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Reviews
I'll Never Forget What's'isname (1967)
Oliver Reed, Orson Welles, and Dolly Birds...
I first saw this movie on Canadian TV on the midnight movie on CJOH and it has stuck in my head ever since. Back then, I enjoyed it for the psychedelic dream sequences, the dolly birds, and the good ol' "frank sexuality." Watching it again on DVD thirty years later, I find it still resonates, but for different reasons. Now, I relate more to Quint's rejection of his entire way of life and the way he wants to be free of it, but ultimately can't escape it.
The Super-8 commercial he makes at the end of the film is still dazzling -- one would think that Michael Winner would have gone on to greater things, but this film is the best thing he ever did. Same goes for Oliver Reed, although he made some good ones in the late '60s and early '70s. Several other Reed-Winner collaborations, THE SYSTEM (a/k/a THE GIRL GETTERS), THE JOKERS, and HANNIBAL BROOKS, are also worth checking out.
Excellent performances by Reed, Orson Welles, Carol White, and Harry Andrews, and a top script by Peter Draper (who also wrote THE SYSTEM).
Favorite bit of dialogue:
QUINT: I'm going to find an honest job.
LUTE: Silly boy. There aren't any.
Yardbirds (1992)
DVD Doc in Need of an Upgrade
As rock docs go, this is pretty good; As a DVD, it's pretty lame. There are so many of these career retrospective videos that make the same mistake: presenting great vintage clips in truncated form without the option of viewing the entire performance. Obviously, the filmmakers got the rights to use the footage, so why not use the whole clip, or at least offer it as a bonus feature? Here we get the entire version of a few numbers, but others -- the excellent live takes of "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago" and "Dazed and Confused," to name but two -- are presented as mere snippets. And that's a drag, because they are unavailable elsewhere. The clip from Antonioni's BLOW-UP is also cut short, but you find that easily enough on the DVD re-ish of that film.
Rhino does a great job with their CD reissues, but this DVD seems to have been slapped together from the original VHS release, with no extras. Also, the sound quality on the vintage TV clips certainly could have been tweaked a bit.
That said, there is much to enjoy here, not least of which is the music made by this great group, which influenced many a teenage garage band here in the US. Not to mention the go-go girls, and the haircuts that inspired a generation. The interviews are also good, and one can't help but notice the resemblance of Jeff Beck to Nigel Tufnel (Chistopher Guest's character in THIS IS SPINAL TAP)!
Paparazzi (2004)
Loathsome Revenge Fantasy from Mel Gibson
That crazy Mel. This is easily the worst film of '04, and that's saying something. It's a nasty little number from Mel Gibson's Icon Productions about how tough it is to be rich and famous, and how tabloid photojournalists are all drug-addled rapists and killers. Well, actually, the only killer in the movie is the "hero," Bo Laramie, played by the charmless Cole Hauser. He's especially unconvincing as an action hero-type movie star, because he has zero charisma, but I digress. After some overzealous paparazzi cause an accident that puts his son in a coma, Bo goes all "vengeance is mine" on the seedy paparazzi, setting up one to be gunned down by the LAPD, bludgeoning one to death with a baseball bat, then framing the foaming-at-the-mouth Tom Sizemore for it. And he gets away with it! A better ending would have been to have him caught and executed for his premeditated kill spree. Then Mel could have made a sequel: LETHAL INJECTION 2. We're supposed to root for this creep? This terribly made film actually makes one sympathize with the villains, because the hero is such a loathsome, murdering a-hole, and Hauser is so bad in the part. Awful, reprehensible, and a waste of 80 minutes of your life. Whoever gave this film a "10" (6.2% of IMDb voters) is either on Mel's payroll, or seriously disturbed. A "10" would be CITIZEN KANE or THE GODFATHER. This is only a "10" on the list of "Incredibly Bad Films Directed by Mel Gibson's Hairdresser."
Pretty Things (2005)
A Blown Opportunity
This is one of the most frustrating and infuriating viewing experiences I've had in years, and a real blown opportunity to do a comprehensive job telling the story of these burlesque queens. The problem is that Liz Goldwyn inserts herself into the story, and takes it over with her misguided attempts to do striptease, something that she has neither the looks nor the body for.
I mean, if you want to strip, it helps if you have actual curves. This woman needed to go on the all-ButterBurger diet for a month. But it's not her anorexic frame that's the problem here. It's her ego-tripping, wrongheaded approach to the subject that torpedoes this project. Despite having one of the Maysles as her cinematographer, she violates all the rules of documentary film-making, and misses the point time and again.
The interviews are great, and funny in spite of the filmmaker, who keeps trying to insert her third wave feminist rhetoric into their life stories. Whereas the strippers themselves are very matter-of-fact about their careers, Goldwyn keeps trying to tell them how they "owned their sexuality." When the women tell her about the raincoat crowd masturbating under newspapers while the dancers did their bump-and-grind, her reaction is priceless: "How dare they!," she says, adding, "That's not what it was about...It was about witticism...Empowerment." No, it was about women taking their clothes off and guys wanking to it. As one of the strippers says, "We were the poor man's brothel." If Goldwyn has a problem with guys beating off to strippers, she needn't worry that anyone will be masturbating to the striptease number she performs at the end of the film.
Zorita, a stripper who often used a snake in her act, has a lot of the best lines. Goldwyn keeps asking Zorita about her lesbianism. When she asks what use Zorita had for men, the response is classic: "A hairy chest and a limp joint. Who needs it?" At another point, when teaching the fan dance to the clueless filmmaker, Zorita tells her, "You're queer for asses." Anyway, there's some worthwhile stuff to be found here, but there could have been so much more if not for the overprivileged and undertalented Goldwyn and her lame, Women's Studies take on classic striptease.
Oh yeah -- she also loses points for using David Bowie's "Oh! You Pretty Things" as the theme song, instead of the Bo Diddley song.
Common Law Wife (1961)
A Humanity-Hatin' Cesspool of Sleaze
"Common Law Wife," a made-in-Texas drive-in quickie directed by exploitation maestro Larry Buchanan ("Mars Needs Women," etc.) has it all: inept cinematography, bad acting, dubbing that's reminiscent of a Sir Run Run Shaw production, and, best of all, twisted, hate-filled characters like lusty old Uncle Shug, who wants to get rid of his aging common law wife, a shrieking harridan played by Anne McAdams (who would go on to have a lengthy career), so he can shack up with his niece, Jonelle, who wants to get rid of HIM -- permanent-like! Jonelle (stripper name: Baby Doll) has been takin' it all off in New Orleans, and damn if they didn't cast a real stripper in the part!
No nudity here, just your garden variety sleaze and down-home depravity. They don't make 'em like this any more, which is either a good thing or a bad thing...
Bobby Darin: The Darin Invasion (2003)
Darin Swings on Canadian TV!
1970 TV special, shot in Toronto, with Bobby Darin hosting an enjoyable hour-long (well, actually 42 minutes) variety show with guests George Burns, Linda Ronstadt (lovely, doing "A Long, Long Time," accompanied by BD on guitar) and the Poppy Family (Canadian pop-rock duo of "Which Way You Going, Billy?" infamy). It's like Vegas, but with more Canadian Content. Darin covers "Hi-De-Ho" by Blood Sweat & Tears, probably because it was written by a Canadian. The video quality is a little soft, which kind of adds to the period feel. Darin's toupee has a few bad moments in the opening number (Jackie Wilson's "Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher"), but his fancy footwork makes up for it. The Fagin medley is a bit much, though...
The "Mack is Back" DVD, taken from a 1973 live show, has more music, better picture quality and extras.
The Darin Invasion (1970)
Darin Swings in Canadian TV Special
1970 TV special, shot in Toronto, with Bobby Darin hosting an enjoyable hour-long (well, actually 42 minutes) variety show with guests George Burns, Linda Ronstadt (lovely, doing "A Long, Long Time," accompanied by BD on guitar) and the Poppy Family (Canadian pop-rock duo of "Which Way You Going, Billy?" infamy). It's like Vegas, but with more Canadian Content. Darin covers "Hi-De-Ho" by Blood Sweat & Tears, probably because it was written by a Canadian. The video quality is a little soft, which kind of adds to the period feel. Darin's toupee has a few bad moments in the opening number (Jackie Wilson's "Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher"), but his fancy footwork makes up for it. The Fagin medley is a bit much, though...
The "Mack is Back" DVD, taken from a 1973 live show, has more music, better picture quality and extras.
Team America: World Police (2004)
Makes Orgazmo Seem Like Citizen Kane
Although I did get a few cheap laughs out of this film -- the Matt Damon puppet, the vomiting scene, some of the songs -- for the most part I found it to be unfunny and almost right-wing. I was expecting the satire to be a little more even-handed, with both the right and the left being lampooned, but Parker and Stone saved their most savage (and I do mean savage) attacks for the likes of Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn. The reason the filmmakers chose to portray Moore in such a harsh light is because they say that people mistook a piece of animation in "Bowling for Columbine" for their work. Is that Moore's fault?
Their message seems to be "Liberal = Bad." I don't think that celebs who speak out against the war are as bad as, say, the chickenhawk politicians who conceived the wrongheaded "Operation Iraqi Freedom" and the Patriot Act. I didn't miss the point that "Team America" is arrogant and reckless, but I do think that the film's "message" is undercut by its nastiness and misplaced venom toward the Hollywood Left, and even more by the witless, half-baked script. That said, I'd like to add that I am a fan of "South Park." Maybe if they had written a part for Cartman, I wouldn't have hated this movie so much.