Today’s music video of the day feels perfect for Spring Break!
Enjoy!
Tag Archives: review
Late Night Retro Television Review: Baywatch Nights 1.17 “Code of Silence”
Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Tuesdays, I will be reviewing Baywatch Nights, a detective show that ran in Syndication from 1995 to 1997. The entire show is currently streaming on You tube!
This week, the stars align and David Hasselhoff finally meets …. THE YAKUZA!
Episode 1.17 “Code of Silence”
(Dir by Charles Bail, originally aired on March 16th, 1996)
While her mother has a desperate conversation on a nearby payphone, young Mariko (Nicole Iiada) wanders onto the beach and spots a sea gull who has gotten tangled up in a fishing net. Fortunately, Mitch Buchannon drives up in his red Baywatch jeep and is able to set the sea gull free. Unfortunately, no sooner has the sea gull flown away then a bunch of Yakuza pull up and promptly kidnap Mariko’s mom.
Is there a detective in the house?
Why, yes, there is!
Well, kinda….
This is yet another episode of Baywatch Nights in which Mitch gets involved in a case as a result of being a lifeguard as opposed to being a private investigator. Indeed, if not for the presence of Angie Harmon, there would be little to distinguish this from an episode of Baywatch. While watching the last few episodes of Baywatch Nights‘s first season, you really can tell that the producers were desperate to bring over the audience that was watching just plan Baywatch. If the first half of the first season was all about David Hasselhoff wearing suits and providing hard-boiled narration, the second half is more about getting everyone onto the beach as quickly as possible.
As for this week’s case, it turns out that the kidnapped woman is a geisha who has a computer disk that the Yakuza wants. While the members of the Yakuza are busy threatening her with all sorts of violence, Mitch is teaming up with her grandfather (played by Soon-Tek Oh) and trying to discover where she’s being held. When Garner and Mitch find out about the Yakuza’s secret headquarters, they launch an assault. You might think that this would be difficult, seeing as how the members of the Yakuza are all ruthless martial artists. Well, it turns out that karate is no match for Mitch’s fists. The ancient art of combat falls before the power of the Hoff.
Somewhat inevitably, the episode ends with Mitch being given two samurai swords by Soon-Tek Oh. When Mitch says that he can’t accept such an expensive gift, Soon-Tek Oh says that no one gets the swords as a gift. Instead, they must be earned by truly displaying the spirit of the samurai. Mitch looks truly touched while Angie Harmon suppresses a laugh.
David Hasselhoff vs. The Yakuza! Well, we all knew it was going to have to happen at some point. That said, I don’t think the Hoff was dealing with first-grade Yakuza. It seems like the Yakuza sent the B-team to California. Well, that was their mistake. It didn’t take much effort for the Hoff to track them down and defeat them and in fact, it felt almost too easy. The Yakuza probably thought the Hoff would be too busy recording a new album to care. Again, their mistake.
Never underestimate the Hoff!
Retro Television Reviews: Fantasy Island 4.16 “Chorus Girl/Surrogate Father”
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Tuesdays, I will be reviewing the original Fantasy Island, which ran on ABC from 1977 to 1984. Almost the entire show is currently streaming on Daily Motion.
This week, Mr. Roarke is almost too clever for his own good.
Episode 4.16 “Chorus Girl/Surrogate Father”
(Dir by Richard Benedict, originally aired on February 21st, 1981)
Weird episode, this week.
Our first story features John Saxon, playing the role of Evan Watkins. Evan is a compulsive gambler and his fantasy is to make one huge score. Accompanying Evan is his young daughter, Amy (Nicole Eggert). Her fantasy is for Evan to give up gambling and start acting like a real father. On the Island, Evan and Amy meet Margo (Rosemary Forsyth), a social worker whose fantasy is to really make a difference in the life of someone who is in trouble. Basically, Mr. Roarke takes all three fantasies and just crams them together.
So, Evan does win big but then some gangsters show up, searching for him. And Amy does get her wish but not before Evan nearly abandons his family. And Margo, after some initial hesitation, falls in love with Evan and leaves the Island with him and Amy. It all works out but it still seems dangerous to mix together a bunch of fantasies like that. If one thing had gone wrong, Roarke would have been left with three unhappy customers instead of just one.
This fantasy was pretty predictable but it did give Herve Villechaize a chance to actually do something more than just stand around and ask Mr. Roarke questions. The scene where Tattoo comforts Amy by explaining that her father may be a man on the outside but is still just a scared child on the inside was wonderfully acted by Villechaize and rather sweet. Villechaize was notoriously difficult on the set of Fantasy Island and was reportedly always on the verge of being fired for his behavior but, in this scene, he demonstrates why he was so important to the show. Mr. Roarke may be the owner of Fantasy Island but Tattoo is the heart.
The second fantasy is kind of creepy. Sheila Richards (Lisa Hartman) has been deaf since birth. She was raised by Franklin Adams (Stuart Whitman), who taught her how to dance. Unfortunately, Sheila can only dance by watching Franklin’s hand signals. Franklin’s fantasy is for Sheila to be able to hear for a weekend so she can audition for a world-famous choreographer. Franklin also wants to tell Sheila that he’s in love with her.
There’s a few problems here. Franklin is in his 50s while Sheila is in her 20s and has basically been dependent on him for her entire life. Franklin wants Sheila to hear him when he says, “I love you!” but he also goes to the Island with the knowledge that, at the end of the weekend, Sheila will again lose her hearing. It seems a bit cruel on Franklin’s part to put Sheila through all that when 1) he knows sign language and 2) Sheila can read lips. There’s nothing stopping Franklin from telling her how he feels.
The other problem is that the episode doesn’t seem to understand that there are many dancers who are hearing-impaired. Because they learn the choreography and can feel the vibrations of the music, they are fully capable of dancing without being dependent on someone signing to the them from the audience. One does not need to hear the music to be able to dance to it. Instead, one just has to be able to keep time and remember the choreography.
Anyway, as you can probably guess, Sheila falls in love with the world-famous choreographer, leaving Franklin heart-broken. However, at the end of the episode, Mr. Roarke introduces Franklin to a teenage girl who lives on the Island. Roarke explains that she’s deaf and asks Franklin to look after her while she goes to school in New York. Franklin agrees with a quickness that is a bit …. icky.
This whole fantasy felt like a mess, from Franklin’s oddly-conceived fantasy to the fact that Lisa Hartman was in no way convincing as someone who can’t hear. Whether Sheila can hear or not, the one thing that remains consistent is Hartman’s overacting. Even the usually reliable Ricardo Montalban seems to be annoyed by the whole fantasy.
This was a weird trip to the Island. What will next week’s journey reveal?
Music Video of the Day: Sunglasses at Night by Heidi Klum (2024, dir by Rankin)
Wow, is there nothing that Heidi Klum can’t do?
This is, of course, a cover of a song by Corey Hart. Heidi’s version was produced by Tiesto. I have to say that, as a former Project Runway fan, I’d love to see Alyssa Milano try to compete with this.
Enjoy!
Late Night Retro Television Review: CHiPs 1.17 “Hitch-Hiking Hitch”
Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Mondays, I will be reviewing CHiPs, which ran on NBC from 1977 to 1983. The entire show is currently streaming on Freevee!
This week, Baker solves everything!
Episode 1.17 “Hitch-Hiking Hitch”
(Dir by Phil Bondelli, originally aired on February 9th, 1978)
It’s another crazy week on the highways of California.
Baker saves a wind sailor who loses control of his boat while testing it on the freeway. Baker saves a trucker when the brakes go out on his rig. Baker helps out an old man (George Chandler) who refuses to leave his home until he’s promised that he and his dog won’t be put in an assisted living facility. Baker tells two teenagers, Jenny (Lark Gein) and Marge (Stacy Nelkin), about the dangers of hitchhiking on the highways.
In other words, this is yet another first season episode of CHiPs where the main theme seems to be that Ponch is thoroughly useless. Oh, don’t get me wrong. Ponch definitely helps out. When Baker tells Ponch to direct traffic, Ponch hops off his motorcycle and starts waving at cars to either stop or go. But it’s still hard not to notice that, when something needs to be done, Baker is the one who does it. Indeed, Baker is usually the only one who knows how to do it. You have to kind of wonder why he’s not in charge since he always knows what to do.
Still, Sgt. Getraer is the man in charge and he’s been named “Sergeant of the Month” by CHiPs Magazine. Ponch and Baker are worried that Getraer is too humble to really enjoy the honor. For some reason, Ponch thinks that playing a joke on Getraer by switching out his helmet will make Getraer enjoy life more. It really doesn’t make much sense to me but this is Ponch that we’re talking about.
There’s an odd scene where Ponch and Baker are having lunch at a diner. A man in a van pulls up and sees that their bikes are in the parking spot that he wants. The man, who is rather large, picks up the bikes and puts them on the sidewalk. He then picks up a car and moves it to the side. Luckily, Getraer rolls up and gives the guy a ticket.
While Baker and Getraer are doing their jobs, Ponch is trying to get laid. When Mary Kate (Katherine Cannon) comes to the station to bail out her sister (who is one of the hitchhikers), Ponch takes one look at her and says, “I bet you were named after your grandmother, who was also very beautiful.” Mary Kate responds that she was named after two spinster aunts. She goes on a few dates with Ponch and claims that her sister has been led astray by her friend. It turns out Mary Kate is wrong and her sister is the one who keeps insisting on hitchhiking.
The hitchhiking nearly ends in disaster but fear not! Baker is there to save Marge from some creeps driving a van. Seriously, what would California do without Jon Baker?
Anyway, the scene with the out-of-control truck was kind of exciting but otherwise, this was a typical episode of CHiPs. It wasn’t particularly memorable but the California scenery was lovely to look at. Anyone want to go wind sailing?
Retro Television Review: Miami Vice 2.5 “The Dutch Oven”
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Mondays, I will be reviewing Miami Vice, which ran on NBC from 1984 to 1989. The entire show can be purchased on Prime!
Well, this sucks! Tubi is no longer streaming Miami Vice. Hopefully, the show will soon have a new streaming home. As for the episode that I reviewed below, I had to buy it on Prime. It cost next to nothing but still, there’s a larger issue, namely my desire to watch stuff for free.
Episode 2.4 “The Dutch Oven”
(Dir by Abel Ferrara, originally aired on October 25th, 1985)
This week’s episode of Miami Vice opens with a typical Vice situation. Trudy is undercover as a prostitute. Tubbs is undercover as a drug buyer. When the dealers try to rip Tubbs off, it leads to an exciting and well-shot car chase that ends in an alley. One of the dealers points his gun at Sonny and Trudy and, four shots later, he’s lying dead on the ground.
For once, though, it’s not Sonny who did the shooting. Instead, all four shots were fired by Trudy. This time, it’s Trudy who is shaken by taking someone’s life and it’s Trudy who finds herself being harassed by Internal Affairs. Feeling lost, Trudy goes to a party hosted by her ex-boyfriend, David (Cleavant Derricks). Soon, Trudy and David are back together but, when Trudy discovers that someone is dealing drugs at David’s parties, she is forced to confront the fact that her boyfriend might not be an innocent bystander.
A young Giancarlo Esposito appears in this episode, playing an up-and-coming dealer named Adonis. Adonis is an old friend of David’s and he’s also the one who is responsible for selling the drugs at the parties. (It turns out that David actually is innocent.) Sonny, realizing that Trudy is too close to the case and still emotionally shaken by the earlier shooting, goes undercover to take Adonis down. Of course, Adonis doesn’t surrender easily and the episode ends with him literally daring Trudy to shoot him. Trudy hesitates so Sonny sends Adonis to the ground with one punch. As far as endings go, it doesn’t quite feel like a Miami Vice ending. Season one, for instance, had no hesitation about ending with gunshots. Gina shot Burt Young in cold blood. Pam Grier killed several drug dealers and apparently got away with it. Bruce Willis’s wife shot him on the courthouse steps. Dennis Farina was shot in his car at the end of Lombard. This episode, though, ends with Sonny demonstrating that he can make arrests without killing people and with Trudy still not having to deal with her fear of using her weapon. It feels a bit wishy-washy, to be honest.
On the plus side, Abel Ferrara does a good job directing this episode. The opening action scene is genuinely exciting and the entire episode is permeated with a melancholy atmosphere. This episode deserves some credit for acknowledging that the Vice detectives spend a lot of time investigating and arresting people with whom they’ve become friends. And it’s good that, after spending so much time in the background, Trudy finally got a showcase episode and Olivia Brown got a chance to prove she could carry a story. This is an effective episode, even if it never quite becomes a classic.
Spring Break On The Lens: The Squad (dir by Rick Walker)
Years ago, three girls were rescued from their abusive foster parents. Under the direction of the enigmatic Alpha (Jennifer Ferguson), Gina (Meghan Carrasquillo), Dani (Grace Evans), and Bella (Alea Hansinger) have made a lot of money and they only have to work one week out of the year. That week is Spring Break, when they hit the beach and sell drugs to all the visiting college students.
Unfortunately, a bigtime gangster known as Frosty the Snowman (Shawnee Brittan) does not want Alpha and the Squad moving in on his business. So, along with targeting Alpha for assassination, he also sends his people down to the beach to take out the members of the Squad. It all leads to a lot of violence, death, and bikini shots. Everyone has their own agenda and no one can be trusted, perhaps not even Alpha. Can the Squad survive or will they end up being dunked in acid?
Just from reading the plot description, you might think that this was a subversive, satirical film in the style of Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers and certainly, there are moments of deliberate humor. The three Squad members spend a lot of time talking between jobs and making fun of the faux tough guys that they have to deal with. There’s a slightly funny bit where one of the girls will make a snarky comment and someone else will reply by accusing them of being a very particular type of bully. “You’re a spray tan bully,” made me laugh more than it probably should have. (That’s probably because, as a redhead, I can’t tan to save my life.)
That said, The Squad takes itself way too seriously at certain points. There’s all sorts of twists and turns and scenes of criminals talking about all of the unpleasant tortures that they intend to inflict until they hear what they want to hear. This is one of those films where all the camera movements are jittery and most of the scense are so underlit that you end up straining eyes just trying to figure out who is talking to who. For a 78-minute film, there’s a lot going on in The Squad and the plot is almost impossible to follow. The film makes the mistake of assuming that we’ll automatically care so much about The Squad that we won’t care that their actions rarely make sense. But since we really don’t get to know either The Squad or Alpha, it’s difficult to get emotionally involved in their attempts to corner the drug market.
For the most part, the acting is poor. The actresses playing the members of the Squad are naturalistic and likable when they’re just lying around and gently giving each other a hard time but the minute they have to start shooting or talking tough, everyone starts trying too hard to act as if they’re in an early Tarantino film and the whole thing just feels awkward. As Frosty, Shawnee Brittan is convincingly evil and some of the actors playing his toothless henchmen are properly creepy. Otherwise, one would be better served by rewatching Spring Breakers.
A Few Late Thoughts On The 96th Oscars
Last night, the Oscars actually ended early.
Not that early, of course. In fact, towards the end of the show, Jimmy Kimmel came out and did his usual anti-Trump schtick just to pad out the running time so that the Oscars managed to make it to the allotted 3 hour and 30 minute mark. (And yes, it is schtick. The late night hosts need Trump just as much as Trump needs them.) The thing is, though, the Oscars usually run over by a good 30 minutes. The show ending on time means that it ended early. This is the first Oscar telecast, in my lifetime, to end on time. I could actually go out and do stuff after the show ended. It was fun!
As for the show itself, it was a relatively smooth production. No one got slapped. There were no major technical snafus. As to be expected, there were a few embarrassing acceptance speeches. I thought Zone of Interest was a powerful film and I also thought Under The Skin was brilliant but I can still do without ever having to listen to Jonathan Glazer give another speech. One can only imagine how Martin Amis would have reacted to Glazer’s “speech.”
(Martin Amis wrote the novel that served as the basis for the film that won Glazer an Oscar. Amis never had much use for the wimpy or the self-important.)
Ryan Gosling’s performance of I Am Ken was the highlight of the show. Of course, then the song failed to win the Oscar. It reminded me a bit of how, in 2021, the entire broadcast was designed to end with Chadwick Boseman receiving a posthumous award, just for a confused Joaquin Phoenix to read Anthony Hopkins’s name instead. Sometimes, the voters really do just vote for who or what they think should win, regardless of the preferred narrative.
In fact, for all the hype, Barbie wasn’t much of a factor in the awards. It won one Oscar, for the song that wasn’t I Am Ken. The Academy was far more impressed with Poor Things. Still, Barbie did better than Killers of the Flower Moon, which won not a single award. Poor Things‘s Emma Stone defeating Lily Gladstone was the upset of the evening. Am I the only one who briefly got worried that Poor Things would somehow win Best Picture over Oppenheimer?
The big winner, of course, was Oppenheimer. My top film of 2023 was Past Lives but Oppenheimer was a close second. (Until Glazer gave his speech, Zone of Interest was my third pick.) Robert Downey, Jr. became the first former SNL cast member to win an acting Oscar. Christopher Nolan accepted his Oscar from Steven Spielberg, which felt like a real changing-of-the-guard moment. Cillian Murphy won Best Actor. I would have voted for Paul Giamatti but Murphy still deserves a lot of credit for holding Oppenheimer together.
Godzilla is an Oscar winner! Yay!
All in all, it was a good show. Occasionally, it was even fun. It was very efficient, as if the Academy specifically picked this year to show ABC that it actually could put on an orderly show that didn’t preempt the entire network’s programming by an extra hour. My advice for next year would be to stop doing the thing where five previous winners came out to praise the current nominees. (That bit has always felt a bit condescending and I would much rather see clips of the nominated performances.) And maybe get John Mulaney to host because Jimmy Kimmel has become just way too impressed with himself.
Now, 2023 is done. Onward to 2024!
(Actually, you know what I haven’t done, yet? I haven’t posted my picks for the best of 2023. I’ll do that this week, even though I doubt anyone cares at this point. But I’ve posted my lists every year and I’m not going to break tradition now. I just have a handful of movies to watch today and tomorrow….)
The Unnominated: The Long Riders (Dir by Walter Hill)
Though the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences claim that the Oscars honor the best of the year, we all know that there are always worthy films and performances that end up getting overlooked. Sometimes, it’s because the competition too fierce. Sometimes, it’s because the film itself was too controversial. Often, it’s just a case of a film’s quality not being fully recognized until years after its initial released. This series of reviews takes a look at the films and performances that should have been nominated but were, for whatever reason, overlooked. These are the Unnominated.
First released in 1980, The Long Riders is one of the many films to tell the story of the James/Younger Gang.
A group of former Confederate guerillas who became some of the most notorious bank robbers to roam post-Civil War America and who were based in Missouri, the brothers who made up the James/Younger Gang were hunted by the Pinkertons and beloved by the citizens who viewed them as being 19th Century Robin Hoods. Following a disastrous attempt to rob a bank in Northfield, Minnesota, the Younger brothers were captured by the government while Jesse and Frank James made it back to Missouri. Jesse was shot in the back by Bob Ford while Frank subsequently surrendered to authorities and made a good living on the lecture circuit.
The Long Riders tells the story of the gang, from their first encounter with the heavy-handed Pinkertons to the Northfield raid to Frank’s eventual surrender. Director Walter Hill both celebrates the legend of the James/Younger Gang while also emphasizing that all the members of the gang were also individual humans who had their strengths and their flaws. Hill emphasizes the idea of the gang being a group of post-war rebels, still fighting a war against a government that is more interested in protecting banks than looking after people. The Long Riders deconstructs the legend while also celebrating it.
The main thing that sets The Long Riders apart from other films about the James/Younger Gang is the fact that the brothers are played by actual brothers. David, Keith, and Robert Carradine plays the Youngers. Randy Quaid plays Clell Miller while Dennis Quaid assumes the role of the cowardly Ed Miller. Nicholas and Christopher Guest make a memorably creepy impression as Charley and Bob Ford. And finally, Jesse and Frank James are played by James and Stacy Keach. (The Keaches also worked on the film’s script). And while Stacy is definitely the more charismatic of the Keach brothers, the film makes good use of James’s rather stoic screen presence. While the rest of the gang enjoys the outlaw life, James Keach’s Jesse is rigid, serious, and ultimately too stubborn and obsessive for his own good.
Now, the casting might sound like a gimmick but it works wonderfully. When Clell chooses the gang over Ed, it carries an emotional weight because we’re watching real brothers reject each other. The comradery between the Carradines carries over to the comradery between the Youngers and it also informs their occasional rivalry with the better known James brothers. While it is Stacy Keach and David Carradine who ultimately dominate the film, every brother in the cast makes a strong impression. Also giving a memorable performance is Pamela Reed as a defiantly independent Belle Starr, who loves David Carradine’s Cole Younger but marries Sam Starr (James Remar). The knife fight between Carradine and Remar is one of the film’s highlights, as is the violent and disastrous attempt to rob the bank in Northfield.
The Long Riders is an exciting and ultimately poignant western but sadly, it received not a single Oscar nomination, not even for the stunning cinematography or Ry Cooder’s elegiac score. Fortunately, just like the legend of the James/Younger Gang, The Long Riders lives on.
Previous entries in The Unnominated:
Music Video of the Day: She’s So High by Miles & Miles (2021, dir by thisislilja)
Happy Oscar Sunday! This song pretty much describes how I’m going to be feeling today. This is my Super Bowl. This should be a national holiday. Today is the day!
Enjoy!
Through the Shattered Lens