As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in hosting a few weekly live tweets on twitter and occasionally Mastodon. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of Mastodon’s #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We snark our way through it.
Tonight, for #MondayActionMovie, the film will be 1987’s Over The Top!I picked it so you know it’ll be good.
It should make for a night of fun viewing and I invite all of you to join in. If you want to join the live tweets, just hop onto Mastodon, find the movie on YouTube, Tubi, or Prime hit play at 8 pm et, and use the #MondayActionMovie hashtag! The watch party community is a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.
Today’s scene that I love comes from my favorite film of all time, 1972’s The Godfather.
In this scene, Kay Adams (Diane Keaton) has moved on and is working as a teacher. Suddenly, Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) shows up. He’s been back from Sicily for a year and he’s working with his father. Michael promises her that the Corleone family is getting out of the rackets. We, of course, know that is never going to happen.
I will be taking a small break from my Retro Television Reviews so that I can celebrate my birthday this weekend and enjoy a little mini-vacation. This feature will return on Monday, November 17th, with reviews of Miami Vice and CHiPs!
In Alan J. Pakula’s 1974 film The Parallax View, Warren Beatty plays a seedy journalist who goes undercover to investigate the links between the mysterious Parallax Corporation and a series of recent political assassinations. In the film’s most famous sequence, Beatty — pretending to be a job applicant (read: potential assassin) for the Parallax Corporation — is shown an orientation film that has been designed to test whether or not he’s a suitable applicant. The montage is shown in its entirety, without once cutting away to show us Beatty’s reaction. The implication, of course, is that what’s important isn’t how Beatty reacts to the montage but how the viewers sitting out in the audience react.
So, at the risk of furthering the conspiracy, here’s that montage.
4 Shots From 4 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 is all about letting the visuals do the talking.
I love giallo!
4 Shots From 4 Giallo Films
The Bird With The Crystal Plumage (1970, dir by Dario Argento)
Hatchet For The Honeymoon (1970, dir by Mario Bava)
A Lizard In A Woman’s Skin (1971, dir by Lucio Fulci)
The House With Laughing Windows (1976, directed by Pupi Avati)
As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly watch parties. On Twitter, I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday and I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday. On Mastodon, I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We tweet our way through it.
Tonight, at 10 pm et, I will be hosting #FridayNightFlix! The movie? 1985’s Legend!
If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, find Legend on Prime, start the movie at 10 pm et, and use the #FridayNightFlix hashtag! I’ll be there happily tweeting. It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.
Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Thursdays, I will be reviewing Highway to Heaven, which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1989. The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi and several other services!
This week, Mark finally gets the stuff.
Episode 4.21 “A Dolphin Song For Lee: Part One”
(Dir by Michael Landon, March 9th, 1988)
After he complains for the hundredth time about not having “the stuff,” Mark finally gets the boss’s attention in this episode. Suddenly, Mark is the one who doesn’t need to eat, who knows where to go for the assignment, and who instinctively realizes that the young woman they’ve been assigned to help — Lee (Bess Meyer) — desperately needs a bone marrow transplant. Meanwhile, Jonathan becomes human yet again.
That’s not a bad idea for a story, though it’s hard not to notice that this is the second time that Jonathan’s gone from being an angel to being mortal during season four. One would think that either Jonathan or Mark would have noted this fact but neither one does. Maintaining continuity has not been season four’s strong point.
As for the story itself, it’s pretty simple but then again, it’s only Part 1 of a two-parter. Lee refuses to get the bone marrow transplant because she fears her parents won’t be able to afford it. Using “the stuff,” Mark essentially commands a local news producer to do a story on Lee and her need for a transplant. In a scene that feels like a fantasy today, we see people apparently all across the country watching the news story on Lee. One guy in a bar yells at everyone to be quiet so he can hear the story. It feels incredibly dated and almost too earnest for its own good, if just because it’s hard to imagine people actually sitting around the TV and watching a network newscast nowadays. (It’s also hard not to wonder if Mark essentially zapping the producer and taking over his mind is a good example of what the Boss wants done with the stuff. That’s not something that Jonathan has ever done, even though it would have made things a lot simpler.)
People across the country donate money so that Lee can get her operation. Lee’s cancer goes into remission but the “To Be Continued” announcement at the end of the episode feels a bit ominous. If Lee’s going to be okay, why does the story need to be coninuted?
Through the Shattered Lens 