As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in hosting a few weekly live tweets on twitter and occasion ally 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 1994’s Tough & Deadly!
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, pull up Tough & Deadly on YouTube, start the movie at 8 pm et, and use the #MondayActionMovie hashtag!
Today’s scene of the day comes from the original Mad Max, directed by George Miller and starring Mel Gibson as Australia’s favorite apocalypse survivor. In this scene, Max — who is still trying to be a servant of law and order — chases The Night Rider!
The Night Rider has become a bit of a fan favorite, which is saying something for someone who really isn’t in the film for that long. As Mad Max takes place before the total collapse of civilization, it’s temping to see The Night Rider as a harbinger, letting Max and his other police colleagues know what the future for holds all of them.
4 (or more) Shots From 4 (or more) Films is just what it says it is, 4 (or more) shots from 4 (or more) of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 (or more) Shots From 4 (or more) Films lets the visuals do the talking.
Today the Shattered Lens wishes a happy birthday to one of our favorite people, George Miller! The doctor-turned-director began his cinematic career with 1979’s Mad Max and he’s gone on to become one of the most influential and important filmmakers out there. In honor of George Miller’s birthday, here are….
4 Shots From 4 George Miller Films
Mad Max (1979, dir by George Miller, DP: Dave Eggby)
The Road Warrior (1981, dir by George Miller, DP: Dean Semler)
Babe: Pig In The City (1998, dir by George Miller, DP: Andrew Lesnie)
Mad Max: Fury Road (2015, dir by George Miller, DP: John Seale)
Every Monday night at 9:00 Central Time, my wife Sierra and I host a “Live Movie Tweet” event on X using the hashtag #MondayMuggers. We rotate movie picks each week, and our tastes are quite different. Tonight, Monday March 3rd, we’re watching CARBON COPY starring George Segal, Susan Saint James, Jack Warden, Dick Martin, Paul Winfield, and “introducing” Denzel Washington.
CARBON COPY is the story about a rich, white corporate executive (George Segal) who finds out that he has an illegitimate black son (Denzel Washington). This creates a variety of issues for him at home, at work, and in his social circles.
Although CARBON COPY was chosen by Sierra, I’m looking forward to watching it for the first time for several reasons:
This is the theatrical film debut of one of the all-time great actors in Denzel Washington. Everyone has to start somewhere, and it will be interesting to see Denzel at the very beginning.
George Segal starred in a movie with Rod Steiger called NO WAY TO TREAT A LADY (1968). My dad used to always tell me about this movie. I bought it on DVD and added it to my collection simply because my dad loved it. I even took it to their house one year for our annual Christmas celebration so we could watch it together. That doesn’t have anything to do with CARBON COPY, but it’s always given me a reason to appreciate Segal.
George Segal reportedly turned down the lead role in the film ARTHUR (1981) in order to make CARBON COPY. I enjoyed ARTHUR when I watched it growing up. It will be interesting to see how the two films compare.
Director Michael Shultz also directed movies like COOLEY HIGH (1975), CAR WASH (1976), GREASED LIGHTNING (1977), WHICH WAY IS UP (1977), and BUSTIN’ LOOSE (1981) leading up to CARBON COPY. It will be interesting to see how he handles the material.
So, join us tonight for #MondayMuggers and watch CARBON COPY! It’s on Amazon Prime.
Presence takes place in one very big house. The Payne family — Rebekah (Lucy Liu) and Chris (Chris Sullivan) and their teenage children, Tyler (Eddy Maday) and Chloe (Callina Liang) — have moved into the house, little aware that it is already haunted by a poltergeist. The entire film is seen through the eyes of the poltergeist, the Presence.
The Presence floats through the house, going from room to room and allowing us to hear snippets of conversation that help us to put the plot together. The Paynes have moved to what they hope will be a better neighborhood and school district for their children. Tyler is a swimmer and his new school will perhaps make it easier for him to get the attention of college scouts. Chloe is still mourning the death of one of her friends. Her friend died of a drug overdose and we hear enough conversations to learn that drugs were apparently a problem at Chloe’s old school. More than one of Chloe’s classmates have died. Chris keeps an eye on Chloe, looking for any signs of drug addiction. Rebekah, meanwhile, is more concerned with the future of Tyler. As for the Presence, it gets upset easily. It’s not happy that Chloe seems to like Ryan (West Mulholland), a friend of Tyler’s who, at first, seems like almost a parody of sensitivity. The Presence gets even more upset when Tyler circulates a nude photo of another student online. What does the Presence want with the Paynes and will Rebekah and Chris’s already strained marriage survive the pressure of living with the mysterious spirit?
Written by David Koepp and directed by Steven Soderbergh, Presence is told with long takes and naturalistic lighting. Following the film’s plot requires listening to snippets of conversations that sometimes drift in from a neighboring room. It’s an interesting technique, or at least it is for the first half of the film. Eventually, it becomes apparent that Soderbergh is more interested in the film as a technical experiment than as an actual story involving interesting characters or surprising twists. At first, the long shots and the lack of close-ups seem to symbolize that the Presence is an outsider amongst the living family but eventually, they come to symbolize Soderbergh’s detachment from the story that he’s telling. As with so many of Soderbergh’s genre exercises, it’s a film that’s easier to respect than enjoy. Soderbergh sticks with his technique for the entire film, even when it would easier to abandon it. I appreciate the dedication but sometimes, I wish Soderbergh could just make a genre film without continually trying to convince us that he’s actually too good for the material.
On the plus side, Soderbergh does get fairly effective performances from his cast. There’s a twist involving Ryan’s character that isn’t really surprising but West Mulholland still does an excellent job selling it. Callina Liang realistically portrays Chloe’s sadness and I could definitely relate to her need to rebel, as I would think anyone who has ever been a teenager would. As so often happens with Soderbergh’s films, the extreme stylization gets in the way of the story but Liang still brings a bit humanity to Soderbergh’s chilly vision.
It was quite a night for Anora and Sean Baker! Sean Baker tied Walt Disney’s record by winning 4 Oscars in one night. After being dismissed as an als0-ran by many critics, Anora made a comeback and swept the Oscars. It was actually kind of fun to watch.
(As far as my predictions go, I hit 12 out of 23 correctly. That’s one of my worst showings ever but at least I managed to stay over 50%, albeit barely.)
It would be hard to overstate just how excited I was about the film CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON (2000). Having only discovered the work of Chow Yun-Fat a few years earlier, I had turned into a superfan and followed his every move. In the latter part of the 90’s, I dove into his entire filmography from Hong Kong. And that mostly meant buying movies online because there were not many options for purchasing his Hong Kong films, other than the classics THE KILLER (1989) and HARD-BOILED (1992), anywhere near my home in Arkansas. I soon discovered that Chow Yun-Fat was much more than just an action star as I would be watching serious dramas and crazy comedies along with his action fare. I’ll never forget my reaction when I first saw Chow play crazy comedy. It was the kitchen sink, cross-genre affair GOD OF GAMBLERS (1989), which starts with him playing the badass, unbeatable gambler of the title. He then falls down, hits his head and for a big part of the movie plays the simple minded goofball “Chocolate,” who will still gamble, but only for his favorite treats. Once I got used to such a jarring change within the same movie, I was able to appreciate just how good he is comedy. To this day, it’s one of my favorites.
While I was busy trying to watch every film I could get my hands on during that time, Chow Yun-Fat was making the move to American films. I was at the movie theater on opening night for THE REPLACEMENT KILLERS (1998), THE CORRUPTOR (1999) and ANNA AND THE KING (1999). While I personally enjoyed each of these movies, Chow did not seem to be catching on with the American public with only ANNA AND THE KING breaking $100 Million worldwide. The other two would struggle to reach $20 Million.
And then I started reading about Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh working on a film with director Ang Lee in China called CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON. I had really enjoyed Lee’s film of SENSE AND SENSIBILITY (1995), so I thought it might be interesting to see how he would handle a Chinese “wuxia” film. I would try to find as much information as I could, but I mainly just had to wait. As it premiered at Cannes and was being released around the world to enthusiastic reviews and big time box office, all I could do was read about it and bide my time. I then did something that I had never done before, and I have never done since. I found an e-mail address for Sony Pictures Classics and sent them an e-mail asking when CROUCHING TIGER was coming to Arkansas. To my great surprise, they responded that it would be in Little Rock on February 2nd, 2001. I could not be there on February 2nd, so I would have to wait until February 3rd to see the film, and I loved every second of it. And this time I wasn’t the only one as CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON was lighting the box office on fire in America on its way to a record $128 million, which was unheard of for a foreign language film. The world had a fever, and it seemed the only prescription was crouching tigers and hidden dragons!!
Ten days after that beautiful night at the movies in Little Rock, the Oscars were announced, with CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON receiving 10 nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director. I was so excited. At that same time, I had a subscription to Entertainment Weekly that put out on issue on February 23rd, 2001 with Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh on the cover. There were small pictures of people like Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts around the edges, but Chow and Michelle were the centerpiece, and I was down for all of it! I watched the Oscar ceremony on March 25th, 2001 and saw my film take home 4 Oscars, those being Best Foreign Language Film, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, and Best Original Score. It was almost surreal watching Chow Yun-Fat being shown over and over during the telecast, always with a big smile and a genuine excitement for their film’s triumph. All of that joy I had found in searching out Chow’s work, and reading about him, and showing up on opening nights for his new movies… it all seemed be culminating that amazing night at the Oscars. Those were some of the most exciting “movie times” of my life, and I would take up residence on cloud 9 for weeks/months afterwards.
After taking a break for a few years, I watched part of the Oscar telecast last year and really enjoyed the triumph of OPPENHEIMER. I’ll be back again tonight watching along with my wife and my friends at TSL. I have to admit I’m really looking forward to it.
8 Shots From 8 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, 8 Shots From 8 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
My list of my favorite Best Picture winners is a fluid one. There are a few — like All About Eve, It Happened One Night, the two Godfathers — that are always on the list. I love these four films with all my heart. Then there are films like No Country For Old Men that I think about and say, “Of course that’s going on the list!” There are other films that have snuck up on me. Until I was making out this list, I didn’t realize how much I truly did like Coda.
Anyway, here’s my top 8!
8 Shots From 8 Oscar-Winning Films
It Happened One Night (1934, dir by Frank Capra, DP: Joseph Walker)
Casablanca (1942, dir by Michael Curtiz, DP: Arthur Edeson)
All About Eve (1950, dir by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, DP: Milton R. Krassner)
West Side Story (1961, dir by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, DP: Daniel L. Fapp)
The Godfather (1972, dir by Francis Ford Coppola, DP: Gordon Willis)
The Godfather Part II (dir by Francis Ford Coppola, DP: Gordon Willis)
No Country For Old Men (2007, dir by Joel and Ethan Coen, DP: Roger Deakins)
CODA (2021, dir by Sian Heder, DP: Paula Huidobro)
Through the Shattered Lens 