Tag Archives: Kurt Russell

I Watched Now You See Him, Now You Don’t (1972, Dir. by Robert Butler)

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

Dexter Riley (Kurt Russell) is back and just in time because Medfield College is on the verge of getting closed down again.

In The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, buying a computer was supposed to be the solution to all of Medfield’s financial problems.  I guess it didn’t work because Medfield is broke again and corrupt businessman A.J. Arnoe (Cesar Romero) is planning on canceling the school’s mortgage so that he can turn it into a casino.

There is some hope.  Dexter has accidentally created an invisibility spray.  Not only does it tun anything that it touches invisible but it also washes away with water so there’s no risk of disappearing forever.  Dexter and his friend Schuyler (Michael McGreevey) know that they can win the science fair with their invention but the science fair doesn’t want to allow small schools like Medfield to compete unless they really have something big to offer.  Dexter tells the Dean (Joe Flynn) that he has a sure winner but Dexter also refuses to reveal what it is because he doesn’t want word to leak before for the science fair.  The Dean decides to raise the money to pay off the mortgage by becoming a golfer, as one does.  Schulyer works as the Dean’s caddy while Dexter uses the invisibility spray to help the Dean cheat.  That’s a good message for a young audience, Disney!  But when Arno finds out about the spray, he wants to steal it so he can rob a bank.

This was even dumber than The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes but it was also hard to dislike it.  The comedy was too gentle, Kurt Russell and the rest of the cast were too likable, and the special effects were too amusingly cheap in that retro Disney way for it to matter that the movie didn’t make any sense.  When a bunch of college kids learn the secret of invisibility and use it to cheat at golf, you know you’re watching a Disney film.

Film Review: Fools’ Parade (dir by Andrew V. McLaglen)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

1971’s Fools’ Parade opens in 1935.

Three men are released from the West Virginia state penitentiary and given a train ticket out of town by the prison captain, Council (George Kennedy).  The men are a bank robber named Lee Cottrill (Strother Martin), a young man named Johnny Jesus (a young Kurt Russell), and a courtly older man named Mattie Appleyard (James Stewart).  Despite his polite tone of voice and his folksy manner, Appleyard is actually the most notorious of the three men being released.  Convicted of murdering two men, Appleyard has spent the past 40 years in prison.  Both Appleyard and Cottrill are looking to go straight.  Every day of his sentence, Appleyard worked and earned money.  Along with a glass eye, Appleyard leaves prison with a check for $25,000 dollars.  Appleyard plans to cash the money at the bank and then open a store with Cottrill.

Unfortunately, Appleyard has been released at the height of the Great Depression.  The streets are full men desperately looking for work.  People will do anything to feed their families or to make a little extra money.  Salesman Roy K. Sizemore (William Window) transports guns and dynamite.  Willis Hubbard (Robert Donner) works as a conductor on the train.  Aging prostitute Cleo (Ann Baxter) offers to sell the virginity of her adopted daughter, Chanty (Katherine Cannon).  Junior Killfong (Morgan Paull) sings on the radio and occasionally takes on deadlier work with his friend, Steve Mystic (Mike Kellin).  As for Captain Council, he’s decided that he’s going to make his money by ambushing the train carrying the three men that he has just released from prison.  After killing the men, Council will cash Appleyard’s check himself.

Of course, it doesn’t quite work out as simply as Council was hoping.  Willis Hubbard has a crisis of conscience and lets Appleyard, Cottrill, and Johnny know what Council is planning.  The three men narrowly make their escape but Council frames Appleyard for a murder that he didn’t commit.  Now wanted once again, the three men must not only get the money but also clear their names.  It won’t be easy because, as Hubbard explains, they may be free from the penitentiary but now, they’re trapped in “the prison of 1935.”

Fools’ Parade really took me by surprise.  I watched it because it featured two of my favorite actors, James Stewart and Kurt Russell.  And both Stewart and Russell give very good performances in the film.  Stewart was always at his best when he got a chance to hint at the melancholy behind his folksiness and the young Kurt Russell plays Johnny with a sincerity that makes you automatically root for him.  For that matter, the normally sinister Strother Martin is very likable as Lee Cottrill, a bank robber who is still struggling with the idea of going straight.  But, beyond the actors, Fools’ Parade is a genuinely sad portrait of desperate people trying to survive.  At one point, Sizemore and Cottrill watch as their train passes a camp of people who have been displaced by the Great Depression and it’s even implied that the villainous Council has some regret over what he’s become.  (There’s a small but poignant scene in which Council and Cleo acknowledge the passage of time and, for a minute, the viewer realizes these two people were, at one time, maybe as idealistic and optimistic as Johnny.)  It’s a well-acted film, one in which moments of humor are mixed with moments of true sadness.  I may have picked the film for Jimmy and Kurt but, in the end, the film’s story and performances drew me in.  The 63 year-old Stewart proved that he could still give a memorable performance and the 20 year-old Kurt Russell proved that he was a future star in the making.  If you haven’t seen it, this is definitely a film to check out.

I Watched The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969, Dir. by Robert Butler)

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

Medfield College has a problem.  No one takes the college seriously.  Maybe if the college could win the big college quiz show, people would finally stop laughing at Medfield but the students are not academically talented.  Professor Quigley (William Schallert) thinks that the college needs to finally buy a new-fangled device called a computer.  The Dean (Joe Flynn) says that there’s no way any college can afford something as expensive as that!  Luckily, businessman and gangster A.J. Arno (Cesar Romero) is willing to donate one of his computers.  It takes several students to move the computer into the lab because the computer is huge.

Medfield finally has a computer but are the students smart enough to win that quiz show?  Popular jock Dexter Riley (Kurt Russell) happens to be in the lab during a freak thunderstorm.  When both he and the computer get struck by lightning at the same time, it leads to Dexter becoming a human computer.  He suddenly knows everything.  He can speak any language and solve any equation.  He can answer any question/  Whenever anyone shines a light into Dexter’s ear, they see circuit boards.  No one really cares that none of this makes sense.  Medfield is going to win that quiz show for sure!  But first, Dexter is going to have to escape from Arno, who fears Dexter now knows all the details about his gambling ring.

Watching this Disney film was a real eye-opener for me.  Computers are such a part of my everyday life that it was strange seeing a college making such a big deal about getting one.  The computer that Medfield got looked more like the type of computer that NASA used to go to the moon than the ones that were in my high school computer lab.  I was worried that no one seemed to care that Dexter had a circuit board in his head.  Not even Dexter seemed to care.  It was also funny to me that all he had to do was get struck by lightning while standing near a computer and suddenly, he knew how to speak every language and solve every problem.  I use a computer everyday and I can still only speak English and Spanish.  I feel like I’m getting cheated.

The whole movie was absolutely ludicrous but I did enjoy watching this movie.  It was too sweet, innocent, and good-natured not to enjoy.  There was nothing realistic about the movie but it was nice to imagine a world where everyone gets along, the bad guys are all too buffoonish to really be dangerous, and a serious knock on the head leads to thing returning to normal instead of permanent brain damage.  Kurt Russell was only 18 when he made The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes but he could already carry a movie.

Shattered Politics: The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band (dir by Michael O’Herlihy)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

First released in 1968, The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band is an old school Disney family film that almost feels like a rather mean-spirited parody of an old school Disney family film.  The songs are forgettable, the film has a cheap made-for-TV look to it, and the whole thing feels a bit too manufactured to  produce any sort of genuine emotion.

That said, it’s memorable for two reasons.  First off, it may be the only film ever made that centers on the presidential election of 1888.  In the Dakota territories, the citizens wait to see whether or not Democrat Grover Cleveland will be reelected or whether he’ll be defeated by Republican Benjamin Harrison.  Those who support the Dakotas joining the Union as one state hope to see Cleveland returned to the White House.  Those who favor the creation of a North and South Dakota hope that Benjamin Harrison will win the election, allowing for four new Republican senators to be sent to Washington.

Confederate veteran Renssaeler “Grandpa” Brown (Walter Brennan) supports the Democrats and he’s got his family singing songs to promote the cause of Grover Cleveland.  Grandpa’s son, Calvin (Buddy Ebsen), is a Republican who still has no problem performing at the Democratic Convention because he, much like his children, is a born performer.  His oldest son, Sidney (Kurt Russell, who was 16 at the time of filming), is not old enough to vote but I imagine he’d probably vote for the Republican ticket because he’s Kurt Russell and it’s hard to imagine Kurt voting for a Democrat.  The other children want to keep both Grandpa and their father happy.  Meanwhile, daughter Alice (Lesley Ann Warren) has fallen in love with newspaper editor, Joe Carder (a very bland John Davidson).  Joe’s a Republican and supports Benjamin Harrison.  Grandpa’s not happy but really Grandpa should just mind his own darn business.  At least, that’s my take on it.  (Also, I gave up cursing for Lent.)

On the one hand, the Bowman sisters are pretty evenly split politically, with two voting for the Democrats and the other two tending to vote Republican so I could definitely relate to the idea of a family that didn’t always agree on politics  At the same time, this film’s premise means that there are a lot of songs about Benjamin and Grover Cleveland in this film and they’re about as memorable and exciting as you would expect a bunch of songs about two of America’s forgotten presidents to be.  If you learn anything about the election of 1888 from this film, you’ll learn that Cleveland’s full name was Stephen Grover Cleveland.  You might also note that, for all the talk about how the country have never been as divided as it is today, people were saying the exact same thing in 1888.

The other thing that makes this otherwise forgettable film stand-out is that it features the film debut of Goldie Hawn, who appears as a Republican dancer in the film’s climax.  This was not only Hawn’s debut but it was also the first film that she made with Kurt Russell.  That said, don’t panic.  Hawn was 22 to Kurt’s 16 when she made this film but the two of them didn’t become a couple until they met again in 1983, while filming Swing Shift.  I read an interview with Kurt where, when asked whether he noticed Goldie Hawn in her film debut, he said that he did but he didn’t even think of talking to her because, “I didn’t even have a car.”

Fortunately, everything worked out in the end.  Benjamin Harrison vanquished Grover Cleveland (though Grover returned in 1892, becoming the first of two president to serve non-consecutive terms) and, after their second film together, Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn are together to this day.

 

 

Scenes That I Love: Kurt Russell In Used Cars

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Used Cars (1980, directed by Robert Zemeckis)

Today is not only St. Patrick’s Day!  It’s also Kurt Russell’s birthday!

Today’s scene that I love comes from one of my favorite Kurt Russell movies, the wonderful 1980 comedy, Used Cars!  In this scene, Kurt’s ambitious used car salesman promotes his senate candidacy and gets some important advice from his mentor (Jack Warden).  This scene features both Russell and Warden at their considerable best.  Needless to say, if you haven’t watched this film, you need to!

(Watch it with Fargo and have yourself a car salesman double feature!)

 

#MondayMuggers present THE MEAN SEASON (1985) starring birthday boy, Kurt Russell!

Posted on by Bradley Crain

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 17th, we celebrate Kurt Russell’s 74th birthday by watching THE MEAN SEASON (1985) co-starring Mariel Hemingway, Richard Jordan, Richard Masur, Richard Bradford, Joe Pantoliano, and Andy Garcia. 

Kurt Russell plays Malcolm Anderson, a reporter for a Miami newspaper. He’s had enough of reporting the local murders, so he promises his school teacher girlfriend (Mariel Hemingway) that they’ll move away soon. Before Malcolm can hand in his notice, the murderer (Richard Jordan) from his latest article phones him. The murderer tells Malcolm that he’s going to kill again. The phone calls and murders continue, and soon Malcolm finds that he’s not just reporting the story, he is the story.

We thought it would be fun to join The Shattered Lens and make Kurt Russell our centerpiece for the day. There’s absolutely nothing more enjoyable to me than watching movies with friends. And If you enjoy Russell, Miami, and serial killer thrillers, you should like this one. So, join us tonight for #MondayMuggers and watch THE MEAN SEASON! It’s on Amazon Prime.

The trailer for the THE MEAN SEASON is included below:

I Watched Touchback (2012, Dir. by Don Handfield)

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

When he was in high school, Scott Murphy (Brian Presley) was nicknamed “Mr. Football.”  He was the best high school player in Ohio and everyone knew he was going to make it far in the NFL.  His dreams of football stardom ended on the night of the big game when his leg was shattered during a running play.  Twenty years later, Scott is still living in his small town.  He owns a farm that he can’t make the payments on and crops that he can’t bring in.  When Scott learns that he is to he honored at the next high school football team for taking the team to the state championship years ago, it causes him to break down.  He attempts to commit suicide but, when he passes out from inhaling carbon monoxide, he doesn’t die.  Instead, he wakes up as a high school student in 1991.

Scott has his second chance.  The championship game is coming up and, if Scott can keep from getting injured, he’ll be able to accept his scholarship to Ohio State and go on to the NFL.  He makes sure to introduce himself to his future wife Macy (Melanie Lynesky) so he won’t lose her.  He befriends the kids that he picked on the first time he was in high school.  When a college scout tells him that his scholarship will not be rescinded if he chooses to sit out the big game, Scott decides to stay on the bench but then his coach (Kurt Russell) explains how much the game means to the people in the town.  Scott realizes he has to play for them but can he get through the game without getting injured a second time?

What would you do if you had a second chance?  That’s something that everyone wonders.  If I had a second chance to relive my senior year of high school, I would take more risks, worry less about the unimportant stuff, and try to be nicer to everyone and not just the members of my social circle.  If I knew I was going to suffer a life-changing injury, I would probably go out of my way to make sure it didn’t happen.  That’s where Touchback loses me because I just don’t think Scott would have played in that game, no matter how eloquent the coach was.  If Scott had sat out the game, the town might have lost the championship but Scott could have gone on to the NFL, still married Macy, and his family wouldn’t be struggling to make ends meet on the family farm.

If I didn’t really believe Scott would have made the decision that he made, there were still parts of Touchback that I liked.  Kurt Russell was a great coach.  I liked the way the town rallied to Scott, even when he was at his lowest and about ready to give up.  That’s one thing I love about close-knit communities.  They take care of each other.

I Watched Dreamer (2005, Dir. by John Gatins)

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

Dreamer is based on the true story of a horse that did something that few horses have managed to do.  It broke a bone but it still managed to make a comeback as a racehorse.

I love horses, which is why I’m not a fan of horseracing.  I find horseracing to be cruel.  The horses, which have an innate need to follow the orders of whoever is riding it, will literally run themselves to death to try to keep their jockeys happy.  When you add that many racehorses are kept in deplorable conditions and that, with insurance, they are often worth more dead than alive, you have a sport that brings out the worst in a lot of people.  Horses are wonderful animals because they are so loyal.  That loyalty deserves better than being shot because they broke a leg due to their trainer’s negligence.

Given how I feel about horseracing, I’m amazed that I liked Dreamer when I saw it in the theaters and I was surprised that I still liked it when I watched it this weekend.  I guess it’s because the horse in Dreamer is not euthanized.  She would have been euthanized if not for the fact that her trainer (Kurt Russell) brought his daughter (Dakota Fanning) to work with him that day.  Russell loses his job but he does gain a horse.  After the horse recovers from its injury, Russell hopes to breed the horse.  It turn out that the horse cannot have a foal but it can still race.  With Russell and Fanning’s help, the horse returns to competition and shows up everyone who gave up on her.  Russell and Fanning refuse to give up on the horse and the horse doesn’t give up on herself.  Along the way, Russell and Fanning finally spend time together as father and daughter and Russell reconnects with his wife, Elisabeth Shue, and his father, Kris Kristofferson.  Everyone involved gives a good job.  The movie may be predictable but there aren’t any false notes in any of the performances.  I not only wanted the horse to get better but I wanted the family to grow closer and I was happy when both those things happened.

Dreamer is a good family movie.  If only every trainer was as kind and willing to admit his mistakes as Kurt Russell is in this film.  There’s nothing surprising about Dreamer but it’s still a movie that makes me cheer.  It makes me cheer in a way that a real horse race never would.

 

Scenes that Bradley loves – triggering human time bombs in TELEFON!

Posted on by Bradley Crain

Well before THE NAKED GUN was triggering Reggie Jackson, director Don Siegel and Charles Bronson were triggering human time bombs in TELEFON (1977). Quentin Tarantino even borrowed from this film when he chose the Robert Frost poem for Stuntman Mike’s (Kurt Russell) lap dance from Arlene (Vanessa Furlito). It’s not as sexy, but it’s still a good time as Bronson tries to prevent World War III. Enjoy!

Taking my love of movies on down the road (Part 1) – THE HATEFUL EIGHT 2015 Roadshow

Posted on by Bradley Crain

I love movies. And when I say that I love movies, I don’t mean that I just enjoy watching them. When I say I love movies, what I’m really saying is that my love of cinema is part and parcel of who I am. And I truly enjoy sharing that love with any person who will listen to me, or in this case, read what I have to say. For most of my life, I experienced the wonder of movies either at my local cinema or on VHS, DVD or Blu-ray at my house. It was a really big deal for me to travel about 45 miles to the big city of Little Rock and watch a movie at the Cinema 150, which was the coolest theater in Arkansas prior to the stadium seating multiplexes that we have now. Unfortunately, it had to close its doors way back in 2003, but I still have fond memories of the place. Watching movies at the Cinema 150 was reserved for the big, special effects movies like TRUE LIES and TWISTER where the Cinema 150 could give you that added value! Those days that included dinner at Casa Bonita and a movie at the Cinema 150 were great days. In 2015, I started taking my love of movies on the road, and these have been some wonderful experiences for a movie lover like me. Over the next week, I’m going to share a few of those experiences here. I hope you enjoy them!

The first time I ever left the state of Arkansas specifically to watch a movie was the week after Christmas in 2015. My son Hank and I made the trip to Dallas, TX, actually Arlington, which was about a 4-hour drive, to attend the unique “Roadshow” presentation of THE HATEFUL EIGHT. Hank was 15 and I had introduced him to Tarantino’s films by this point. As an avid gamer, with a specific interest in first person shooter “War” games, he really liked INGLORIUS BASTERDS. He was a fun partner to have on this trip! I was excited to see Tarantino take on the western genre, one of my favorites. I thought Kurt Russell was perfect for the part of “the hangman” John Ruth, and we all know what Samuel L. Jackson is capable of when acting out Tarantino’s words. It was also a terrific showcase role for Jennifer Jason Leigh. But I have to admit the performance I enjoy the most of all is that of Walton Goggins as Sheriff Chris Mannix. As a big fan of the JUSTIFIED TV series, I couldn’t wait to see how he would perform in the company of those amazing film actors, and I was so glad to see him knock it out of the ballpark! The roadshow version of The Hateful Eight included a 70 MM projector, a 4-minute overture, 12-minute intermission, Cinerama logos, and a cool booklet. I still have the booklet from the show we attended. We both loved the movie. Hank and I were recently talking about Tarantino, and I asked him what his favorite Tarantino film was. Without hesitating, he said THE HATEFUL EIGHT. I love it as well. This “roadshow” movie experience is a very special memory that I have with my son. I’ve shared a few of the pictures from the booklet below. Enjoy!