Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy 78th birthday to actor Robert Englund.
Englund will forever be identified with the horror genre and Freddy Krueger. That said, before he first played Krueger in the first Nightmare on Elm Street, he was a busy character actor who appeared in roles both big and small. He was considered for Star Wars. He even played some sympathetic characters!
Of course, he’s not particularly sympathetic in today’s scene that I love. Here he is in 1975’s Hustle, bringing his intense style to the small role of a thief who pulls a gun on Burt Reynolds. This scene stands out for both Englund’s menace and Reynolds’s trademark cool. Of course, if you’ve seen the film, you know what this scene is going to lead to. The 70s were a dark time!
On Sunday, the Tonys will be handed out on and, if you want to watch the ceremony, it’ll be televised on CBS. However, if you’d just rather watch some movies about backstage life, I’ve got a few suggestions.
The Broadway Melody (1929) is a historically important film, in that it was the first sound film and the first musical to win the Oscar for Best Picture. The story is nothing special. Two sisters (Anita Page and Bessie Love) attempt to make the transition for Vaudeville to Broadway. One sister becomes a success and almost loses herself in the process. The other sister remains determined to become a star. Watching the film today, it’s obvious that the cast and the crew were still figuring out how to work with sound. That said, it’s a historical oddity and an interesting look at the film industry making the transition into the sound era. If you’re into that sort of thing — and I certainly am! — the film is now available on Tubi.
Far more entertaining is the same year’s Hollywood Revue of 1929 (1929). Produced by MGM, HollywoodRevue features all of the MGM featured players showing off what they could do. It’s a plotless parade of variety acts, hosted by the suave Conrad Nagel and featuring everyone from Joan Crawford to Marion Davies to Buster Keaton, Laurel & Hardy, Lionel Barrymore, John Gilbert, and Jack Benny! The goal here was to not only show off MGM’s roster of stars but also to show audiences that MGM knew how make sound pictures. It’s actually a really fun little movie. The cast appears to be having fun and there’s something really enjoyable about seeing so many talented people all in one movie. It also features a song called Singin’ In The Rain. The film can be viewed on YouTube.
Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz (1979) is a masterpiece, following choreographer Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider) as he directs both a film and a musical at the same time while popping pills, having heart attacks, and flirting with the Angel of Death (Jessica Lange). The scene where Gideon watches as his daughter and his girlfriend perform a dance routine that they’ve prepared for him is one of the most heartfelt moments that I’ve ever seen in a movie. The film’s surreal ending manages to be satirical, heart-breaking, oddly funny, and sad. Fosse based Gideon on himself and sadly, they both shared the same fate. It can be viewed on Tubi.
Finally, Michele Soavi’s Stage Fright (1987) is one of the best horror films to ever be set in a theater. Have you ever wondered why the victims in slasher films don’t just leave the house or the theater? Have you ever said, “Don’t split up, you idiots!” Well, in this one, everyone sticks together and everyone tries to leave and it doesn’t do a bit of good. (Unfortunately, their director has a cocaine problem.) This film has an absolutely brilliant opening sequence. I always laugh when the Marilyn Monroe look-alike starts playing the saxophone. The much-missed Giovanni Lombardo Radice has a small role. Director Soavi appears as a cop who asks, “Do you think I look like James Dean?” The film is on Tubi.
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, we pay tribute to the year 1944 with….
4 Shots From 4 1944 Films
Murder, My Sweet (1944, dir by Edward Dmytryk, DP: Harry J. Wild)
Double Indemnity (1944, dir by Billy Wilder, DP: John Seitz)
To Have and Have Not (1944, dir by Howard Hawks, DP: Sidney Hickox)
House of Frankenstein (1944, dir by Erle C. Kenton, DP: George Robinson)
Zardoz (1974, dir by John Boorman, DP: Geoffrey Unsworth)
As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly watch parties. On Twitter, I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday and I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday. On Mastodon, I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We tweet our way through it.
Tonight, at 10 pm et, I will be hosting #FridayNightFlix! The movie? Zardoz, starring Sean Connery, Charlotte Rampling, and a big ugly head!
If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 10 pm et, and use the #FridayNightFlix hashtag! I’ll be there tweeting and I imagine some other members of the TSL Crew will be there as well. It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.
I love the movie NOTTING HILL. Directed by Roger Michell and written by Richard Curtis, it’s one of my all time favorite romantic comedies. I especially enjoy the close relationships that William Thacker (Hugh Grant) shares with his group of friends. The movie creates a world where these people truly love and care about each other. We all need a group of friends like this.
In honor of the late Roger Michell’s birthday, I share this clip from NOTTING HILL:
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, let us take a look back at a classic cinematic year. It’s time for….
4 Shots From 4 1997 Films
Boogie Nights (1997, dir by Paul Thomas Anderson, DP: Robert Elswit)
Kundun (1997, dir by Martin Scorsese, DP: Roger Deakins)
Lost Highway (1997, dire by David Lynch, DP: Peter Deming)
Since I already shared the full version for today song of the day, it only seems right to share the classic scene from 1997’s Boogie Nights, featuring Mark Wahlberg performing The Touch.
As I sit here writing this, Jolie is very much a respectable figure, one who doesn’t appear in as many movies she once did. When she does act, it’s almost always in the type of big and rather glossy films that inevitably seem to be destined to be described as potential Oscar contenders. She’s so identified with the work that she does for UNHCR that it can be argued that she’s even better known now as a human rights activist than as an actor. (On Wikipedia, her career is listed as being “actress, director, humanitarian.”) Angelina Jolie has made the move from acting to directing and even though none of her directorial efforts have been especially memorable, they still tend to get a lot of attention because she’s Angelina Jolie. Angelina Jolie is definitely a part of the establishment and, let me make this very clear, there’s nothing wrong with that! She’s still a good actress. She seems to be far more sincere about her activism than many of her fellow Hollywood performers. Personally, I think the efforts to get her to run for political office have been a little over-the-top (and they seem to have died down after an attempted presidential draft in 2016) but again, she’s earned her success and she deserves it.
That said, it can sometimes be surprising to remember that, before she became so acceptable, Angelina Jolie was Hollywood’s wild child, the estranged daughter of Jon Voight who talked openly about being bisexual, using drugs, struggling with her mental health, and playing with knives in bed. This was the Jolie who, long before she married Brad Pitt, was married to Billy Bob Thornton and used to carry around a vial of his blood. This was the Angelia Jolie who had tattoos at a time when that actually meant something and who went out of her way to let everyone know that she was a badass who wasn’t going to let anyone push her around. This was the Angelina Jolie who was dangerous and unpredictable and who wore her wild reputation like an empowering badge of honor.
That’s the Angelina Jolie who starred in Gia.
Made for HBO in 1998, Gia was a biopic in which Jolie played Gia Carangi, one of the first supermodels. The film followed Gia, from her unhappy childhood (represented by Mercedes Ruehl as Gia’s mother) to her early modeling days when she was represented by the famous Wilhelmina Cooper (Faye Dunaway) to her struggles with heroin and cocaine to her eventual AIDS-related death. During the course of her short life, Gia falls in love with a photographer’s assistant named Linda (Elizabeth Mitchell) but, as much as Linda tries to help her, Gia simply cannot escape her demons.
That Gia is a fairly conventional biopic is not a shock, considering that it was directed by the reliably banal Michael Cristofer. He starts the film with people talking about their memories of Gia and he doesn’t get anymore imaginative from there. That the film works and is memorable is almost totally due to performances of Elizabeth Mitchell and Angelina Jolie, both of whom give such sincere and honest performances that they make you truly care about Gia and Linda. Jolie, in particular, portrays Gia as being an uninhibited and impulsive agent of chaos, one who follows her immediate desires and who makes no apology for who she is and what she does. There’s a lot of physical nudity in this film but the important thing is that Jolie allows Gia’s soul to be naked as well. There’s nothing hidden when it comes either the character or Jolie’s empathetic and passionate performance.
Jolie won an Emmy for her performance in Gia and her work in this film led to her being cast in 2000’s Girl, Interrupted, the film for which she would win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Since then, Jolie’s become, as I said at the start of this review, very much a member of America’s cultural establishment. My hope, though, is that someday, someone will give Jolie a role that will remind viewers of who she was before she became respectable. I think she still has the talent to take audiences by surprise.
Gabriel Caine (James Woods) is a fast-talking con man fresh out of prison who’s already set up his next big scam. Along with his partner Fitz (Oliver Platt), Caine is targeting Diggstown, a small, boxing-obsessed community ruled over by the corrupt John Gillon (Bruce Dern). Gillon controls the town because he rigged a fight that left local boxing legend Charles Macum Diggs (Wilhelm von Homburg) completely brain-damaged. The scam involves getting Gillon to take a $100,000 bet that 48 year old “Honey” Roy Palmer (Louis Gossett Jr.) can defeat any ten Diggstown fighters in one 24-hour period. Once the fights start, you can bet that both sides will have lots of surprises up their sleeves, but the question is who will be standing when the final bell rings?!!
Since today is Bruce Dern’s 89th birthday, I decided to watch DIGGSTOWN, one of my favorite movies featuring the birthday boy. A box office flop when it was released in 1992, making less than $5 million at the box office, the reputation for the film seems to have gotten stronger over the years. The film has an excellent cast! James Woods exudes cockiness and intelligence as conman, Gabriel Caine. He somehow pulls off the feat of being both sleazy and very likable, which is a testament to Woods’ skills as an actor. Louis Gossett Jr. is great as “Honey” Roy Palmer. I remember when I first saw the trailer for DIGGSTOWN, I thought he was too old for the role. After watching it though, he’s able to make the boxing scenes work, especially when you consider some of the help he’s given as part of the con. With the huge personalities of Woods and Bruce Dern surrounding him, Gossett’s more grounded performance anchors the film. Bruce Dern is perfectly cast as the villainous scuzzbucket, Gillon. He’s the type of guy you really want to see get his comeuppance at the end. Now that I think about it, Gillon is such an A-hole, Caine can’t help but seem likable in comparison! Finally, I did want to give a shout out to Oliver Platt, who’s extremely funny in his role as Caine’s partner in con. It’s one of the first movies I remember seeing Platt in, and he’s great!
For DIGGSTOWN to really work though, the boxing scenes need to work and the con needs to be smart. Director Michael Ritchie (THE BAD NEWS BEARS) does a good job setting up both. The boxing sequences are well choreographed by Benny “The Jet” Urquidez, and you can’t help but root for the old guy as his opponents keep on coming. Of the 10 fights, some are funny, some are quick, and some are very intense depending on the situation. Ritchie is able to keep the stakes high enough during the boxing scenes to make sure we remain invested in the story. It’s a nice balancing act as the con plays out in the background of each fight. And what a con it is! I won’t spoil it for you, but it’s a stroke of genius that resulted in a massive amount of satisfaction for this audience member!
Overall, DIGGSTOWN is one of those movies I’m sure to watch every few years. With its great cast, punchy sense of humor, and genius triple-twist of an ending, I can’t imagine anyone leaving disappointed. I highly recommend it!
Bruce Dern is a favorite actor of mine. He’s one of those performers who, over the course of his very long career, has appeared in all sorts of different and occasionally odd films, sometimes as a lead but most often as a character actor. He appeared in biker films, westerns, literary adaptations, and Oscar-winners. He killed John Wayne in TheCowboys. He introduced Peter Fonda to acid in TheTrip. (Dern, for his part, has said that he the only person on the set of that film who has never done acid.) He captured the trauma of Vietnam in Coming Home. He played one of the great hyperactive cops in The Driver. He came close to playing Tom Hagen in The Godfather and was the original choice for the attorney who was eventually played by Jack Nicholson in Easy Rider.
In 2013’s Nebraska, he broke my heart.
In Nebraska, Dern plays Woody Grant, an elderly man who is convinced that he’s won a million-dollar sweepstakes. Everyone around him, including his wife (June Squibb) and his oldest son (Bob Odenkirk), realizes that the sweepstakes is a scam and that Woody has actually won nothing. But Woody is convinced that a million dollars is waiting for him. All he has to do is somehow make it from Montana to Nebraska. At first, Woody attempts to walk along the interstate. When that doesn’t work and the police end up arresting him and sending him home, his youngest son, David (Will Forte), agrees to drive Woody down to Lincoln, Nebraska. David knows that there’s not any money waiting for Woody but, unlike his mother and his older brother, David hasn’t given up on the idea of connecting with his father.
Nebraska is a road movie, with the majority of the film following David and Woody as the drive through rural and smalltown America. They stop off in Woody’s former hometown, where they meet Woody’s brother (Rance Howard) and also Woody’s former business partner, a bully named Ed (Stacy Keach). Ed is convinced that Woody stole money from him. Woody blames Ed for the loss of his air compressor. Their anger has simmered for years and, at first, it’s tempting to assume that it’s simply one of those grudge matches that old men seem to have a weakness for. But Ed turns out to truly be a rotten human being and Woody …. well, Woody his own problems but at least he’s not as bad as Ed.
Before I say anything else, I want to praise the entire cast. June Squibb, Bob Odernkirk, Stacy Keach, Rance Howard, Melinda Simonsen (who has a small role as a receptionist in Lincoln), they all bring their characters to memorable life. Will Forte is the heart of the film, trying to keep his family together and standing up for his father when it matters. If you only know Will Forte as MacGruber, you need to see Nebraska. That said, this film is dominated by Bruce Dern’s poignant, sad, and often very funny performance as Woody Grant. Woody is a flawed character and Dern wisely doesn’t try to sentimentalize or downplay any of those flaws. He drinks too much, he neglected his family when he was younger, he holds a grudge, and he’s incredibly stubborn. But, as played by Dern, you just can’t help but like Woody and hope that he finds some sort of happiness. Even though the viewer, like everyone else in Woody’s life, knows that the sweepstakes is a scam, it’s still hard not to spend the film hoping that Woody will prove everyone wrong when he makes it to Nebraska.
Nebraska was nominated for Best Picture while both Bruce Dern and June Squibb picked up acting nominations. That year, the Best Picture race was dominated by 12YearsASlave. Matthew McConaughey won Best Actor for DallasBuyersClub while Lupita Nyong’o won Best Supporting Actress for 12 Years A Slave. Alexander Payne lost Best Director to Gravity’sAlfonso Cuaron. Gravity also won the Oscar for Best Cinematography, defeating Nebraska’s gorgeous black-and-white imagery.
Oscars or not, Nebraska is a wonderful, late career showcase for the great Bruce Dern.
Through the Shattered Lens 