Lisa recommended Holiday in Handcuffs to me. I said, “I need a break from Hallmark Christmas romances.” She said, “A.C. Slater in handcuffs.” I said, “I’ll hold onto the key.”
It’s Christmas time but Trudie (Melissa Joan Hart) doesn’t want to go home. She fears that she’s disappointed her parents (Timothy Bottoms and Markie Post) because she’s only a cook in a diner and she doesn’t have a rich boyfriend. Then she sees the obviously successful David Martin (Mario Lopez) having lunch at the diner so she decides to kidnap him, take him home for Christmas, and tell everyone that they’re a couple. That’s a crime, by the way.
I’m almost embarrassed about how much I enjoyed this movie. I respect the law and I don’t think you should break it, even to get a boyfriend. You shouldn’t kidnap anyone, especially at Christmas. Trudie and David won me over, though. This was made for ABC Family so even though it involves a kidnapping, it’s a very nice kidnapping. Trudie may have committed a felony and, at first, David isn’t happy about being kidnapped but soon, Trudie and David are falling in love. David goes from calling the cops to getting down on one knee. June Lockhart plays Trudie’s grandmother and calls the police “pigs.” That’s the power of Christmas. It’s a cute movie that features a heroine who does the exact thing that you should not try at home and who gets Mario Lopez as a result. Maybe it’s just the holiday spirit getting to me but I loved this unhinged Christmas romance.
I finally watched the latest episode of Fear the Walking Dead earlier today and, believe it or not, I’ve actually come to like this show.
Considering that I originally stopped watching Fear the Walking Dead because I got bored with it during its first season, I’m as surprised as anyone to realize that the seventh season of Fear The Walking Dead has won me over. But what can I say? The first three episodes of the show’s final season have been so weird that it’s been impossible not to enjoy them. Everything, from the radiation-scarred landscape to Colman Domingo’s wonderfully odd performance as Strand, has come together to make this show a rather lively look at a world dominated by the walking dead. It also helps, of course, that most of the boring characters from season one are no longer on the show. AMC figured out that audiences didn’t care about an emergency room doctor and her drug addict son. They cared about Morgan and nuclear fallout.
Morgan showed up during the final minutes of the latest episode of Fear the Walking Dead, just long enough to discover that two of his allies had been, depending on how you look at it, either rescued or abducted by Strand. He and Strand had a little argument over the radio. Strand says that he’s going to remake the world, something that Morgan could never figure out how to do. Morgan and Strand both appear to be batshit insane, which is what made the scene so compelling. Would you want to live in a world created by either of them?
The majority of the episode revolved around John Dorie (Keith Carradine) and his daughter-in-law, June (Jenna Elfman), living in an underground bunker. (Before I go any further, I should mention that is the first season of Fear the Walking Dead that I’ve regularly watched since the first one. So, if I misinterpret anything that was established in a previous season, feel free to correct me in the comments but be kind about it.) The bunker was formerly the lair of Teddy, who I assume was a serial killer who John pursued and framed during his previous life as a cop. With June insisting that it was too dangerous to leave the bunker and John suffering from DTS, John became very interested in a hidden room that he and June discovered in the bunker. The room was where Teddy used to embalm his victims and John soon found himself having conversations with the spirit of one of his victims, Cindy Hawkins. Cindy’s body was never recovered and John became obsessed with finding it. Apparently, he made a promise to Cindy’s mother, The fact that Cindy’s mother was probably dead either as a result of zombies or radiation did not seem to matter with John.
The show left it ambiguous as to whether or not Cindy’s spirit was real or just a product of John’s delirious state. But ultimately, it didn’t matter whether or not Cindy’s spirit was real. Cindy was a symbol. Finding Cindy’s body would bring John some sort of peace. It would be a sign that there was still a place for men like John in the world of the walking dead. Keith Carradine did a great job of portraying John’s torment and his single-minded determination to find some shred of hope, even while trapped in a combination of a zombie and a nuclear apocalypse.
It was a good episode, full of enjoyably weird imagery and distinguished by fine performance from both Keith Carradine and Jenna Elfman. Both John and June ended the episode as guests of Strand. Hopefully, they’ll both survive. It’d be a shame for either one of them to exit the season early.
Back in January, I had to get a new cable box. Sadly, when the boxes were switched, I lost everything that I had saved on the DVR. Over a hundred movies and TV shows were wiped away! However, I did not let this get me down. Instead, I decided to take advantage of the fact that I now had a lot more free space by literally recording anything that looked the least bit interesting.
Well, the day of reckoning has finally arrived. It is now March 21st and the DVR is nearly full. So, for the next few weeks, I am going to clean out my DVR and review what I watch! Now, I can’t say how long this is going to take. In the past, I’ve always given myself unrealistic deadlines. So, this time, I’m not giving myself a time limit. Instead, I’m just going to start watching what I’ve got recorded and hope that I’m done by 2018. We’ll see how it goes.
Anyway, I started things off by watching the 2005 mafia romance film, In the Mix.
I recorded In The Mix off of Starz on March 16th. I did this despite the fact that I’ve actually seen In The Mix quite a few times. In The Mix, which is technically a beyond terrible movie, is a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine. It’s a bit like From Justin To Kelly or On The Line. Even though all my instincts as a movie snob tell me not to do it, I can’t help but watch it.
In the Mix stars Usher as Darrell, the hottest DJ in New York. Every woman wants him and every man wants to be him. However, all Usher wants to do is hang out with the family of the local mob boss. It turns out that Don Frank (Chazz Palminteri) was friends with Darrell’s father and Darrell is now friends with Frank’s son, Frankie Jr. (Anthony Fazio). Frank hires Darrell to DJ his daughter’s birthday party.
(Frankie, Jr. is a white kid who wants to be black. Personally, I think there’s probably an interesting story in the idea of the son of an old-fashioned Italian mafia don who idolizes — or appropriates, depending on how you look at it — black culture but Frankie, Jr.’s characterization pretty much starts and ends with him saying, “Yo.”)
At the party, Darrell quickly falls in love with Frank’s daughter, Dolly (Emmanuelle Chriqui) and Dolly likes him too. Especially after he takes a bullet that was intended for her father. While Darrell is recuperating at the mansion, Frank tells Dolly that she can’t go outside unless she has a bodyguard. Dolly says that’s fine as long as the bodyguard is Darrell.
And you know what that means! It’s time for a makeover montage as Darrell gets a whole new wardrobe! Yay!
Anyway, the plot is about as predictable as the casting of Kevin Hart as Usher’s comedic sidekick and Robert Davi as a sinister gangster. Dolly and Darrell fall in love but you already knew that was going to happen. You also probably already guessed that Dolly already has a boring boyfriend named Chad (Geoff Stults) and that Darrell has a crazy ex-girlfriend named Cherise (K.D. Aubert). And, of course, Frank is not initially happy with the idea of Dolly leaving her rich lawyer boyfriend so that she can be with Darrell. However, Darrell eventually gets a chance to prove himself by rescuing Dolly from some rival gangsters and he’s welcomed into the crime family. Of course, he gets shot a second time. “If the ghetto’s so dangerous,” he says as he lies on the ground, “how come I keep getting shot by white people?” Everyone has a good laugh as they wait for the ambulance. That’s the type of movie that In The Mix is.
As I watched In The Mix, I realized that it was actually a lot worse than I remembered and yet, I still enjoyed it. Why? To be honest, it all comes down to Usher and Emmauelle Chriqui, both of whom look really, really good and who have enough chemistry that they can overcome an amazingly clunky script. You reallydo believe that the two of them actually are into each other and you hope that things will work out for them because they’re such a ludicrously attractive couple. In The Mix is an incredibly shallow and silly movie but the stars both look good when they kiss and, ultimately, that’s what a movie like this is all about.
That said, in the future, I probably won’t bother to set the DVR for it again.
I just happened to catch one of my favorite creature-feature films on cable this morning and I had forgotten just how much fun this film was and is to still watch. I am talking about 1990’s horror-comedy Tremors by director Ron Underwood (who would follow it up with the very successful and funny City Slickers a year later) and starring the comedic duo of Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward. I was still in high school when I saw this in the theaters and even then this film had me from the get-go.
Tremors is a throwback to all the Saturday matinee creature-features and monster mash films that were huge during the 50’s and through the 60’s. It’s plot was simple enough that even a little kid could keep up with what was going on. We had a small, rundown mining town in the middle of nowhere (it always happens to be one of those small desert or valley towns which dotted the landscape once the national interstate was completed) whose fortunes have seen better days, hell better decades from the looks of it. The town has its cast of characters with Fred Ward and Kevin Bacon’s roles of Earl and Val the two main leads. We even get long-time genre actor Victor Wong in a supporting role as the town’s only store owner and also it’s two-bit hustler always looking to find a new way to make a buck. One of the funniest roles goes to Michael Gross (the dad in the 80’s hit family show Family Ties) who, with Reba McEntire as his wife, play some crazy-ass survivalists who try fighting off the creatures of this feature the giant, underground worms the survivors have dubbed “Graboids” for their propensity to grab people and animals with prehensile tentacle like appendages which shoot out from their mouths.
No, Tremors wasn’t some live-action version of the ever popular hentai, though I wouldn’t be surprised if the writers of the film were subconsconsciously influenced by them. What the film ended up being was one of the funnier horror comedies which ended the 80’s and announced the 90’s. It was also one of the last few great non-CGI creature features to come out of Hollywood. The Graboids were definitely animatronic and rubber-suited props, but they moved and looked real that one didn’t question whether they were real or not. It would be these creatures who would end up the stars and highlight of this film (the ensemble cast a good second) and follow-up sequels would and could never live up to it. It didn’t help that the sequels ended up using too much CGI which just ruined the illusion built-up by the original.
So, if you ever feel bored and suddenly see that one of the many basic cable channels are showing this little horror-comedy gem from the 1990’s I recommend you watch it with snacks and drinks on hand. There are many ways to make one stop being bored by watching something on the “Tele” and I say Tremors is one of those ways.
Through the Shattered Lens 