At a party/lunch/work function/bar/medical convention, a conversation is going well, but dangerous territory is broached.
The Enemy: ‘What’s your Favorite [insert media example here] of all time?’
The Victim: ‘Oh gosh, there are so many, I don’t know, I can’t think of anything, I…I guess [you blurt out the title of some widely-acknowledged lesser exponent of an artist’s creative oeuvre, ie Prince’s ‘Under the Cherry Moon’ instead of ‘Purple Rain’ or Clint Eastwood’s ‘Paint Your Wagon’ instead of ‘Unforgiven’].
YOU HAVE DIED.
My hypothesis will prove that within a certain set of predetermined enviromental factors, game will not be present.'
Socially, anyhow.
How to avoid such a fate? Where is the reset button of life?
There isn’t one, but those who aren’t willing to learn from history are doomed to repeat it!
If you had known the maneuver known (in my head) as the Reverse Highlander, this wouldn’t have happened.
Are you ready to learn it?
‘So what’s your favorite [blahblahbla] of all time?’
Step One: ‘Well, there can’t be only one.’
See what I did there?
Step One allows you time to gather your thoughts, organize, and target them instead of just shotgunning them all over the face of whoever you’re speaking with. I fully realize that the average person does not live in fear of conversational faux pas like long pauses, losing one’s train of thought or stuttering, but there’s no harm in being prepared and practicing good conversational skills.
Step Two: You’ve gathered your thoughts, and can now progress with the conversation like a stone cold orator, which if I know kids these days is every kid’s dream.
‘Of course I enjoy [Neil Gaiman’s film adaptation of Coraline/most of his books/his accent] but there can’t be only one favorite. And even though it landed heavily on the side of suck, there was something fun about his Beowulf adaptation.’
I’ve come to understand that I, as a straight woman, really dig curvy platinum blondes with great attitudes. Parton has bubbled in everything I’ve ever seen her in; maybe she doesn’t have the widest range and I’m not going to make that joke god it would be so easy but watching her in most anything is a treat. Maybe not 9 to 5, but there are other movies out there that make better use of her ASSETS! comedic timing and sparkling personality.
So much art/poetry/music has been created over lesser things than Dolly Parton. Where is her opera, her pieta, her great red dragon and the woman clothed with the sun?
It was another of those nights.
Spoiled for choice and paralyzed by indecision, I scrolled to the box for 9 to 5 and thought, ‘I remember liking this when I was 6, I’ll give it a try.’
I really, really wanted to like it, but alas.
There’s nothing overtly wrong with the movie, it’s just that the comedy is dated, Jane Fonda couldn’t make me laugh if she fed me Nitrous Oxide, and the movie’s feminist message depressed me by reminding me how little progress women have made since 1983.
Don’t believe me?
Here’s something that will blow your mind:
Many young women think that the PussyCat Dolls are about empowerment.
Taking off your clothes, writhing in your underwear, obsessing over weight and appearance and competing with each other for the attentions of men are just not what I think of when I think of female empowerment.
Photo from the historic 1918 Women's Right to Vote rally.
To be fair, I differentiate between bullshit teases like the VaginaCat Dolls (IT’S THEIR NAME!!) and sex workers. Sex workers and strippers perform an actual honest service, and they know it; their feminism is very 3rd wave, where sex is not a shameful thing, and a naked woman can be empowering. It’s complex though, you can’t just say ‘if you are a stripper you are a feminist’ because that’s faulty logic.
If the VaginaCat dolls were real whores they wouldn’t have shows on network television or sell tshirts to 12 year old girls. They’re about selling the image of sex instead of selling actual sex.
I hate that.
I hate Maxim magazine’s candy ass, giggling and sweating PG-13 version of sex. I hate that when a protagonist has sex in a movie they put on a Serious Face and look like they’re doing anything but having fun. Other people have fun during sex, laughing during quickies or falling out of closets with their drawers around their ankles, but the hero/heroine looks like they’re having their taxes done because sex is a Serious Business and if you smile then you might look stupid and SURPRISE! Sometimes people make stupid faces during sex. IT HAPPENS. Any virgins reading this will either be relieved or horrified to know that.
But back to objectifying Dolly Parton.
I’ve come to understand that I, as a straight woman, really dig curvy platinum blondes with great attitudes. Parton has bubbled in everything I’ve ever seen her in; maybe she doesn’t have the widest range and I’m not going to make that joke god it would be so easy but watching her in most anything is a treat. Maybe not 9 to 5, but there are other movies out there that make better use of her ASSETS! comedic timing and sparkling personality.
I liked the message of 9 to 5, but the comedy too often relied on ‘zany!’ setpieces and people having ‘wacky!’ reactions to things that just weren’t that worth getting excited about.
I kind of wouldn’t mind a remake with competent comedic actresses in the leads; Parker Posey, Amy Poehler, Mo’Nique, Tina Fey, Amy Sedaris, Christina Hendricks… couldn’t you see Ricky Gervais playing the Dabney Coleman role? Maybe too close to his old David Brent character, but maybe he could be a snide underling or something.
Note to self: Enjoying something in your childhood is not a guarantee you will enjoy it as an adult. You also used to eat flavored Chapsticks.
There are a handful of things that make Quigley Down Under stand out as a worthy watch: one is Tom Selleck’s somewhat rakish perfomance. Although a total good guy through and through, there are little hints that he wasn’t maybe the guy in the white hat his whole life. He has a moment where he almost leaves Cora behind, and threatens a dying man with torture.
Pretty much Magnum PI in the 1880s, but still fun.
Ignore the tag to my immediate left–Quigley Down Under is so much better than that terrible copy.
One of the more interesting premises for Westerns in the last thirty years has got to be the premise behind Quigley Down Under:
A Wyoming sharpshooter responds to an ad in the newspaper and winds up in Australia–which was undergoing its own frontier experience very similiar to the US’s Old West, complete with mass murder of the natives.
This last point is very important later on.
Basically, Quigley can shoot with pinpoint accuracy from a distance of just over 1200 yards–which is pretty goddamn impressive NOW. Back in the 19th century that was the equivalent of being pyrokinetic.
Along the way, Quigley picks up the deranged Cora, played with an effusive energy by Laura San Giacomo in an early role. She insists on calling him Roy and seems to think they have some kind of relationship.
Quigley has been on a boat from America for three months, and catches a wagon for several days’ ride into the interior to the ranch of Elliot Marsdon, played by consummate bad guy Alan Rickman–it’s kind of amazing how Rickman’s career in the 80’s was comprised of getting beaten up by American action stars, but it worked for him and he’s still cruising along now, so more power to him. I freaking LOVED him as the snide Sheriff of Nottingham in the Costner version of Robin Hood. Pure camp.
The acting may be camp, but the mustache is all business.
Here lies the gruesomeness behind what seemed to be an otherwise light-hearted film: Marsdon’s plan is to have use Quigley’s sharpshooter skills to kill the Aborigines that have been attacking his ranch–you know, the indigenous people who have been put off their native land and were slaughtered just for being there in the first place.
Let it sink it. I’ll wait.
Quigley is understandably horrified by the plan.
Marsdon’s fawning fascination in Quigley’s personal experience with the American West grosses him out further. He puts Marsdon through a window, and Marsdon has his thugs beat Quigley and drive him to the middle of nowhere and leave him for dead. Some fool has brought along Quigley’s super badass experimental rifle, an 1874 Sharp’s Buffalo Rifle, which Quigley quickly retrieves and uses to make the guy very dead.
There are a handful of things that make Quigley Down Under stand out as a worthy watch: one is Tom Selleck’s somewhat rakish perfomance. Although a total good guy through and through, there are little hints that he wasn’t maybe the guy in the white hat his whole life. He has a moment where he almost leaves Cora behind, and threatens a dying man with torture. Despite being sold as a leading man, I never really found Selleck attractive, but he has a definite charm and a disarming smile that made the character really come to life. He was just a cool guy, and made for a well-conceived, realistic hero.
The other thing that makes QDU stand out is the movie’s main conflict, and the dark subject matter explored as European expansion meant relocation or death for native peoples.
There’s a particularly gruesome moment when a small group of Aborigines, including women and children, are straight up driven over a cliff to die on the rocks below.
This isn’t fiction, or some filmmaker’s conceit.
That kind of monstrous shit really happened–the history of every nation is written in red ink, any student of history knows that, but seeing it in action, even dramatized, is enough to make one sit back and reflect on the human condition as a whole. You don’t need to stand on a street corner and scream about it, but instead let that consideration inform your decisions going forward in life. The world would be a better place, I like to think.
But we were discussing a movie.
The other gem of the film is Lara SanGiacomo’s performance as Crazy Cora, who was shipped to Australia by her husband as a punishment for a simple accident. The event left her mad, prone to erratic behavior, and insistent on calling Quigley ‘Roy.’ Her depiction of someone mentally unbalanced is refreshingly real; someone with real mental problems doesn’t hold up a little sign or provide some other shorthand to let you know when they’re crazy, so you don’t know to dismiss what they’re saying until the sign goes back down. You just have to put up with them and hope for the best.
The movie suffers, to be sure. A slightly corny ending, old school one-dimensional villains, and it isn’t sure if it wants to wander into comedy territory at times, despite dealing with some pretty heavy shit.The costumes and acting hold up well, and don’t seem dated despite the movie being 20 years old.
It’s still one worth catching though, if you find yourself on a Saturday night with a bowlful of popcorn and two hours to kill.
Seriously, Tom Hanks. Why the Hate On Comedy? It's not like it hasn't needed you. God, how it's needed you.
Quite honestly, I got a little burnt out on Dramatic Tom Hanks–I can name the ones I’ve seen on one hand, probably–I realized while watching The Burbs, Joe Dante’s 1989 comedy, that I liked League of Their Own and Forest Gump, and figured Hanks would get back to comedies.
I’m still waiting.
Often considered the heir to Jimmy Stewart’s Everyman throne, it’s fitting that Hanks stars in a film about a bored man conflating the importance of his neighbors’ activities; Stewart’s version of this was Hitchcock’s ‘Rear Window,’ and I’m not really saying the two are comperable outside of ‘they are kind of similiar thematically and they both contain carbon-based life.’
I won’t lie, I love The ‘Burbs, but I was surprised how low it scored on Rotten Tomatoes. I suppose it might be considered a nostalgia piece, and except for one very interesting idea:
That reminiscing on the glorious good old days is a total crock.
Sound familiar? That’s because similiar territory was covered in the Coens’ existential masterpiece, No Country for Old Men, and is the cornerstone of current academic thought on history.
There’s a moment in the Burbs where we hear the story of Skip, a suburbanite who for all intents and purposes is happy with his soda fountain job, white picket fence and 1.8 children or whatever the percentage is. But then we find out the horrible truth–Skip wasted his family with an ice pick one fine summer day, and the story has become the kind of small-town lore they don’t include in the Chamber of Commerce literature. It’s the kind of thing ALL small towns have–violence, scandal, and intrigue are nothing new in the course of human events, and every small town has some kind of American Gothic weirdness going on that gets whitewashed when people talk about the Good Old Days out on the porch.
Skeletons in the closet, toys in the attic, ants at a picnic–however you qualify it, something is rotten in the state of Surburbia.
From Suburbia come delicious, free-range humans, delivered overnight to your local supermarket.
Hanks and his team of misfits –Rick Ducommen and Bruce Dern, with Corey Feldman checking in now and then with an ‘Awesome!’, ‘lame!’, or other 80’s era teenspeak– become more and more obsessed with the notion that all is not well next door. When they cross the line, Walter Fielding (Hanks) is an unwilling participant, but quickly takes up leadership of the group when evidence surfaces suggesting the Klopeks might be up to something unsavory.
I could easily see The Burbs being remade, if it were handled properly. IT might be fun to mix up the setting a little–set it in a little town in England and the Hanks/Ducommon duo could be reimagined with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, of Hot Fuzz/Shawn of the Dead fame.
‘The Burbs is a fun, tightly-directed and performed comedy almost anyone can hang out and enjoy.It occasionally wanders into ‘zany’ territory, but strong comedic performances from Hanks–especially his breakdown at the end–help ground it and keep it from straying into wacky land.
File that understatement along with others such as ‘Salma Hayak is attractive’ and ‘I enjoy dairy products.’
Isn't it amazing someone signed off on this artwork?
When the 80’s movie action ball really started rolling, you got the A group of Schwarzeneggar, Stallone and Willis, then the B group of Lundgren and Van Damme, then the C group of Dudikoff and Jackie Chan.
Way on down the alphabet, somewhere around the weird numbers like ‘Q,’ you’ll find Fred Ward as Remo Williams.
The movie is subtitled ‘The Adventure Begins’ because it was based on a ‘men’s adventure series’ of books with names like ‘The Destroyer.’ It was intended to be the first of a series, but since the first movie never really caught fire the series was abandoned.
There are a couple reasons why the movie didn’t catch fire–the action scenes are lackluster, the villain not that engaging (although he could have been; he’s an arms manufacturer creating faulty weapons and scamming the US military), and the movie gets off to a slow start.
But before we get too much into it, let’s talk about the elephant in the room:
Can you spot the authentic Asian man in this picture? Neither can I, because there isn't one.
Chiun.
Chiun is Williams’s Korean mentor, teaching him everything from martial arts to what not to eat (hamburgers). From him Remo learns how to fight, how to climb stuff, how to dodge bullets and run on water.
The problem is that Chiun, though he is a fantastic character and his chemistry with Remo carries the film at times, is not an Asian man.
Not at all.
In what is either an inspired or monstrously insensitive casting choice, Chiun was played by veteran actor Joel Grey, best known as the Master of Ceremonies in Cabaret and father of 80’s actress Jennifer Grey. The makeup was so convincing that it was nominated for an academy award but lost to Mask.
Adorable! But Adorable =/= Asian.
The use of Yellowface in movies has rarely stirred the same kind of discussion that blackface has, yet it’s no less offensive to the minority it seeks to depict.
Now, there’s a place for it. I think part of what makes a good actor is the ability to create believable characters, and if you can create a character that’s nothing like yourself and it’s still compelling, you’ve done something. It’s probably little consolation that the filmmakers hired one of the best actors of the time to portray Chiun, mostly because there are real Asian actors struggling to get any work in Hollywood.
The bottom line for me is that I didn’t even know a white man played Chiun until I watched the movie last night, and I grew up watching this film. I saw Joel Grey’s name in the credits and thought ‘Huh, I wonder who he plays?’ Then I noticed how there were so few names in the opening credits, had a brainwave, and cringed. “Oh god, they DIDN’T.’
But they did. And you know what? Grey is pretty convincing. It helps that the character is actually well-written: Chiun is Korean, fiercely proud of his heritage and way of life, disdainful of Williams and his lazy American lifestyle, and when he isn’t training Williams is usually seen eating traditional Korean dishes, practicing calligraphy, or watching his soap operas. He is proud of what he’s accomplished with Williams, but would never admit it to the man’s face.
It helps that the film’s writers had dozens of books and some already well-fleshed out characters to draw on–again, it’s hard to accept that they were unable to find a Korean or at least Asian actor to portray Chiun, but I think they were looking for something other than complete authenticity. Remo Williams doesn’t necessarily wink at the audience, but there is some element of self-awareness to the film–it’s in the ludicrous stunts, and just in Fred Ward’s self-effacing, blustery performance. Hell, they got his name off the bottom of a bedpan!
Kate Mulgrew, best known as Janeway from…one of the Star Trek shows that is not Original Series or Next Generation and therefore I know nothing about, puts in a convincing performance as a Major investigating the corrupt arms dealer. It was weird seeing a strong, self-directed woman character in this movie, as entrenched in 80’s action cliches as it is, but there she was, a breath of fresh, ball-busting air.
Bottom line: Remo Williams is a weird, fun actioner ahead of its time in some ways, and strangely staid in others. Ward has a passing charm as a leading man, if only because of his blue-collar, hangdog approach to the world, and he clearly has done some of his own stunts–his face is easily viewable in a few scenes.
This movie has me interested in tracking down some of the books. Apparently there are over a hundred in the series by now, and they’ve been going since the 70’s–with such ample room for character development there’s probably a lot of good stuff being missed out on.
