Val’s Movie Roundup #16: Hallmark Edition

Posted on August 20, 2015 by Valerie Troutman

Sorry, but during this period my Mom has been having knee replacement surgery so my descriptions are going to be so so at best. Luckily, I know that when it comes to Hallmark movies, you really just want to know whether it’s worth your time. That I can do.

Mystery Woman: Sing Me A Murder (2005) – This one has Kellie Martin’s character hosting a charity concert for an old timey folk band. At the same time Clarence Williams III is doing side work investigating a series of bank robberies. I reached the end where they explain what really happened and it made little sense to me. I watched that section a second time, and it still didn’t make sense. This movie is a convoluted mess. It’s a shame because I have been enjoying this particular series of films. On the upside, this movie has John Getz in it. Movie lovers might not recognize the name, but you will recognize him when you see him. He is the lover in the Coen Brothers first film Blood Simple (1984). Just with 21 years added on to him. If you don’t have to see all of the Mystery Woman movies, then you can skip this one.

Falling In Love With The Girl Next Door (2006) – Ever wrote a paper for school, had absolutely no inspiration, but powered through it and churned out something to turn in? That’s this movie. You already know this by just reading that title. It’s about two people who fall in love, want to get married, their parents interfere, and the couple ultimately gets their way. That’s it! Nothing worth seeing here. There are a few big name actors in here, but Bruce Boxleitner and Shelley Long, for example, are completely wasted. A definite skip.

This Magic Moment (2013) – A film crew comes to a small town to shoot scenes. A local screenwriter hooks up with their lead actress, but belongs with another girl. He ends up with the local girl. I was quite bored out of my mind. However, it did remind me that the movie Love And The Midnight Auto Supply (1977) was shot in a neighboring small town to where I live, so I will have to review it at some point. I even have access to the old local papers from back then when it was being made.

If you can follow the conversations in this movie better than I did then you will probably like it more, but it’s still not a particularly good Hallmark movie of this nature. I’ve reviewed much better love stories such as Recipe For Love and the recent Love Under The Stars. Also, just like Falling In Love With The Girl Next Door, this movie has two good actors that it completely wastes. Those being Charles Shaughnessy and Corin Nemec.

Mystery Woman: At First Sight (2006) – The interesting thing about this particular entry in the Mystery Woman series is that Kellie Martin herself directed it. It doesn’t make a whole lot of difference, but she does at least as good a job as the others who have helmed other entries in the franchise. It begins with Kellie setting out to find her birth mother. She gets embroiled in a murder mystery that involves her biological family. It’s fine, followable, and not sanitized. That’s really the best you can ask for from a Hallmark mystery movie. At the same time, Clarence has his own plot that reveals or at least hints more at his mysterious background. Honestly, I prefer when Martin and Williams work together to solve the mystery, rather than each having their own plot to follow. I think they work well together. Oh, well. Even though this is my 5th Mystery Woman film, there are still six more of these to go. This one is perfectly fine to watch.

The Things You Find On Netflix: Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s The Island of Dr. Moreau

Posted on August 20, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I have never actually seen the 1996 film The Island of Dr. Moreau but I certainly have read a lot about it.

It’s one of those films that seems to get mentioned whenever film critics start talking about the worst films of all time and, as a result, the story of the film’s production has become legendary. The film’s shoot was difficult, for reasons of both nature and human nature. The film was shot in the inhospitable Australian rain forest and shooting was briefly shut down due to a sudden hurricane. Richard Stanley, the original director, was unceremoniously fired by New Line Cinema and apparently proceeded to go native in the Australian wilderness, smoking a huge amount of weed while the studio executives feared that he would return and burn down the set. Veteran director John Frankenheimer was brought in to finish the film and clashed immediately with the film’s notoriously eccentric and difficult stars, Val Kilmer and Marlon Brando.

And I have to admit that, every time I read about The Island of Dr. Moreau, there’s a part of me that wants to track down and watch this film and see how bad it could possibly be. But, every time I find myself too tempted, I think about a shirtless Val Kilmer lounging around in a kilt and I quickly change my mind.

Bleh!

Fortunately, if I want to get a feel for the insanity behind the film’s production, I no longer have to actually watch The Island of Dr. Moreau. Instead, I can just get on Netflix and watch an entertaining documentary called Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s The Island of Dr. Moreau.

Lost Soul could have just as easily been called Everybody Hates Val Kilmer. Val himself declined to be interviewed for the documentary and I have to say that I think that was a huge mistake on his part because literally everyone who did agree to be interviewed appears to absolutely despise Val Kilmer. It’s not so much that everyone tells a story about Val’s bad behavior as much as the fact that, decades later, everyone still seems to be so traumatized by the experience of having been anywhere near him. (German actor Marco Hofschnieder especially seems to take a lot of delight in doing a devastating yet hilarious imitation of Val Kilmer smoking a cigarette and complaining about every line of dialogue, regardless of whether it was his dialogue or not.)

The documentary also includes plenty of crazy Marlon Brando stories but there’s a noticeable difference between the Brando stories and the Kilmer stories. Brando is portrayed as being an almost tragic figure, a great actor who hated his talent and, as a result, went out of his way to give performances that mocked the very idea of even trying to be good. As annoyed as everyone seems to have gotten with Brando, there’s still an undercurrent of affection to the Brando stories. That’s something that is definitely lacking from the Kilmer stories.

(According to the documentary, Brando was not a Val Kilmer fan. When Kilmer asked Brando if he had visited the Australian reef, Brando replied, “I own a reef,” and reportedly didn’t speak to Kilmer for the rest of the shoot.)

As interesting as the stories about Brando and Kilmer may be, the heart of the film rests with Richard Stanley, the promising young South African director whose brief “mainstream” film career was pretty much derailed by the drama surrounding The Island of Dr. Moreau. Interviewed at his home in France and captivating the audience with both his intense stare and his mordant sense of humor, Richard Stanley describes both his vision for The Island of Dr. Moreau and the pain of having that vision snatched away from him. Not only does he confirm that, as has long been rumored, he did sneak back onto the set as an extra but he also explains that the production’s problems were largely due to a mishap involving a warlock named Skip.

Lost Soul makes for an interesting cautionary tale about what happens when an artist has to deal with the establishment. Watch it with Jodorowsky’s Dune and have yourself a double feature of “what could have been” cinema.

4 Shots From 4 Films: The Dunwich Horror, Dagon, The Call of Cthulhu, The Whisperer in Darkness

Posted on August 20, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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.

This edition of 4 Shots From 4 Films is dedicated to H.P. Lovecraft, on the occasion of his 125th birthday.

4 Shots From 4 Films

The Dunwich Horror (1970, directed by Daniel Haller)

Dagon (2001, directed by Stuart Gordon)

The Call of Cthulhu (2005, directed by Andrew Leman)

The Whisperer in Darkness (2011, directed by Sean Branney)

Let’s Watch The Ghost of Slumber Mountain!

Posted on August 19, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Hi, everyone!

So, while I was doing research for our latest post in Through The Shattered Lens Presents The Oscars, I came across a short film from 1918, The Ghost of Slumber Mountain.

Directed by special effects pioneer Willis O’Brien (who would later do the special effects for the original King Kong), The Ghost of Slumber Mountain tells the story of an explorer and writer named Holmes (Herbert M. Dawley). When his nephews ask him to tell them a story, Holmes tells them about the time that he explored Slumber Mountain and met the ghost a prospector named Mad Dick (played by O’Brien himself). The ghost instructs Holmes to look through a telescope. Upon doing so, Holmes finds himself starting into prehistoric times. He not only sees a fight between a Tyrannosaurus and a Triceratops but then apparently gets sent though time himself as he soon finds himself being chased by the surviving dinosaur.

Now, there are a few things that I should make clear about The Ghost of Slumber Mountain. It’s a silent film, which means that watching it requires modern audiences to adapt to a far different narrative experience than they may be used to. As well, the film originally ran 30 minute but the current print clocks in at 19 minutes. As a result, most of the film’s non-dinosaur plot is unknown.

With all that in mind, The Ghost of Slumber Mountain is still a fascinating and fun slice of cinematic history. This was the first film to show live actors and stop-motion creatures together on the screen. And while the special effects are primitive when compared to today’s CGI monsters, there’s also an undeniable charm to them.

Today, of course, we tend to take special effects for granted. One of the great things about watching a movie like The Ghost of Slumber Mountain is that it gives you a chance to travel back to a time when special effects truly were special and unexpected. There was once a time when film magic truly did seem to be like magic and sometimes, it’s fun to hop into a cinematic time machine and try to imagine being in that 1918 audience and being truly amazed by what we are seeing.

So, why not hop into that time machine and watch The Ghost of Slumber Mountain?

The Fifth Annual Academy Awards: 1918

Posted on August 19, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Over on Through the Shattered Lens Presents the Oscars, we are continuing to reimagine Oscar history, one year at a time! Today, we take a look at the year 1918. World War I ended, the Spanish Flu wiped out 5% of the world’s population, and the Academy embraced Tarzan of the Apes!

Through the Shattered Lens Presents The Oscars

A scene from Tarzan of The Apes

1918 was a year of dominated by war and pestilence. As the world seemed to be intent on destroying itself, both the Academy and American filmgoers embraced escapism.

Overseas, the Great War continued to drag on. With no end to the fighting in sight, there were fears that the American public would turn against the war and their elected leaders would withdraw American soldiers from the fighting. The British government, realizing the potential of film as a propaganda tool, contacted director D.W. Griffith and offered to help him make a film. The end result was Hearts of the World, an epic war film that starred Lillian Gish as a French girl who struggles to survive and find true love as the Germans raid her village.

Though Gish would later say that Griffith was displeased with the pro-war tone of Hearts Of The World

View original post 1,357 more words

Insomnia File No. 4: Nina Takes A Lover (dir by Alan Jacobs)

Posted on August 18, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

Last night, if you were having trouble getting to sleep at 2 in the morning, you could have turned over to Starz and watched Nina Takes A Lover, a movie from 1994.

Nina Takes A Lover is such a typical 90s Sundance film that it could have just as easily been called Independent Movie From 1994. Everything that we tend to associate with American independent cinema is present in this film. It’s a relationship drama with moments of quirky comedy. It’s set in the city and no, it doesn’t matter which city. It could be New York or it could be Seattle or it could be Los Angeles or San Francisco. The important thing is that it’s a city on one of the coasts, the type of city where people engage in witty banter while sharing an apple in the park or over cups of coffee at a cozy cafe that was probably replaced by a Starbucks after this film was released. This is the type of film where the characters tell their stories in flashback while being interviewed by a bespectacled journalist. Characters alternate between artificial small talk and sudden statements of portentous wisdom. Of course, all of quirky drama leads up to a sudden twist. I figured out the twist after watching about 10 minutes of the film. Maybe audiences in 1994 were a bit more surprised.

About the only thing that keeps Nina Takes A Lover from being the most stereotypical indie film ever made is the fact that there’s no quirky criminals and nobody spends any time talking about their favorite childhood TV shows. If Nina had only shot someone while taking a lover, this would have been the most indie film ever.

I imagine that I’ve probably made the film sound totally unbearable but I actually enjoyed Nina Takes A Lover. Once I realized and accepted that Nina Takes A Lover wasn’t exactly going to reinvent cinema, I discovered that it was actually a very likable film.

Nina is played by Laura San Giacomo, who owns a shoe store. Nina meets a man in the park. The man (Paul Rhys) has no name and is merely identified as being “Photographer.” (And, of course, he’s British because this is an independent film and, in the world of indie cinema, all ideal lovers are British.) Soon, Nina and Photographer are having a passionate and very physical affair. However, Nina explains that she’s married and her husband will be home in three weeks. Photographer says that he has a wife as well. As Nina and the Photographer talk about love, marriage, and sex, they also try to figure out what they should do when the three weeks are up.

And, of course, it all leads to a twist that you’ve probably already figured out but you know what? It doesn’t matter if the film is predictable because it’s just so likable. Laura San Giacomo and Paul Rhys both give likable performances, they have a lot of chemistry, and the sex scenes are well-done and genuinely erotic. The film may tell a familiar story but it tells it well.

Nina Takes A Lover is a good film to watch when you’ve got insomnia. It won’t put you to sleep but it will definitely make the hours of darkness a little more pleasant.

Previous Insomnia Files:

Here’s The Teaser for Carol!

Posted on August 17, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Here’s the teaser for the upcoming film, Carol!

Carol, which is based on a Patricia Highsmith novel and stars Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara, was widely acclaimed at Cannes and it’s expected to be a major Oscar contender.

(Yes, that’s right — Rooney might finally get an Oscar nomination that she actually deserves, as opposed to the nomination she got for David Fincher’s insulting bastardization of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.)

This teaser looks pretty good. The only thing that concerns me is that director Todd Haynes may have be acclaimed by some critics but I’m Not There was a mess that featured a handful of good scenes and a general sense of incoherent pretension. And his version of Mildred Pierce was a total travesty, which was mostly rewarded for what it should have been as opposed to what it actually was.

So, Carol could be brilliant. Or it could be totally overrated. I look forward to finding out!

Val’s Movie Roundup #15: Hallmark Edition

Posted on August 17, 2015 by Valerie Troutman

Citizen Jane (2009) – I was quite surprised that this was actually a Hallmark movie. The acting was strong. The story stayed focused. They actually bothered shooting in San Francisco. This almost could have been a small time B-Movie or something I would expect from Lifetime.

It begins with Jane Alexander’s (Ally Sheedy) aunt being murdered. Jane lives with a man named Tom O’Donnell (Sean Patrick Flanery) and it’s never really a mystery that he did it. The film is about how they prove it. Jane has assistance from Detective Jack Morris (Meat Loaf). I think Meat Loaf did a great job and so does Sheedy. We care, we follow, we get a decent movie. The only problem I found is the same one that was in the Lifetime movie Cleveland Abduction (2015). That movie was also based on real events. Even not knowing the true story behind it, you could tell that the film was a superficial treatment that needed much more time to properly tell the story. The same is true here. At times things will feel like they just jumped from one gear to another. Otherwise, it’s one of the most well made of the Hallmark mystery type movies. Even if there isn’t much of a mystery to it. More like mystery in the Columbo sense of the word where we know exactly what happened, but find out how the person is going to be caught.

Garage Sale Mystery: The Wedding Dress (2015) – Again, it’s time for Jennifer (Lori Loughlin) to get involved in a mystery. This time she is at an estate sale and when she returns to her shop she discovers that among the things she has purchased is a vintage 1970’s wedding dress. Great! Except there are blood stains in a pocket. And thank god there are. I say that because this establishes a good reason for her to be investigating while the cops don’t. That’s really nice when it comes to the recent deluge of these murder mystery movies that Hallmark is producing. Usually the woman just comes across as a busybody who should just mind her own business. Here she has something that should spark her interest and the further she looks into it, the more she has a reason to bring her police officer friend into the case. It’s still heavily sanitized in the way you expect from these movies. However, for this series, I think it’s the best one I have seen so far.

Love Under the Stars (2015) – When you boil it down to the basic plot, this is like the Hallmark movie Class (2010). Except it’s much better. It’s about a college girl played by Ashley Newbrough who needs to come up with her thesis in child psychology. Her college advisor played by Barry Bostwick has a niece that teaches a fourth grade class and has Newbrough go there for inspiration. She meets a guy played by Wes Brown who is raising a daughter as a single parent because the mother/wife has passed away. It plays out the way you expect it to and the way Class did, but it’s just better the whole way through. Especially Wes Brown. We can easily understand why she is attracted to him, but he also comes across well as a loving father who appears happy, but also has an underground river of fear and concern for his daughter constantly flowing through him. He is the real reason the film works as well as it does. Newbrough is pretty good too, but she basically walks around the film like she’s hot and horny, to put it bluntly, all the time she’s with him. It makes it difficult to take her character seriously as a real person the way we do with him. In particular, when it comes to her backstory of also losing her mother and the development of the relationship with the daughter. They should have had her dial it back a bit and act less like an infatuated teenager.

Also, the daughter (Jaeda Lily Miller) is a little annoying. I don’t think it’s the actresses fault so much as it is the way her character is written. I don’t think they give her enough credit and let her be more like a real kid with problems, then a cardboard cut out of a troubled child. A little tweaking of her character would have helped.

I really did like the use of the counting thing. When the father leaves her off at school or somewhere else, he counts down a few seconds because he knows she will turn around, usually opening a door, in order to wave to him one more time. She’s afraid he might be gone like her mother is forever. It’s a really nice touch that of course pays off in the end.

All around, this is one of the top tier Hallmark movies I have seen so far.

Operation Cupcake (2012) – I mentioned not giving the character of the daughter enough credit in Love Under The Stars and the problem is in this film too. This is about Army Colonel Griff Carson (Dean Cain) who comes home on leave to his wife Janet (Kristy Swanson) who runs a cupcake shop. The whole thing is about Griff adjusting to civilian life while also awaiting a possible promotion to General. The problem is they don’t give this guy enough credit. Instead, they drag out his adjustment way too long. It shouldn’t have taken him so long and the change should have been more gradual rather than played for laughs as long as it could. He works at the shop with his wife, and there was at least one scene where you wonder if he actually comes from the Army. He is mobbed by a ton of people at the cupcake store that he suddenly has to service. He doesn’t really attempt to put some of his training to use in order take a bunch of unruly people and get them to act in a civilized manner. The scene doesn’t work and the movie just doesn’t really work either. I think they should have had Cain’s character transition more gradually rather than having him be essentially a brick wall that only comes down in the end. Hallmark avoided that with Recipe For Love and that’s why it is one of my favorites. I also think that Dean Cain was miscast. I have difficultly buying any kind of machismo from his character. He just doesn’t fit the part. This is one that’s fine if you wind up catching it by chance, but don’t put your lure out into the Hallmark waters explicitly to see it.

Final note: I didn’t even notice till I was looking at the credits, but Donna Pescow is in this. She was a baker at the store who has some back and forth with Cain. Of course for most people she is from Saturday Night Fever (1977), but I will always remember her as the mom on the TV Show Out Of This World. Makes me want to break out my bootleg copies of that show. To the best of my knowledge, they still haven’t released that show on DVD.

The Fourth Annual Academy Awards: 1917

Posted on August 17, 2015 by Jedadiah Leland

Lisa and I continue to reimagine the Oscar history, one year at a time. Today, we look at 1917. The U.S. enters World War I, the Pickfords take over Hollywood, and, for the first time, the entire membership of the Academy gets to vote.

Through the Shattered Lens Presents The Oscars

The host of the 4th Annual Academy Awards, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle

On March 4th, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson took the oath of office and began his second term of President. Just a few months earlier, he had run for reelection on a platform of maintaining American neutrality in the war that was ravaging Europe. His slogan was “He Kept Us Out Of War,” and it was enough to allow him to survive one of the closest elections in U.S. History.

One month later, the U.S. declared war on Germany and entered into what would come to be called World War I.

Whereas the previous year had been dominated by films, like the Award-winning Civilization, that promoted neutrality and world peace, 1917 saw the release of several films that were designed to support the American war effort. The pacifism of Civilization was forgotten as the box office embraced…

View original post 1,241 more words

A Blast From The Past: Cheating (dir by Herk Harvey)

Posted on August 17, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In the past, I have occasionally shared old educational films here on the Shattered Lens. As everyone should know by now, I love history and these short films all serve as interesting time capsule of the era in which they were made. Seeing as how August is traditionally the time when students go back to school, I figured now would be as good a time as any to share some wisdom from the past.

The film below is from 1952. It’s called Cheating. It’s about what happens when John Taylor forces his friend Mary to help him cheat. When he gets caught, it not only harms Mary’s reputation but John soon finds his own position on the student council threatened! Oh, the horror!

Now, I have to admit that I enjoyed this short film because, as I’ve mentioned before on this site, I occasionally cheated on a few tests while I was in high school. But, beyond that, this film is interesting because it’s shot like a living nightmare, complete with crooked camera angles, expressionistic lighting, an atmosphere of existential dread, and an extremely judgmental narrator. Director Herk Harvey goes all out in his direction for this one. (Harvey is probably best known for later directing Carnival of Souls, his only feature film.)

Plus, there’s always the fun of listening to all those country accents. It may be tempting to make fun of the “actors,” all of whom seem to have picked out of a local high school drama class. But, there’s an authenticity to them that will make most viewers reconsider the importance of cinematic authenticity.

Anyway, the ultimate message here seems to be that you should only cheat if you know you can get away with it and that is a message that I happily endorse. It’s something that all students should keep in mind as they return to school this month.

Enjoy Cheating!