’m going to share a scene from one of her earlier films, 1952’s Don’t Bother To Knock. In this film, Marilyn plays an unstable woman who is staying at a hotel. Her cousin (played by Elisha Cook, Jr.) gets her job as a babysitter but is shocked to find out that Marilyn has been trying on her employer’s clothes. After getting admonished by her cousin and pretending to be sorry, she proceeds to then summon another gust (played by Richard Widmark) over to her room.
It’s a simple scene but it’s wonderfully played by Monroe. This was one of her first truly dramatic roles and she does a good job with it.
From Don’t Bother To Knock, here is a scene that I love:
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!
Marilyn Monroe would have been 99 years old today. Sixty years after her mysterious death, Marilyn Monroe continues to intrigue film lovers and conspiracy theorists alike. Her legacy is such that, ever since her death, directors have been trying to recreate her life with biopics and actresses have been trying to recapture Marilyn’s magic.
It’s not easy to for them to do because Marilyn Monroe was an original and not someone whose talent and charisma can be easily duplicated. Needless to say, it’s time for….
4 Shots From 4 Marilyn Monroe Films
All About Eve (1950, dir by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, DP: Milton R. Krassner)
Niagara (1953, dir by Henry Hathaway, DP: Joseph MacDonald)
Some Like It Hot (1959, dir by Billy Wilder, DP: Charles Lang)
The Misfits (1961, dir by John Huston, DP: Russell Metty)
Today is Alanis Morissette’s 51st birthday.
Today’s music video of the day is for a song that she wrote about not being able to tour during the COVID lockdowns. The song is all about how much she misses traveling with her band. When the song was released, it was used to raise money for Morissette’s backing band, who couldn’t work because the governments across the world tried to ban mass gatherings.
Seriously, I think some people have forgotten — or have chosen to pretend to forget — just how insane things got with the COVID lockdowns. We were all missing our friends, our family, our lives …. our band.
(Sorry, I’m not yet ready to forgive and forget. 15 Days To Slow The Spread because 48 Months To Do What You’re Told Or Else. I just spent a week and a half watching Clint Eastwood films so I’m definitely not in a rule-following mood right now.)
Enjoy!
In 1984’s City Heat, Clint Eastwood plays Lt. Speer, a tough and taciturn policeman who carries a big gun, throws a mean punch, and only speaks when he absolutely has to.
Burt Reynolds plays Mike Murphy, a private investigator who has a mustache, a wealthy girlfriend (Madeleine Kahn), and a habit of turning everything into a joke.
Together, they solve crimes!
I’m not being sarcastic here. The two of them actually do team up to solve a crime, despite having a not quite friendly relationship. (Speer has never forgiven Murphy for quitting the force and Murphy has never forgiven Speer for being better at everything than Murphy is.) That said, I would be hard-pressed to give you the exact details of the crime. City Heat has a plot that can be difficult to follow, not because it’s complicated but because the film itself is so poorly paced and edited that the viewer’s mind tends to wander. The main impression that I came away with is that Speer and Murphy like to beat people up. In theory, there’s nothing wrong with that. Eastwood is legendary tough guy. Most people who watch an Eastwood film do so because they’re looking forward to him putting the bad guys in their place, whether it’s with a gun, his fists, or a devastating one-liner. Reynolds also played a lot of tough characters, though they tended to be more verbose than Eastwood’s.
That said, the violence in City Heat really does get repetitive. There’s only so many times you can watch Clint punching Burt while various extras get gunned down in the background before it starts to feel a little bit boring. The fact that the film tries to sell itself as a comedy while gleefully mowing down the majority of the supporting cast doesn’t help. Eastwood snarls like a pro and Reynolds flashes his devil-may-care smile but, meanwhile, Richard Roundtree is getting tossed out a window, Irene Cara is getting hit by a car, and both Kahn and Jane Alexander are being taken hostage. Tonally, the film is all over the place. Director Richard Benjamin was a last-minute replacement for Blake Edwards and he directs without any sort of clear vision of just what exactly this film is supposed to be.
On the plus side, City Heat takes place in Kansas City in 1933 and the production design and the majority of the costumes are gorgeous. (Unfortunately, the film itself is often so underlit that you may have to strain your eyes to really appreciate it.) And the film also features two fine character actors, Rip Torn and Tony Lo Bianco, are the main villains. For that matter, Robert Davi shows up as a low-level gangster and he brings an actual sense of menace to his character. There are some good things about City Heat but overall, the film is just too messy and the script is a bit too glib for its own good.
Burt Reynolds and Clint Eastwood had apparently been friends since the early days of their careers. This was the only film that they made together. Interestingly enough, Reynolds gets the majority of the screentime. Eastwood may be top-billed but his role really is a supporting one. Unfortunately, Reynolds seems to be kind of bored with the whole thing. As for Clint, he snarls with the best of them but the film really doesn’t give him much to do.
A disappointing film, City Heat. Watching a film like this, it’s easy to see why Eastwood ended up directing himself in the majority of his films.
Though the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences claim that the Oscars honor the best of the year, we all know that there are always worthy films and performances that end up getting overlooked. Sometimes, it’s because the competition too fierce. Sometimes, it’s because the film itself was too controversial. Often, it’s just a case of a film’s quality not being fully recognized until years after its initial released. This series of reviews takes a look at the films and performances that should have been nominated but were, for whatever reason, overlooked. These are the Unnominated.
1982’s Honkytonk Man was a Clint Eastwood film that I had never heard of, until I came across it on Prime. I decided to take a chance and I rented it. I’m glad that I did because it turned out to be one of Eastwood’s best films.
Clint stars as Red Stovall, a country singer turned farmer during the Great Depression. Kyle Eastwood stars as Red’s nephew, 14 year-old Whit “Hoss” Wagoneer. When Red gets an opportunity to perform at the Grand Old Opry, he decides to head for Tennessee. Since Red is dying of tuberculosis and barely knows how to drive a car, he is accompanied by Grandpa Wagoneer (John McIntire) and Whit. Whit may be young but he knows how to drive and soon, he’s driving Red and Grandpa across the country. When a highway patrolman (Tim Thomerson) stops them, he says that Whit is too young to drive. After watching a speeding Red struggle to keep the car in the right lane, the patrolman pulls up beside them and says, “Let the kid drive.”
Honkytonk Man features an unexpected performance from Eastwood. Typically, we think of Eastwood’s characters as being the epitome of cool. Red is definitely not that. Red is a screw-up, someone who gets arrested while trying to steal chickens and who frequently gets conned by those that he meets during his journey. When the car breaks down in Arkansas, Red is too busy drinking to remember to catch the bus to Tennessee. He spends the night with a hitchhiker named Marlene (Alexa Kernin). The next morning, Whit wakes Red up and informs him that he only has a few minutes before the next bus leaves. Marlene announces that she’s pregnant. “HOLD THE BUS!” Red yells as he hastily puts on his clothes.
That said, Whit loves his uncle and the two Eastwoods, Clint and Kyle, both give excellent performances in Honkytonk Man. In fact, his performance here is probably the best that Clint Eastwood has ever given. Clint plays with his own image here. Initially, the film almost feels like a satire of Clint’s hypermasculine persona. (There is one scene where Eastwood handles a gun but it doesn’t play out the way that you might expect it to.) But, as the film progresses and Red’s illness grows worse, we start to understand Red and his way of looking at the world. Red is flawed but he loves his nephew and he loves music and, in the end, what’s important is not whether or not his song were recorded but instead that he spent his final days with Whit. The film may start out as a comedy but it ultimately becomes a meditation on aging and how one faces the inevitability of death.
As a director, Eastwood takes his time. He lets the movie play out slowly, with the casual pace of country story. It’s a film full of wonderful performance and beautiful visuals and it more than earns our patience. Wisely, Eastwood the director realizes that this story really isn’t about Red. The story is about Whit (or Hoss, as he asks to be known) and his experiences with his uncle. Whit worships his uncle but he also comes to learn that the most important thing is to be able to respect yourself. In this film, Clint Eastwood knows the story that he’s telling and he knows exactly how to tell it.
Honkytonk Man went unnominated as far as the Oscars are concerned. In the year when the well-intentioned but dramatically inert Gandhi dominated the awards and the nominations, Honkytonk Man was forgotten. That’s a shame.
Previous Entries In The Unnominated:
We’re taking just a short break from our Eastwood-a-thon so that I can share my Oscar predictions for May.
As I say every month, don’t read too much into anything this early in the year. I do think Sinners has a decent chance of getting nominated, despite being released early in the year. And since Cannes has now emerged as a semi-reliable precursor, you’ll find a lot of this year’s winners mentioned below. That said, in all probability, the actual Oscar nominations will look completely different from what’s below. That’s part of the fun of doing monthly predictions!
I should note that Clint Eastwood is apparently working on another film. Given how quickly he directs, he might be directing this year’s next sudden contender.
Click here for my April predictions!
Best Picture
Avatar: Fire and Ash
Deliver Me From Nowhere
F1
Hamnet
It Was Just An Accident
The Secret Agent
Sentimental Value
Sinners
The Smashing Machine
Wicked For Good
Best Director
Jon M. Chu for Wicked For Good
Ryan Coogler for Sinners
Joseph Kosinski for F1
Jafar Panahi for It Was Just An Accident
Joachim Trier for Sentimental Value
Best Actor
Timothee Chalamet in Marty Supreme
Dwayne Johnson in The Smashing Machine
Michael B. Jordan in Sinners
Wagner Moura in The Secret Agent
Jeremy Allen White in Deliver Me From Nowhere
Best Actress
Cynthia Erivo in Wicked For Good
Lucy Liu in Rosemead
Renate Reinsve in Sentimental Valure
Amanda Seyfried in Ann Lee
June Squibb in Eleanor The Great
Best Supporting Actor
Miles Caton in Sinners
Colman Domingo in Michael
Paul Mescal in Hamnet
Stellan Skarsgard in Sentimental Value
Christoph Waltz in Frankenstein
Best Supporting Actress
Elle Fanning in Sentimental Value
Ariana Grande in Wicked For Good
Gabby Hofman in Deliver Me From Nowhere
Kate Hudson in Song Song Blue
Nia Long in Michael
In 1980’s Bronco Billy, Clint Eastwood plays Billy McCoy.
Billy is an aging cowboy, a trick-shooter who owns Bronco Billy’s Wild West, a traveling circus that has definitely seen better days. Bronco Billy and his friends travel the country, going from small town to small town and putting on a show. Billy is definitely the star and the highlight of each show is him shooting balloons and tossing a knife while his female assistant is strapped on a revolving disk. Unfortunately, Billy’s latest assistant flinches and gets a knife in her leg. Billy needs a new assistant and, wouldn’t you know it, Antoinette Lily (Sondra Locke) needs a job!
Antoinette is a runaway bride. She married John Arlington (Geoffrey Lewis), not because she loved him but because she needed to get married by the time she turned 30 or she would lose her inheritance. After the ceremony but before the wedding night, Antoinette fled. The police assume that John murdered her and promptly arrest him. John, suspecting that his wife is still alive, pleads insanity so that he can avoid the electric chair.
As Billy’s assistant, Antoinette challenges the way that Billy has always done the show, often to such an extent that you really have to wonder why she sticks around. Since this is a Clint Eastwood film, there a bar brawl where Billy rescues her from being assaulted by a couple of rednecks. Unfortunately, Antoinette’s arrival coincides with a string of accidents and other unfortunate incidents. The other members of the show start to suspect that Antoinette might be bad luck. Myself, I’m not superstitious and I don’t think that people can bring bad luck. I think people make their own luck. However, it’s hard to overlook the fact that Antoinette finds out that her husband is facing the death penalty due to her disappearance and her reaction is to basically shrug it off. Sondra Locke gives a rather flat performance was Antoinette, suggesting none of the quirkiness necessary to make her anything more than a very childish and very self-centered person. Antoinette is a role that demands the eccentricity of a young Sissy Spacek or Shelley Duvall or even Beverly D’Angelo, who did such a good job in Every Which Way But Loose. Sondra Locke gives a boring performance and it drags down the film.
That said, there is a lot to like about Bronco Billy. In many ways, this film feels like Clint Eastwood’s take on a Robert Altman film. The plot is episodic and casual and the best scenes are the ones the emphasize the members of the circus as being a family of misfits. (Indeed, one reason why Locke’s performance feels so jarringly wrong is because both she and Antoinette never seem to be interested in the other members of the show.) Billy may be their leader and their main attraction but every member of the show plays a role in keeping Billy’s Wild West alive. Scotman Crothers, Sam Bottoms, Bill McKinney, Dan Vadis, and Sierra Pecheur all give likable performances that bring the film’s world to life. The film becomes about more than just the aging Billy trying to find his place in a changing world. It’s a film about a group of people who have come together to form their own community and, by the end of the movie, it’s a community that you can’t help but love. In many ways, this film features both Eastwood the director and Eastwood the actor at his gentlest and most humanistic. Billy and his show bring the old west to a new America and, in the end, you’re happy they did.
Through the Shattered Lens