It may seem strange to celebrate the Ides of March by sharing an educational film about The Holy Roman Empire, seeing as how it was famous for being neither holy nor Roman nor an Empire. But then again, the fact that the name “Roman Empire” was still being appropriated into the 19th century shows you just how powerful a hold the Roman Empire had over people’s imaginations. Everyone wanted to be Roman and everyone wanted to be a part of an empire. Of course, there would have been no Roman Empire if not for the Ides of March.
Add to that, this 1961 film features not only a teacher but also historical reenactments. I love cheap looking historical reenactments!
Here, for your educational viewing, is a blast from the past. From 1961, it’s a look at The Holy Roman Empire!
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!
Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy birthday to one of our favorite directors, David Cronenberg! No one has done more to change the way that the world views Canada than David Cronenberg. Last year, Cronenberg came out of a ten-year retirement to film Crimes of the Future. Next up, a film called The Shrouds, a film that is described as being a businessman who discovers a way to communicate with the dead.
Here are….
4 Shots From 4 David Cronenberg Films
Crimes of the Future (1970, dir by David Cronenberg, DP: David Cronenberg)
Scanners (1981, dir by David Cronenberg, DP: Mark Irwin)
Dead Ringers (1988, dir by David Cronenberg, DP: Peter Suschitzky)
Crimes of the Future (2022, dir by David Cronenberg, DP: Douglas Koch)
Way back in 2004, both this music video and this song were favorites of mine. That said, even back then, I found myself wondering if I would still be attracted to a guy if he couldn’t stand up to his father. Lindsay and her boyfriend (Drew Fuller) have a lot of chemistry but, whenever his father shows up, the guy meekly leaves. Whenever I watch this video, I want the guy to punch out his father or, at the very least, for Lindsay to kick the old man in the groin. That’s probably not a very realistic expectation on my part, though. I mean, assault and battery? It really would be over!
Reportedly, this video was inspired by one of the worst films to ever win the Oscar for Best Picture, American Beauty. I’m holding on to hope that someday, Linsday will finally get her Oscar. Don’t scoff. Bigger comebacks have happened and, even in this somewhat overwrought video, Lindsay delivered a pretty good performance. Of course, someone’s going to have to take a chance and write a decent role for her. You’re not going to win an Oscar appearing in Netflix Christmas movies. Just ask Kurt Russell. He totally deserved the award for his performance as Santa Claus but he was snubbed not once but twice. Stupid Academy.
When this video came out, some of my friends thought Lindsay and her boyfriend were crazy for fooling around in a deserted trailer but I’m a country girl at heart so I thought it was sweet. Seriously, though, a deserted trailer can be the most romantic place on the planet under the right circumstances. I would caution everyone to just watch out for snakes because this one time, in Arkansas….
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 1986. The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!
This week, Robert Reed turns into a vampire!
Episode 2.13 “The Lady and the Longhorn/Vampire”
(Dir by Arnold Laven, originally aired on December 16th, 1978)
Tattoo is excited because Vera Templeton (Eva Gabor) is coming to the island. Vera is the glamorous owner of a cosmetics company and she is looking for a location to shoot a commercial for her makeup. Tattoo hopes that she’ll hire him to direct so he puts on a red beret to make him look more like a director. Mr. Roarke rolls his eyes, letting us know that he has no time for Tattoo’s foolishness. NOT THIS WEEK!
Actually, this turns out to be a very foolish week indeed. Vera Templeton is not just coming to the Island to shoot a commercial. She is on the verge of going bankrupt and needs to marry a rich man. She meets Hollis Buford, Jr. (Jack Elam), who wears a cowboy hat and picks his teeth and talks about the rodeo a lot but who is apparently a millionaire. He’s also supposed to be from Dallas. (I’m from Dallas and I can assure you that the cattle barons live in Fort Worth.) Vera flirts with Hollis by speaking in a painfully bad Southern accent. Vera and Hollis get engaged. Hollis seems to love Vera but Vera just wants his money and we are supposed to find this funny.
Vera’s bratty and annoying daughter (Tammy Lauren) doesn’t like Hollis, even though he seems like a perfectly well-meaning guy. So, she sells her stocks to Vera’s butler (Lloyd Bochner) and Vera marries her butler after telling Hollis that their marriage just won’t work out. “Dagnabbit,” Hollis says, “Now, I have to find another date to the rodeo.”
What an annoying fantasy. Not only did the humor fall flat but it was a bit mean-spirited as well.
Meanwhile, Leo Drake (Robert Reed) and his wife, Carmen (Julie Sommars) have come to the Island. Roarke explains that Leo is a method actor.
“That means he like to become the role that he plays,” Tattoo says, “Like Sylvester Stallone in Rocky.”
(And that is probably the only time in history that Robert Reed has even been compared to Sylvester Stallone.)
Leo has been cast in a remake of Dracula so he wants to live in an actual castle overlooking a village in Transylvania. Roarke obliges and soon, Leo is wandering the streets in the middle of the night and he’s developing fangs. Has he become a vampire or is the method getting the better of him? The villagers want to set him on fire but Roarke suggests that they just wait for the sun to rise. When the sun doesn’t destroy Leo, everyone realizes that he’s not a vampire and …. well, that’s that!
Yes, it’s painfully dumb but at least the episode features mild-mannered Robert Reed, with his gray perm and his aging porn star mustache, putting on a cape and wandering around a village at midnight. Reed is totally miscast but that gives this episode what little charm it has.
My fantasy is that next week’s episode will be better!
In 2014’s Road to the Open, Eric Roberts and John Schneider play, respectively, Tim and Rob Gollant.
The Gollant brothers are wealthy, smug, and athletic. At the local country club, they’re not only the best golf players but also the best tennis players. They’re the type who taunt their opponents while they’re losing. No one really likes the Gollant brothers but people put up with them because the Gollant brothers are extremely rich. When they tell you to get off of their bench at the club, it’s because it really is their bench. Their names are literally on the bench.
The Gollant Brothers aren’t exactly likeable but they are fun to watch, specifically because they’re played by John Schneider and Eric Roberts. Roberts and Schneider give perfect performances as two men who have never actually had to grow up. They’re the type of overage high school bullies who wouldn’t stand a chance in the real world but who, fortunately, can spend all of their time hiding out at their country club.
Of course, the Gollants are not the heroes of Road to the Open. Instead, they’re the obstacle standing in the way of Jerry McDonald (Troy McKay) and Miles Worth (Philip DeVova). Jerry and Miles are lifelong friends who enjoy playing tennis together. Overweight, balding, and mild-mannered, Jerry is not a typical athlete and he knows it. Haunted by the death of his wife and raising his daughter on his own, Jerry doesn’t so much fear losing as much as he fears letting everyone down. Miles, meanwhile, is a typical athlete, right down to the anger management issues. Fortunately, Miles has been seeing a somewhat eccentric therapist (Judd Nelson) and he may have finally learned how to control his temper.
There’s a lot of tennis in Road to the Open but, ultimately, it’s about Jerry and Miles’s friendship and Jerry trying to find the strength to move on with his life. Even though he meets and falls in love with Sam (Michelle Gunn), Jerry still feels as if he’s betraying the memory of his wife and, at times, he feels guilty for feeling any sort of happiness. There’s a lot of comedy to be found in Road to the Open but, ultimately, this film is a heartfelt and rather sweet testament to friendship and love. It’s also a well-acted film, with McKay, DeVova, and Gunn bringing a lot of likable energy to their roles.
I watched Road to the Open on Tubi. It turned out to be a nice surprise.
Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:
Now that the 2022 Oscars are over with, it’s time to move on to the 2023 Oscars!
Needless to say, there’s probably nothing more pointless than trying to guess which films are going to be nominated a year from now. I can’t even guarantee that all of the films listed below are even going to be released this year. And, even if they are released this year, I can’t guarantee that they’ll actually be any good or that the Academy will show any interest in them. I mean, Martin Scorsese always seems like a safe bet but we all remember what happened with Silence. For months, everyone said Silence would be the Oscar front runner. Then it was released to respectful but not ecstatic reviews. Audiences stayed away. The film ended up with one technical nomination.
My point is that no one knows anything. As much as I hate quoting William Goldman (because, seriously, quoting Goldman on a film site is such a cliché at this point), Goldman was right.
So, you may be asking, how did I come up with the nominees below? For the most part, I guessed. A few of them I went with because of the people who made the film. Though shooting has wrapped, Ferrari might not even be released this year but it’s a Michael Mann film that stars Adam Driver so, for now, I have to include it. Of course, I had to include Scorsese and Killers of theFlower Moon.Asteroid City is there because the Academy embraced Wes Anderson once and it could always happen again. FairPlay and Magazine Dreams‘s Jonathan Majors are listed because the Sundance Film Festival is still a recent memory. Maestro is there because the Academy seems like to Bradley Cooper. Dune Part Two and Oppenheimer are there because Film Twitter is convinced that they will be.
In other words, there’s no real science to these predictions. It’s too early in the year to do anything but guess. And for now, these are my guesses. A year from now, they’ll be good for either bragging rights or a laugh. Hopefully, they’ll be good for both.
Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy 90th birthday to Sir Michael Caine.
With 177 acting credits listed on the imdb, Michael Caine has been working regularly since 1956. (Though he actually made his acting debut, at the age of 10, in a made-for-TV movie in 1946). There are many great Michael Caine performances and scenes to choose from but, for today, I decided to go for a scene from 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises. Caine was 79 when he played Alfred in this film and he showed that, after decades of work, he hadn’t lost a step as a performer. As well, he also showed his ability to take a character who could have been ridiculous — the loyal butler of a superhero — and instead make him surprisingly poignant.
The 2015 film, 600 Miles, tells the story of two people, neither of whom is quite who he originally appears to be.
Arnulfo Rubio (Kristyan Ferrer) is the 18 year-old nephew of the head of one of Mexico’s drug cartels. Arnulfo’s job is to go across the border, purchases weapons in the United States, and then smuggle them back into Mexico. Arnulfo likes to think of himself as being an important member of his uncle’s cartel but it’s obvious that no one has much respect for Arnulfo. The other members of the cartel treat him like a errand boy. His uncle merely tolerates him, no matter how many times Arnulfo tries to impress him with his loyalty. His own mother doesn’t seem to want to have Arnulfo around the house. While Arnulfo takes the weapon smuggling very seriously, his American partner — who is himself just as trashy teenager — treats it all like a game. Arnulfo talks tough but whenever he’s confronted by the threat of real violence, Arnulfo starts to cry. Arnulfo may carry a gun and he may be committing crimes but he’s still the type of immature child who draws fake tattoos on his shoulders and who makes mean faces in front of a mirror.
When an ATF agent named Hank Harris (played by Tim Roth) attempts to arrest Arnulfo, Arnulfo’s American partner knocks Hank out and then takes off running. Not knowing what else to do, Arnulfo puts Hank in his truck and takes him into Mexico. After Hank mentions the names of the leaders of a rival cartel, Arnulfo decides that Hank could be a good intelligence asset to his uncle’s cartel. Arnulfo feels that kidnapping Hank will be the perfect way to win his uncle’s respect.
As for Hank, it’s hard not to notice that he doesn’t seem to be that upset about being tied up in Arnulfo’s truck. Whenever Arnulfo tries to order Hank to do something, Hank comes up with a perfect excuse for why he can’t to do it. When Arnulfo demands that Hank call his wife and lie about where he is, Hank replies that his wife is dead. Arnulfo believes Hank and, as they drive to his uncle’s house, the two of them even start to bond. Arnulfo never considers that his uncle might not want his nephew to give an ATF agent a guided tour of the cartel’s business. And, for his matter, Hank never tries to escape despite a number of obvious opportunities to do so.
It makes for a very tense film. The viewer knows that something bad is going to happen once Arnulfo finally reaches his uncle. The only question is what. For all of his tough talk, Arnulfo is way too trusting and the audience spends the movie waiting for the moment when it will be revealed whether Arnulfo’s bigger mistake was trusting his uncle or trusting Hank. Along the way, Arnulfo and Hank’s odd friendship becomes a fascinating metaphor for how the U.S. and Mexico view each other and themselves. The film was reportedly inspired by Operation Fast and Furious, the misbegotten government operation in which the United States gave guns to the cartels so that they could then prosecute the cartels for the deadly crimes committed with those same guns. Arnulfo cares about both the cartel and Hank but, in the end, one is left to wonder if any of them actually care about Arnulfo or if he’s just one of many pawns in their game.
Tim Roth and Kristyan Ferrer are both well-cast, with Roth bringing his trademark intensity to the role of Hank and Ferrer making Arnulfo into someone who secretly knows that he will never be the mastermind that he dreams of being. In the wrong hands, Arnulfo could have been a very annoying character but Ferrer plays him as being someone who knows that he’s in over his head and it’s hard not to feel sorry for him as his wishful thinking comes up against the harsh reality of his situation. The first 20 or so minutes of 600 Miles are dedicated to Arnulfo believing that he’s on top of the world. The remaining 60 follow him as he comes to realize that the opposite is true.
600 Miles is as timely today as when it was first released. It’s a film that I recommend to anyone trying to understand what’s happening down on the border.
For today’s music video of the day, Hilary Duff says that you’re so yesterday!
Personally, I’ve always liked Hilary Duff and I think she’s underrated as both a singer and an actress. For instance, The Haunting of Sharon Tate was a problematic film on several levels but Hilary Duff’s performance in the title role made the film several times better than it probably had any right to be. Add to that, Hilary Duff is a Texas girl, just like me! Texas girls support each other.
Texas plays a role in this video. Hilary breaks up with her boyfriend, who appears to be a Galveston surfer. When he leaves his Don’t Mess With Texas t-shirt on the beach, Hilary steals it and then takes it around the town and basically gets everyone to pose while wearing it. Good for her! This is a fun, revenge-filled video. Hilary Duff lets her ex know that he is “so yesterday,” and his t-shirt looks better on a random skater dude than it does on him. Take that!
I’ve been asked if Don’t Mess With Texas is something that is really said down here and the answer is that it is. Don’t Mess With Texas started out as an anti-littering slogan but it has since been transformed into a catch-all phrase that can be used for almost any situation. For instance, whenever we talk about all of the Yankees that have been moving down here, we always agree that they better live by the slogan. Remember why you left your old state and don’t mess with Texas.
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Mondays, I will be reviewing Hang Time, which ran on NBC from 1995 to 2000. The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!
It’s time to start season 4!
Episode 4.1 “A Whole New Ballgame”
(Dir by Miguel Higuera and Patrick Maloney, originally aired on September 12th, 1998)
It’s a brand new school year! Teddy, Vince, and Danny have all graduated, with Teddy and Vince going to Southern Florida University and Danny going to NYU to pursue his stand-up career. Despite the fact that Julie and Mary Beth were in the same grade as Danny with the show began, they’re both still students at Deering High, along with Michael Manning and Kristy.
And, of course, Coach Fuller is gone. He’s now coaching at Southern Florida University. For the first three seasons of the show, Coach Fuller was played by Reggie Theus. Reggie Theus was a stiff actor but he was a former basketball player and he was believable whenever Fuller discussed the mechanics of the game with his players. As stiff as Theus was, it was still easy to believe him as an inspiring basketball coach. Replacing Coach Fuller is Mike Katowinski. Mike is played by Dick Butkus, a former football player who looks and sounds like a former football player. From the minute he appears, it’s hard to buy him as a basketball coach, despite the fact that Julie mentions that Coach Katowinski coached the Houston Rockets for 20 years. As I watched Coach K, I found myself wondering why Deering didn’t give the job to that assistant coach who appeared in two episodes during the third season.
(Add to that, what type of loser goes from coaching an NBA team to coaching a high school basketball team?)
Along with a new coach, this episode introduces some new players, all of whom are suspiciously familiar substitutes for the actors who have left the show. Nick Hammer (Mark Famiglietti) is cocky and confident and, despite the fact that she’s still dating Michael, it’s pretty obvious that he’s being set up as Julie’s next love interest. Rico Bosco (James Villani) is short and dumb, like Vince. Silk Hayes (Danso Gordon) is a thinner version of Teddy. Silk tells us that he’s called Silk because he’s “smooth on the court and off …. with the ladies!”
Things get off to a bad start between the new Coach and Julie when Julie starts to suspect that the Coach is going easy on her because she’s a girl. The main reason she thinks this is because the Coach tells her that he’s going easy on her because she’s a girl. Julie attempts to prove that she’s just as good as the boys by practicing super-aggressively and knocking everyone down. “Don’t worry,” the Coach tells Hammer, “it’s probably just a female thing.” Julie storms out of the gym, as she had every right to do. (Wow, is this the first time that I’ve liked Julie since this series began? I think it may be.) Later, Julie attempts to talk to the Coach about his attitude and he responds by sending her to the school nurse. Julie resents the Coach assuming that all of her behavior is period-related but she does appreciate the nurse sending her home early. As someone who used to fake cramps to get out of gym class on a daily basis, I related.
Julie then shows up at practice dressed in an apron and carrying a plate of cookies. In her words, she’s behaving acting the way coach expects her to act. This leads to Julie getting put on the B-team and not being listed as a starter. Coach explains that it’s not because Julie is a girl. It’s because “you’re a weird girl.” Fortunately, Julie does well-enough in practice that she’s promoted to starter. The audiences goes crazy.
While all of this is going on, Mary Beth tries to come to terms with no longer having a boyfriend. Come on, Mary Beth — it was just Vince!
With this episode, the fourth season got off to a rocky start, with a miscast Coach and a set of new players that just don’t seem to have as much personality as the players they replaced. Would things improve in the second episode of the season?
Let’s find out.
Episode 4.2 “Team Players”
(Dir by Patrick Maloney, originally aired on September 12th, 1998)
Uh-oh, the team’s just not coming together! Mostly it’s Michael and Julie’s fault, because they think that they’re too good for the new players. After Hammer overhears Michael telling Julie that the new team sucks, he tells all of the other players. During the first game of the season, the Tornadoes struggle during the first half but, after realizing they have to work together, they stage a comeback and win in the second half. Wow! JUST LIKE EVERY OTHER GAME THEY’VE EVER PLAYED! After the game, Julie says that this new team might even be better than last year’s team. Uhmm …. no. Sorry, Julie, no. Last year’s time had Danny. None of these new guys can compare to Danny.
In the B-plot, Mary Beth tries too hard to get the Coach to like her. Through a series of unlikely events, she knocks a hole in the wall of his office and she and Kristy has to fix it during the game. Megan Parlen and Amber Baretto are a good comedy team and it’s always a lot of fun when Mary Beth is flustered at the thought of having to do actual work. Unfortunately, the situation is not quite as funny without Reggie Theus’s looking stunned at whatever it is that Mary Beth has done. As played by Dick Butkus, Coach K. is just a bit too angry and gruff to be a good comedic foil. Whenever he gets annoyed with something, he looks like he’s about to tackle someone and break their ribs.
Season 4 is off to a rough start! Hopefully, things will get better next week.
Here, for your educational viewing, is a blast from the past. From 1961, it’s a look at The Holy Roman Empire!
