Blogmerge!

Party's over here ya'll: The Criterion Project

Slow ride, Take it easy

Just got around to seeing a movie I've been wanting to cross off my list for years, Freeway. This film hailed from the fantastic year of 1996 (sad to admit that was one of my favorite years in life?) and features a pretty great mix of a cast: Reese Withespoon, Kiefer Sutherland, Brooke Shields, Brittany Murphey and Dan Hadeya (that would be Cher's dad from Clueless.) And! that girl who played Marsha's lesbian friend in the Brady Bunch Movie.

Its somewhat difficult to classify this movie, because its not really funny enough to be a comedy, but its kind overdramatic for a thriller, so I'll just make things simple and call it simply, odd. It wants be a dark film -- and to some people it might be -- but it missed the mark a little for me. Director Matthew Bright adapted the story of Little Red Riding Hood, replacing a forrest and Grandmother's house with a freeway and a trailer park. Kiefer plays the role of serial killing creepster "Bob Wolverton" and did a damn good job! Can't say the same for Reese - she's fun to look at but her trashy Southern accent made the movie somewhat unwatchable. Brooke Shields exemplified the best of 90's poofy fashion - but I can't link to any pictures without spoiling the movie. So I'll link to this instead.

The credits of a cartoon wolf chasing various hot chicks around the screen paired with a Danny Elfman guitar score are pretty awesome.

69 Boy(girl)z

I grew up in a cable TV-less household. This left me with seven basic channels to choose from: CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX, UPN 9, WPIX and PBS.  There were probably several reasons why WPIX (which has since dropped the far-from-vestigal W in its name) was my favorite of the bunch, but all I can recall at this present moment is that it was the closest thing I had to a movie channel. What I remember most are the commercials they ran for their movies. Well actually just a little salient bit of each. For example there's the clip from 'Moonstruck' where Cher urges some guy to 'Snap out of it!' and, without fail, slaps him in the face. Another I can recall is for 'Tootsie' with the stars & stripes imagery shown in the picture above. I remember it so goddamn well. However I never saw either of these movies.

Now when my pizza guy demanded that I watch Tootsie the other week, I expected to see something along the lines of Dustin Hoffman as a woman marching and saluting the camera for two hours. I was wrong. It's more like Dustin Hoffman as Mrs. Doubtfire for two hours, but replace Sally Fields with steady employment.

Choice quote: 'Tell me what's wrong or I'll kill you.'

Make it spunky, monkey

So, I'm cheating. My first post is about two movies that aren't exactly movies. Apropos of nothing, BAMcinematek screened these gems back to back: The Motown Revue and The Rolling Stones 1964-1975. Cue Bill Shelley, a film archivist with an arsenal of rare live performance footage of every kind. He's digitizing his collection and occasionally edits what he likes for screenings. Kind of like a live performance mix tape. Oh, did I just drool in public?

This amazing clip catches many highlights not including Otis Redding shakin' out to "Shake" with Eric Burden from the Animals and Tina Turner's "Honkey Tonk Woman," ooooh man, I haven't even mentioned the Stones....

But this isn't a music blog so I'll wrap things up here. Bill's website is being reworked and will hopefully include a larger (and errr, more detailed) roster of screenings to catch around the country. I'll keep ya'll posted - they are not to be missed. --Lex

Opening pleasantries

My mother always said, 'Every web blog should have an intro post'. Which is funny, because who still calls them web blogs? So embarrassing. Anyway, welcome!
***Spoiler alert***
The next posts will be about movies.