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?
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!
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)
My wife and I are iced and snowed in here in Central Arkansas this weekend, so we’re watching movies. I was browsing Tubi when I came across the 1991 made-for-TV movie BUMP IN THE NIGHT. Knowing nothing about the film other than the fact that Christopher Reeve is prominently featured on the poster, I hit play and got a movie I really wasn’t prepared for, emotionally or morally!
The film opens with a young schoolboy named Jonathan (Corey Carrier) leaving his home, where his alcoholic mother Martha (Meredith Baxter Birney) is passed out on the couch. Jonathan is on his way to have breakfast with his dad Patrick (Wings Hauser). Rather than finding his dad, however, he’s met by the mysterious Lawrence Muller (Christopher Reeve) who claims he was sent by his dad to pick him up. When Patrick and Martha, divorced well before the opening of the film, discover that Jonathan is missing, the two must try to put aside their differences to find their son, who’s been targeted by both a pornographer and a pedophile.
We’ve been watching a lot of made-for-TV thrillers around my house lately that deal with people with various psychological issues, but I was not expecting a film that dealt with child pornography and pedophilia. And I certainly wasn’t expecting that pedophile to be played by Christopher Reeve. Reeve gives an effective and chilling performance, as his character starts out as kind and soft spoken to the boy, before eventually showing himself to be violent and emotionally unstable as he’s rejected and the walls start closing in on him. Meredith Baxter Birney and Wings Hauser are also effective as the divorced couple who carry a lot of emotional baggage, but try to put that aside while they’re looking for their son. Birney is especially good as she’s an alcoholic, and we see her fighting her own personal demons throughout the search. Hauser, who’s always so good when he plays the psycho in his movies, gets the straight role as the concerned dad and he brings a needed calm and steadying presence to the explosive material.
You have to give BUMP IN THE NIGHT some credit for tackling some very difficult material, whether it be alcoholism, pornography or pedohilia, and it takes them head on. Based on the 1988 novel of the same name from author Isabelle Holland, there are limits to how far this TV production can take the material, but in some ways those limits make the film even more disturbing. We see bedrooms with multiple cameras set up for recording illicit activities with children. We see grainy VHS tapes from pornographers that show young boys holding hands and walking down the street. We’re told things like, “just make sure he’s ready for filming! It begins at 10:00!” Director Karen Arthur uses these types of images and thoughts to manipulate our emotions, with our own minds filling in the blanks with the worst fears that we can imagine. This gave me a strong rooting interest for the local law enforcement and parents to rescue their son before he’s exploited and abused.
Even with its excellent cast, I may not have watched BUMP IN THE NIGHT if I had realized the sordid nature of the material. I’ll be honest, with its title, I was expecting a more straightforward thriller. However, having now seen the film, I will give it credit for its effective handling of the material and its fine performances. I won’t ever watch it again though.
As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on twitter. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and 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, for #ScarySocial, I will be hosting 1984’s The Initiation!
If you want to join us on Saturday night, just hop onto twitter, start the film at 9 pm et, and use the #ScarySocial hashtag! The film is available on Prime and Tubi! I’ll be there co-hosting 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!
Happy Birthday in Heaven to one of my all time favorite actors, Rutger Hauer. I was so happy when his career hit a resurgence in 2005 with roles in SIN CITY and BATMAN BEGINS. Today, I’m celebrating my wife’s birthday, and I’m also celebrating Rutger’s birthday by sharing this scene from the amazing SIN CITY.
Enjoy my friends, and Happy Birthday Rutger! You have brought me so much joy over the years!
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? 1990’s Lionheart!
If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, find Lionheart on Prime, start the movie at 10 pm et, and use the #FridayNightFlix hashtag! I’ll be there happily tweeting. It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.
See you there!
Ever since the Oscar nominations were announced, there have been a lot of people on social media complaining about Kate Hudson’s nomination for Best Actress. She was nominated for the musical biopic, Song Sung Blue, and the argument that I keep seeing, over and over again, is that the nomination should have gone to One Battle After Another‘s Chase Infiniti or maybe Eva Victor for Sorry, Baby.
To those people, I can only say, “Shut up and watch the damn movie.”
In Song Sung Blue, Kate Hudson plays Claire, a hairdresser and part-time Patsy Cline imitator who meets and marries Mike Sardina (Hugh Jackman), an auto mechanic who loves to sing and perform. (When they first meet, Mike has been hired to pretend to be Don Ho at a county fair.) Claire and Mike start performing as Thunder and Lightning, performing covers of Neil Diamond songs and eventually becoming something of a pop cultural institution in Wisconsin. (At their height, they open for Pearl Jam. The actor who played Eddie Vedder looks nothing like Eddie Vedder but you do have to appreciate a celebrity impersonation in the middle of a movie about celebrity impersonators.) Eventually, tragedy strikes. A car accident leaves Claire struggling with pills and her own mental health. Mike, who is 20 years sober when the movie begins, struggles with his sobriety. There are laughs and there are tears. In fact, there’s a lot of tears. I knew the details of the story before I saw the film but, having recently lost both my father and my aunt, I was still sobbing by the end of the movie.
As for Kate Hudson, she’s wonderful in the film and more than deserving of her nomination. Both she and Hugh Jackman give empathetic and sincere performances as the type of people who other movies would probably hold up to ridicule. They’re both eccentric and they both have their demons. Mike is haunted by his experiences in Vietnam and his daughter points out that Mike has essentially switched addictions, from alcohol to music. Claire struggles with depression even before the car accident that changes her life. They’re not flawless. They’re not perfect. But they’re beautiful when they’re performing together. As played by Hudson, Claire goes from being somewhat insecure to being someone who has definitely found her voice and when it appears that she might never perform again, it’s heartbreaking because the viewer understands exactly how much being on stage means to Claire.
As a film, Song Sung Blue runs a bit long but in the end, I was charmed by its unashamed celebration of Americana. Song Sung Blue allows us to enter a world where a bus driver can also be a talent booker and a dentist can double as an agent. It’s a world where anyone with the courage to take the stage and perform from the heart can be a star, if just for one night. It’s a crowd-pleasing film, one that says it’s okay to sometimes sing the popular song that everyone loves. “He has other songs!” Mike says whenever anyone demands that he start his show with Sweet Caroline but, in the end, everyone is really happy when he sings it. How could they not be? He and Claire sing it really well.
One final note about Kate Hudson. I’ve always felt that a lot of her films, for better or worse, were versions of the type of films that her mom could have starred in during the 1970s and 80s. And I do have to say that it’s easy to imagine younger versions of Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell playing Claire and Mike. However, Kate Hudson and Hugh Jackman make both the film and the characters their own. By the end of the movie, you’ve forgotten that you’re watching Kate Hudson and Hugh Jackman. You’re watching Thunder and Lightning!
Through the Shattered Lens 