Things have been a little heavy lately. To lighten them up, here’s a fanvideo some geniuses made showing Daredevil’s Matt Murdoch losing battles with his greatest foe…..
…. gravity.
That man hits the ground A LOT.
Also people drink a lot on that show.
I’m still not done with the first season but it’s a lot of fun so far!
This clip is from the end of the film. It encapsulates the film’s message in its entirety: that loneliness is not being alone, that it’s being around people who make you feel alone, and that to survive you must sometimes make difficult choices. It is also the best part of an otherwise heartrending movie.
There is nudity and some language, but it does more in four and a half minutes than some movies do in more than two hours.
The biggest word on this poster should not have been ‘Hilarious’
I was going to do post on this film, since I watched it recently. If I had watched it in a world where Mr. Williams had not ended his life, I think I would have enjoyed it more. However, this is not that world. It’s impossible to discuss this particular film outside of the context of his suicide; maybe in a few years that will be easier.
Obviously this is kind of a downer post, but I’m not going to do a full review, just a synopsis and a clip from the film. I am not warning anyone away from this film because it was definitely very good, but if suicide is a trigger for you then definitely give this one a miss.
*****SPOILER******
SYNOPSIS: Williams plays Lance Clayton, adivorced father with dreams of being a famous writer struggling with a thankless job as a teacher and a thankless son as a father. When his spoiled, unappreciative, immature and deeply unpleasant son accidentally kills himself during an act of auto-erotic asphyxiation, Clayton changes the position of the body and makes it look like an intentional suicide, penning a touching and introspective note. When the boy’s death rocks the school, a cult of personality grows up around the boy, and so his father also creates a journal full of intelligent perspectives on life. The journal is a huge hit and Kyle’s father enjoys almost overnight success, but the hollowness of the success wears on him and he begins to struggle with the loneliness he feels as a result. An especially hard-hitting moment in the film occurs when Robin Williams’ character, on a talk show, looks directly into the camera and reminds the audience that ‘Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.’
This clip is from the end of the film. It encapsulates the film’s message in its entirety: that loneliness is not being alone, that it’s being around people who make you feel alone; the unspoken coda is that to survive you must sometimes make difficult choices.
There is nudity and some language, but it does more in four and a half minutes than some movies do in more than two hours. It makes perfect use of that most magnificent of glam teamups, David Bowie and Queen’s immortal “Under Pressure.”
Anyhoodle, after Mark is bitten, he has to deal with the fallout of his girlfriend Robin being enraged that he cheated on her. Plus, the Countess still has her sights set on him – she has to drink his blood twice more before Halloween in order to retain her youthful beauty and immortality.
The rest of the movie is fairly predictable, but the dialogue is snappy and the comedy elements are decent. Hutton is clearly having a wonderful time as the femme fatale, and Jim Carrey makes a pretty convincing 80’s goth during the last third of the film, when the vampiric effects are really showing. There’s even a dance sequence!
Recently I saw another gloriously 80s-tastic vampire comedy, 1985’s Once Bitten. Jim Carrey in his first leading role, Lauren Hutton in her prime, and Cleavon Little! Hurrah!
Let the goofyness ensue!
I absolutely love cheesy 80s vampire comedies, and Once Bitten totally delivers. I had been aware of it for some time but I think it was out of print or something during the years I worked in video rental and sale stores as I never could seem to find it, but it’s now available on Netflix Instant Watch.
The Countess, played by Lauren Hutton, is living the life in 80s’ LA. She sleeps in a coffin that looks like a tanning bed, lives in a sprawling mansion that’s a few pink accents shy of the Barbie Dream House, and has a stable of undead household servants she’s assembled in her 400 year life. Hutton is a dream in shiny pink spandex, and it’s clear she’s having a hoot of a time. In all honesty, the movie seems kind of like pr0n for guys into cougars – she’s not exactly a spring chicken but she’s aging VERY well, and the barest tilt of her head or lick of her lips promises that she has PLENTY of experience when it comes to doing the nasty.
Enter Jim Carrey’s character, young, virile and frustrated Mark Kendall, whose girlfriend is afraid to Go All the Way (remember that old chestnut from Fright Night?). When his girl puts him off again, he agrees to go with some randy friends of his into town to some kind of weird hook up bar where people call each other on table phones. I don’t know, it was the 80s. Anyway, his friends both get into altercations with married women with jealous husbands, a bar fight breaks out, and hilarity ensues. There may have even been ridiculous sound effects, I’m not sure (EDIT: I had to check – there were!). Amid the chaos, Mark wanders into the path of the Countess, who takes him home to her pastel MegaMansion and sort of makes a man out of him.
Now, I was fully prepared to talk about how blase the whole thing was, until I realized I’d forgotten a lot of the movie (I watched it a few months ago). I went back to refresh my memory by looking at some quotes on IMDB, and some of them totally made me chuckle. While the performances were a little weak, this movie had some SHARP writing – there is a subplot with Mark’s friends worrying about him, and their disastrous attempts to check him for a vampire bite on his groin in the gym’s shower were actually pretty funny. Subsequently, they fret about people mistaking them for gay (THAT again) and more interestingly, whether or not they might be.
The biggest comedy score for this movie was that it has – dun dun DUNN!!!! – Cleavon Little!
“Oh THAT Cleavon Little!’ I hear you saying!
Best known as Black Bart in Blazing Saddles, Cleavon Little was a very busy actor in television and stage, but only appeared in a few movies, most of which were forgotten. I saw his name in the credits for Once Bitten and was totally astounded.
He doesn’t get as much screen time as he ought, and he’s definitely a supporting character, acting as both snarky foil to the Countess and scheming henchman. While he’s playing a stereotypical ‘sassy gay butler’ trope, my GOD is he hilarious. If the film had been just a little more serious, with a little more emotional resonance, his performance and the film itself would be better remembered. Alas, there’s only so much he can do with the material, and while the movie IS pretty funny, I just wish there had been more roles in Hollywood for him to play than be relegated to a cheesy 80s vampire sex comedy.
Anyhoodle, after Mark is bitten, he has to deal with the fallout of his girlfriend Robin being enraged that he cheated on her. Plus, the Countess still has her sights set on him – she has to drink his blood twice more before Halloween in order to retain her youthful beauty and immortality.
The rest of the movie is fairly predictable, but the dialogue is snappy and the comedy elements are decent. Hutton is clearly having a wonderful time as the femme fatale, and Jim Carrey makes a pretty convincing 80’s goth during the last third of the film, when the vampiric effects are really showing. There’s even a dance sequence!
ADORABLE!
There is a great scene where the Countess follows Mark and Robin to a store in the mall, where Robin is trying to help Mark pick out an outfit, suggesting various pastels and Cosby-type sweaters and white jeans (barf), and the Countess keeps surreptitiously intervening, suggesting black leather and such.
A fine vintage!
Additionally, the movie touches on some neuroses about sex that were so rampant during the 80s, especially about changing gender roles and the AIDS epidemic.
While it does make the sexually-aggressive Countess into a bad girl, Hutton does her best to make the character charming and fun, even if she IS evil and selfish. It’s clear that while she adores Mark, but he is just another fling in her long life, as illustrated by the stable of ghosts that live in the Countess’s basement. No doubt she courted each one as fervently before drinking their blood and losing interest.
Robin, though a boring good girl, is plucky and fiesty with her denim overalls and culottes, and is at least equally likeable. Usually the virgins in these movies are dull as dishwater, but she does a great job making the material work.
Overall, Once Bitten is another fun entry to the ’80s Vampire’ movie genre. It’s available on Netflix, and is a fun Friday night with friends nostalgia-fest.
The late nineties saw a small explosion in movies with an overabundance of CG, pretty much because a lot of scripts were being greenlighted purely on their reliance on effects (Wild Wild West, I am definitely looking at you). Although the 5th Element does its share of leaning on effects and spectacle, Luc Besson had the sense to keep them mostly in the background and focus on practical effects and foreground activity. Filling out the cast with recognizable faces from the fashion world du jour helps as well, and their outfits and makeup would have inspired me to new heights with Barbie modifications had I seen the movie as a child.
Coming at you, in FANTASTIVISION!
There will never be another summer like the one in which the 5th Element came out.
It was 1997. I had just graduated from high school, and was working at Cross County 8 in West Palm Beach. Cross County has since been torn down, but when it was still standing (briefly, it was the only thing in that mall still standing, as the rest of the mall had been torn down) it was known to be one of the most ghetto theaters in which to see a movie. Most of my friends wouldn’t come see me, even if I promised to get them in for free, mostly because the police were at that theater every weekend and some weeknights, too. My manager was doing (I suspect, no proof of course) mountains of coke as well as a concessionist, and I know the latter to be true because she shwoed me the fancy nighty he bought her. Maybe in another universe platonic friends give each other gifts intended to be worn over their naughty bits, but not in the universe in which Cross County 8 existed.
Used condoms on the floor, rats in the concession, most of the staff stoned, and a homeless Vietnam vet who would pay his 2.75 admission and watch movies all day. The cokefiend manager would give him a drink and a bag of popcorn and let him be, and at the end of every day he would hobble out on his crutches. One leg ended below the knee in a gnarled stump, and his pants sometimes slid down until you could see his junk, but otherwise he was a perfect gentleman.
The rest of the mall was mostly derelict; there was a gift shop of some kind, and an abandoned marionette theater, but otherwise all the storefronts were vacant. The whole thing looked like a level in Silent Hill, and it would not have shocked me to have run across an anthropomorphic vagina wandering around, stalking the hallways on chicken legs that end in giant steel claws.
"I'm sorry sir, but I can promise that our evening ticket prices are not within my control. Yes, 5.75 for evening IS outrageous." God, that was a long time ago.
It was such a shitty theater that we didn’t even get big new movies; we got a lot of second runs, some film festival stuff, and a lot of detritus, but otherwise the big expensive action pictures went to the theater down the road, that had a decent sound system. Which is where I took some friends to see The 5th Element on opening weekend.
If you haven’t seen the movie, imagine something along the lines of a bigass fashion show/music video in space, with monsters and laser beams and beautiful people running around doing things. There’s not a lot of coherence to it, storywise, which isn’t much of a drawback. I know almost NO ONE who watches the movie for the climactic scene at the end, when Leeloo must summon the will to care about the human race in order to save the universe; we watch it for the costumes, the effects, the music (especially the music) and for a batshit loony performance from Gary Oldman, and a brilliant comedic turn by Ian Holm.
This is where I make the official and obligatory mention of his hair. Yes. Yes, it is ridiculous.
Seriously. You just don’t think of him being that funny, but Iam Holm is wonderful as the priest Vito Cornelius, who recognizes Leeloo as the savior of humankind and fumbles his way into helping her.
Another underappreciated performance is Bruce Willis as the standard action foil; his working-class hero amusement at the ridiculous situations in which he finds himself carry the movie for me now, but at the time I remember thinking he just seemed like a smartass. Now I realize he was just having as much fun as a straight man in an orange rubber vest can while pretending to fly a bulbous space taxicab. The story is so overwritten there’s even a sub-subplot in which his mother calls and complains to him about what an ungrateful child he is. No idea why that was necessary, but it was fun.
I did find myself wondering though, in terms of cinematic spectrum, does Bruce Willis consider The 5th Element to be his Zardoz?
You're welcome. And now, like The Ring, in order to unsee it you must inflict it on others.
I certainly hope not.
Like many other excellent sci-fi films with an abundance of effects and a cast of actors eager to make their last payment on houses and cars, The Fifth Element does not begin with a giant stone head flying through the air spouting gibberish and vomiting assault rifles. Or brutal rapes.
I guess I’m just picky and weird about that.
The non-formulaic but familiar story has enough twists to keep things interesting, and honestly the plot is such a goofy mess in places it doesn’t really matter.
The late nineties saw a small explosion in movies with an overabundance of CG, pretty much because a lot of scripts were being greenlighted purely on their reliance on effects (Wild Wild West, I am definitely looking at you). Although the 5th Element does its share of leaning on effects and spectacle, Luc Besson had the sense to keep them mostly in the background and focus on practical effects and foreground activity. Filling out the cast with recognizable faces from the fashion world du jour helps as well, and their outfits and makeup would have inspired me to new heights with Barbie modifications had I seen the movie as a child.
But the shining moment of the movie, which will always be what I associate with it and the scene that I watch over and over again, is the Diva Plavalaguna’s performance.
Check it, y’all.
Makes me want to get up and DANCE.
When I am by myself and listening to it, I do my best to sing along, but, well, you can imagine how that sounds: a cat and a drum machine in a blender.
A friend in high school who was an opera singer declared it one of the greatest things she’d ever heard, and I wish I wish I WISH there was a whole album of this. I mean I have the 5th element soundtrack, but I need MOAR than just one song. Anyone have any suggestions, please post them below. I’ve got a lot of Die Form, but it’s just not the same–Inva Mulla Tchaka’s voice is so joyful, the notes and tones don’t just resonate, they soar. I love the joyfulness the song brings, especially when contrasted to the morose excerpt from Lucia Di Lammermoor that precedes it.
And it provides a suitable brain-rinse to the mildly disturbing image up above. I mean it’s not horrifying, Connery’s a good-looking dude; but to me that picture is the equivalent of seeing a good friend reduced to selling off all their possessions in order to make rent.
The 5th Element is available on Instant Watch, and there is no better way to spend an evening, I promise.
