Tag Archives: Sting

Scene That I Love: Kyle MacLachlan in Dune

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy birthday to the one and only Kyle MacLachlan!

Today’s scene that I love comes from MacLachlan’s film debut, 1984’s Dune.  MacLachlan played Paul Atriedes in David Lynch’s unfairly maligned film and his otherworldly vibe made him as perfect for the role as he would later be for Agent Dale Cooper in Lynch’s Twin Peaks.  As good as Timothee Chalamet was in the more recent adaptations of Frank Herbert’s novel, I still feel that MacLachlan is the superior Paul.

In this scene, Paul confronts the people who have been trying to destroy him and he proves his worth in an armed duel with Sting.

The Sting trailer brings the creepy crawly Nightmare Fuel!

Posted on by Leonard Wilson

Spiders.

If there’s one creature on the planet that gets a bad rap, it’s the spider. They have too many legs, too many eyes (save for Tarantulas), and they were designed with faces perfect for making people shudder. Without them, however, we’d be overrun with insects. I don’t even to look at this trailer to know this is pure Nightmare Fuel. One rapidly growing alien spider running loose in an apartment complex? There’s so much Nope in this, I don’t even know where to start.

At least the hero’s named Charlotte. That’s pretty cool. In Sting, we have an apartment complex and an alien spider that seems to be growing both in size and in appetite.

Sting will be out in theatres this April.

Music Video of the Day: Redlight by Swedish House Mafia and Sting (2022, dir by ????)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Before clicking on play, please be aware that this video features flashing lights and comes with an epilepsy warning.  If you watch, enjoy!

You don’t have to put on the red light,
Those days over
You don’t have to sell your body to the night
You don’t have to wear that dress to night
Those days are over
You don’t have to put on the Redlight
Those days are over
You don’t have to put on the Redlight
Those days are over
You don’t have to put on the Redlight
Those days are over
You don’t have to put on the Redlight
Those days are over
You don’t have to put on the Redlight
Those days are over
You don’t have to put on the Redlight

Music Video of the Day: Demolition Man by Grace Jones (1982, directed by Jean-Paul Goude)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Demolition Man is a song that’s had a long history. It was first written in 1980 by Sting, while he was staying at Peter O’Toole’s home in Ireland. It was written for the Police but they never got around to recording it. In 1981, Grace Jones requested that Sting send her a song. Sting sent over the demo for Demolition Man and Grace Jones was then the first artist to release a recording of the song. It was only after the release of Grace Jones’s version that The Police released their own version and, of course, Sting has gone on to regularly perform the song as a solo artist. And, of course, the song reached a whole new level of popularity with the release of the Sylvester Stallone/Wesley Snipes/Sandra Bullock action film of the same name.

The music video for Grace Jones’s version was shot during her One Man Show tour. The video was included on compilation that was released in 1982 to promote interest in Jones’s latest album, Living My Life. Like all of the videos shot during the tour, it was filmed at either London’s Drury Lane Theater or The Savoy Theater in New York City. The video was directed by Jean-Paul Goude, the French artist who was a long-time collaborator with Grace Jones and the father of her son, Paulo.

Enjoy!

Music Video of the Day: Money for Nothing by Dire Straits (1985, directed by Steve Barron)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

In a 1984 interview, Dire Straits guitarist Mark Knopfler had this to say about the song that would not only become the band’s biggest hit but also one of the best known videos from the early years of MTV:

The lead character in “Money for Nothing” is a guy who works in the hardware department in a television/​custom kitchen/​refrigerator/​microwave appliance store. He’s singing the song. I wrote the song when I was actually in the store. I borrowed a bit of paper and started to write the song down in the store. I wanted to use a lot of the language that the real guy actually used when I heard him, because it was more real….

According to Knopfler, he was in a New York appliance store when he heard a man who worked there complaining about all of the TVs in the shop being tuned to MTV.  (Urban legend has it that the man was watching a Motley Crue video.)  Knopfler wrote down the man’s exact words, which included the famous line about “money for nothing and chicks for free,” and later set them to music.  (Knopfler also included the man’s controversial description of a rock star as being “that little faggot with the earring and the makeup.”  In 2011, 26 years after the song’s initial release, that line would lead to the  Canadian Broadcast Standards Council banning the song from being played on Canadian radio stations.)  After hearing the band’s initial recording of the song, Sting suggested the “I want my MTV” line and was rewarded with a co-writer credit.

The ground-breaking music video was one of the first to feature computer animation.  Under the direction of Steve Barron, Ian Pearson and Gavin Blair (who later founded Rainmaker Studios) created the animation using a Bosch FGS-4000 CGI system and a Quantel Paintbox system.

Money for Nothing spent 3 weeks as the number one single in the United States and the video was named Video of the Year at the 3rd Annual MTV Music Awards.

A Movie A Day #292: The Bride (1985, directed by Franc Roddam)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

The Bride opens where most films about Frankenstein and his monster end.

The Baron (played by fucking Sting, of all people) has agreed to create a bride for his creation, who in this movie is named Viktor and played by Clancy Brown.  Jennifer Beals plays the Bride, who is named Eva.  Eva looks like a normal, beautiful wielder-turned-dancer so when she first sees Viktor, she screams.  Viktor gets upset and starts to trash the laboratory.  “Don’t be impertinent!’ snaps the Baron’s assistant (Quentin Crisp).  A fire breaks out.  Quentin Crisp dies and so does another assistant played by Timothy Spall.  The monster escapes.  The Baron takes Eva into his household.  The Baron is obsessed with controlling Eva, who wants her independence and who has fallen in love with Cary Elwes.  When Eva sees a cat, she screams.  “You never told me about cats,” she tells the Baron, “I thought it was a tiny lion!”

The rest of the movie is a bewildering collection of cameos from respected thespians forced to recite some of the worst dialogue in film history.  Viktor befriends Rinaldo the dwarf (David Rappaport), who tells Viktor about how much he dreams of one day seeing Venice.  After Rinaldo is murdered by Alexei Sayle, Viktor swears that he will go to Venice and he will take Eva with him.

(Timothy Spall,  Quentin Crisp, and Alexei Sayle are not the only British performers to be strangely miscast in The Bride.  Keep an eye out for Phil Daniels, Ken Campbell, and Tony Haygarth, all wasted in small roles.)

The Bride attempts to put a revisionist, feminist spin on the story of Frankenstein but it ultimately just looks like a two hour Duran Duran video, with a guest vocals provided by Sting.  The scenes with Clancy Brown and David Rappaport work but otherwise, every important role is miscast.  Jennifer Beals is monotonous as the Bride and Sting never comes close to suggesting that he is capable of the type of mad genius that would be necessary to create life.  When it comes to the Bride of Frankenstein, stick with the original.

One final note: Both Sting and Phil Daniels also appeared in a much better film from Franc Roddam, Quadrophenia.  I recommend seeing Quadrophenia almost as much as I recommend forgetting about The Bride.

Cleaning Out The DVR Yet Again #16: Zoolander 2 (dir by Ben Stiller)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

(Lisa recently discovered that she only has about 8 hours of space left on her DVR!  It turns out that she’s been recording movies from July and she just hasn’t gotten around to watching and reviewing them yet.  So, once again, Lisa is cleaning out her DVR!  She is going to try to watch and review 52 movies by Wednesday, November 30th!  Will she make it?  Keep checking the site to find out!)

zoolander_2_poster

On October 14th, I recorded Zoolander 2 off of Epix.

A sequel to the 2001 cult hit, Zoolander 2 came out earlier this year and got absolutely terrible reviews and quickly vanished from theaters.  Watching the film last night, I could understand why it got such terrible reviews.  Zoolander 2 is not only a terrible movie but it’s also a rather bland one.  Somehow, the blandness is even more offensive than the badness.

Zoolander 2 opens with Justin Bieber getting assassinated and Derek Zoolander (Ben Stiller) being forced to come out of retirement and discover why pop stars are being targeted.  And, of course, Zoolander can’t do it without the help of Hansel (Owen Wilson)!  Penelope Cruz is in the film as well, playing  Zoolander’s handler and essentially being wasted in a role that could have been played by anyone.

Oh!  And Will Ferrell returns as well.  Ferrell gives a performance that essentially shouts out to the world, “Fuck you, I’m Will Ferrell and no one is going to tell Will Ferrell to tone his shit down!”

Actually, I think everyone in the world is in Zoolander 2.  This is one of those films that is full of cameos from people who probably thought a silly comedy would be good for their image.  For instance, there’s a huge number of journalists who show up playing themselves.  Matt Lauer shows up and I get the feeling that we’re supposed to be happy about that.  There was a reason why people cheered when the sharks ate him in Sharknado 3.

You know who else shows up as himself?  Billy Zane!  And Billy Zane has exactly the right type of attitude for a film like this.  He shows up and he mocks the whole enterprise by giving the Billy Zaniest performance of Billy Zane’s career.  For that matter, Kiefer Sutherland also shows up as himself.  I’m not really sure what Kiefer was doing in the film but he makes sure to deliver all of his lines in that sexy growl of his.  Kiefer knows what we want to hear.

You may notice that I’m not talking about the plot of Zoolander 2.  That’s largely because I couldn’t follow the plot.  This is an incredibly complicated film but it’s not complicated in a funny way.  Instead, it’s complicated in a way that suggests that the film was made up on the spot.  It’s as if the cast said, “We’re all funny!  Just turn on the camera and we’ll make it work!”

The problem with Zoolander 2 is obvious.  The first film pretty much exhausted the comic possibilities of making a spy film about shallow and stupid models.  Don’t get me wrong — the first film did a good job but it’s not like it left any material untapped.  But I would ask you to indulge me as I imagine an alternate reality.

Consider this: Terrence Malick was reportedly a huge fun of Zoolander.

Let’s take just a minute to imagine a world in which Ben Stiller asked Terrence Malick to write and direct Zoolander 2.  And let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that Malick agreed!

Just think about it — 4 hours of Zoolander and Hansel staring up at the sky and thinking about nature.  “What is this thing that causes the heart of man to beat?” Zoolander asks.  “Are we nature or has nature become us?” Hansel replies.

That would have been a fun film!