Hi, everyone! Tonight, on twitter, I will be hosting one of my favorite films for #MondayMania! Join us for 2016’s You May Now Kill The Bride!
You can find the movie on Prime and Tubi and then you can join us on twitter at 9 pm central time! (That’s 10 pm for you folks on the East Coast.) See you then!
Because today is Paul Newman’s birthday, I figured today’s song of the day should come from one of his films. There’s a tendency amongst some critics to be dismissive of the use of Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and it’s true that it’s not really the type of song that brings to mind robbing trains and dying in South America.
(Though we all know that Butch Cassidy — and maybe the Sundance Kid, too — actually survived and eventually returned to America. We all know that, right?)
But, you know what? It’s a song that really gets stuck in your head and somehow, it just feels appropriate for Paul Newman, an actor whose life wasn’t always happy (his son overdosed in 1976) but who was still almost always described as being one of the nicest guys around. Plus, look at Paul on that bicycle! How can you dislike this song?
Today would have been Bob Uecker’s birthday. Here he is in Major League, delivering a line that I’ll probably be repeating a lot once Spring Training begins!
Every team should have a Bob Uecker in their corner!
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 lets the visuals do the talking!
101 years ago today, Paul Newman was born in Shaker Heights, Ohio. He would go on, of course, to become one of America’s greatest film stars, an acclaimed actor who was active from the mid-part of the 20th century to the beginning of our current century. He made his film debut in 1954 with The Silver Chalice (and subsequently paid for an ad in which he apologized for his performance in the film, which I think was a bit unnecessary as he wasn’t really that bad in the film) and he made his final onscreen appearance in 2005 in Empire Falls. (He did, however, subsequently provide the voice of Doc Hudson in Cars, along with narrating a few documentaries.) Time and again, he proved himself to be one of the best actors around. According to most report, he was also one of the nicest. When he died in 2008, the world mourned.
In honor of his cinematic legacy, here are….
4 Shots From 4 Paul Newman Films
The Long Hot Summer (1958, dir by Martin Ritt, DP: Joseph LaShelle)
Hud (1963, dir by Martin Ritt, DP: James Wong Howe)
The Sting (1973, dir by George Roy Hill, DP: Robert Surtees)
Slap Shot (1977, dir by George Roy Hill, DP: Victor Kemper)
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 1986’s Assassin!
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 and 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.
See you soon!
by Paul Orban
This cover is from 1952.
Today would have been Eddie Van Halen’s 71st birthday.
Jamie’s Cryin’ first appeared on Van Halen’s debut album and it was the third released single to come from that album. Though it didn’t chart, it was a favorite of both Eddie Van Halen’s and David Lee Roth’s, with Eddie later saying that Jamie’s Cryin’ should have been Van Halen’s single.
Enjoy!
Alana Westbrook (Morgan Fairchild), the ruthless owner of a cosmetics company, is murdered after she announces that she is actually 60 years old and owes her youthful appearance to a miracle skin cream. Her husband (Patrick O’Neal) is charged with the crime but he’s lucky enough to have Perry Mason (Raymond Burr) as his attorney. Perry thinks that the murderer is an eccentric gigolo (David Warner) but, for once, Perry might be wrong. Meanwhile, Ken Malansky (William R. Moses) gets involved with a corporate spy (Lauren Lane) who might know more than she says.
Lisa and I watched this one earlier today. We really enjoyed it! It’s the most soapy of all the Perry Mason films that I’ve watched so far. Morgan Fairchild was great as the murder victim and all of the suspects were enjoyably weird. What I really enjoyed about this movie was that it featured people who appeared, in different roles, in other Perry Mason films. Patrick O’Neal went from being the victim in Perry Mason Returns to being the accused here. David Warner went from being the victim in The Case of the Poisoned Pen to being a suspect here. This was also a second Perry Mason film for Jonathan Banks but instead of being a tough guy like he was the first time, he was a skin cream creator this time. This movie understood that people will kill for clear skin.
This was one of the last of Raymond Burr’s Perry Mason films (it aired the same year that he died) and, with the returning actors, it feels like a tribute to Burr and the role that he made his own.
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 lets the visuals do the talking!
Today, on what would have been his 83rd birthday, the Shattered Lens pays tribute to Texas’s own, Tobe Hooper!
The Austin hippie who redefined horror and left thousands of yankees terrified of driving through South Texas, Tobe Hooper often struggled to duplicate both the critical and the box office success of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It’s only been in the years since his death that many critics and viewers have come to truly appreciate his unique and subversive vision.
Down here, in Texas, we always believed in him.
It’s time for….
4 Shots From 4 Tobe Hooper Films
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974, dir by Tobe Hooper, DP: Daniel Pearl)
Eaten Alive (1976, dir by Tobe Hooper. DP: Robert Caramico)
The Funhouse (1981, dir by Tobe Hooper. DP: Andrew Laszlo)
Poltergeist (1982, dir by Tobe Hooper, DP: Matthew Leonetti)
by George Quitana
This cover is from 1937.
Through the Shattered Lens 