Didn't Care For It Watch: BUtterfield 8 (1960)

Watched:  08/23/2024

Format:  Max

Viewing:  First

Director:  Daniel Mann

Selection;  Jamie, but following my thread that we should try this movie sometime from a week ago

Look, I'm the first person to start lecturing people about how you need to watch a movie from two points of view - (1) the context you bring to it, and (2) the context in which it was made and released.  You sorta need to think of it like watching the customs of another country and trying to incorporate their point of view to appreciate a visit there.  So, it's part and parcel of watching classic film that one will see outdated concepts, racism, sexism, etc...  Our forebears' ways are not the ways of our current norms.

And, yet...  BUtterfield 8 (1960)  is a rough ride.  

It's the sort of thing we'd treat like a punching dummy or pinata in film criticism by the 1990's - so by 2024, it feels super strange.  The culture that spawned the film is on life support or hospice - with some geniuses still thinking this era was somehow golden.  But, yeah, it's essentially a movie in which all the bad habits of virgin/ whore dichotomies are the skeleton upon which the story hangs and this story very much about women is always secretly about the needs of one man - and a horrible man at that.

Schadenfreude Watch and TL;DR discussion: The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel (2024)

Watched:  08/19/2024

Format:  YouTube

Viewing:  First/ Second

Director:  Jenny Nicholson

This will be a TL;DR post.  Heads up.  If Nicholson can drop a 4-hour video, I can drop a jumbo-sized post.

I've provided headings if you want to scroll through to get to certain sections.

Nicholson is an Online Person

I'm counting Jenny Nicholson's in/famous Disney's Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser  four hour YouTube opus as a documentary.  Because that's what The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel (2024) is - a document of a particular thing, told with a specific point of view. 

I was introduced to Nicholson via the Dug a few years ago, and, during COVID, I wound up watching several of her older videos, after watching her near four hour discussion of the Utah-based "immersive" experience, "Evermore".  I highly recommend that video as well - and it gives a lot of street cred to Nicholson as a non-crank when it comes to role-play experiences.

For years, Nicholson was a pop-culture YouTuber - somehow not adopting the weird quirks of YouTube stardom - likely because she came pre-loaded with her own bag of quirks.  She discussed Star Wars movies, Harry Potter, whatever was in cinemas, and was very into theme parks and nerdy experiences.

I think I would describe Nicholson as the quiet, kinda nerdy girl you saw in the hallway in high school and you assumed you had nothing in common, and then you sat next to her in Government, found out she's actually hilarious, and then you're buds, even if you don't hang out much outside of school.

Nicholson is a small woman, and she's unassuming.  She wears costumes during parts of her videos, knowing that just seeing her staring at the camera is probably a lot.  And she surrounds herself with plushies - some of which are mind-boggling, like what I think is a 4 foot high Porg.

Animation Watch: Fire & Ice (1983)

Watched:  08/18/2024

Format:  BluRay from Austin Public

Viewing:  First

Director:  Ralph Bakshi

This was the weekend for watching movies I considered viewing during COVID lockdown but never got to.  Certainly Gymkata was part of that, but I'd also bookmarked the 1983 animated adventure film Fire & Ice.  

Ralph Bakshi is a figure that I think those in the know were still discussing in the 1990's, but I'm not sure anyone under 40 in 2024 is really aware of Bakshi, his work or what should have been his legacy.  I'll leave you to Google the man, but he burst out of the counter-culture scene, partnering with R. Crumb and making animated features that were decidedly not all-ages.  His films were famously oversexed, and in the US, our relationship with sexualization battles between raw objectification, cartoonish piety, artistic vision and feminist criticism - leaving Bakshi an unapologetic provocateur.

But he also was trying to make art.  And as such, pushed boundaries and envelopes.  His work used familiar imagery, just off kilter enough to look like part of what you may see in other, more sanitized and popular work, but maybe what was happening in other parts of Toon Town where Mickey would never go.  But his interests also strayed into what one could do with music and image (as all animators get to), and an interest in what animation had the potential to do that live action was not capable of for high fantasy.

Gymkata Watch: Gymkata (1985)

Watched:  08/17/2024

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Robert Clouse

I genuinely don't know what led to making this movie.  I have so many questions.

I first saw Gymkata (1985) on basic cable in the mid-90's, I believe as part of USA's "Up All Night" block of programming.*  Aside from the basic plot, one amazing action scene and one specific twist (you could see coming a mile away), my memory of the movie was mush.

It's a movie about a gymnast recruited by the CIA to go into a country on the edge of the Eastern Bloc and secure the friendship of their king by winning "The Game".  "The Game" is a foot race across the small country during which the unarmed participants are pursued by soldiers on horseback with swords and bows and arrows.  You also have to pass through a city full of deranged people who I think are all cannibals?  

The country is apparently one big RenFest, with no motor vehicles and everyone dressed in a mix of what looks like regional and period outfits.  They ride horses.  There are guys dressed like ninjas who suck at everything.  There's maybe 3 guns in the whole movie.  Our heavy looks like the guys I remember seeing handling snakes at the zoo when I was a kid.

Why a gymnast?  Well, because climbing and hopping.  He also learns to turn his skills into fighting skills, provided a piece of gymnastics equipment is nearby.  Or baddies want to stand still while he does a floor routine.

There's a girl.  She's super cute and the actor they found who was shorter than Thomas, who was 5'5".**  The best line of dialog in the whole film is about her:

"Interesting background.  Her mother was Indonesian."  

And you can wait as long as you want, but there will be no more information about what that's interesting.  So, congrats, all of Indonesia!  You are interesting.

Watching the movie in 2024, I can hazard guesses as to how Gymkata came to be.  It seems it was produced and distributed by MGM/UA, which is utterly mind-boggling.  It's a low-budget martial-arts movie filmed in Europe somewhere, and the biggest star is not an actor, but Olympian and gymnast Kurt Thomas, who briefly enjoyed fame in the mid-80's after winning gold in 1976 (the US did not compete in the 1980 Olympics in the USSR).  He just was kinda-famous for a bit. And in the glut of cheapo action films, novelty and a name were a solid combo.

Thomas did not act, really, before, after or (arguably) during Gymkata, but someone decided he should star and didn't fire him - which probably says something about either the cocaine consumed or the certainty no one cared.

Director Robert Clouse made his mark as the supposed director of Enter the Dragon, but I think we all know that was really Bruce Lee, right?  By the 1980's, he was doing this sort of thing and would be the eye behind the China O'Brien films, which I liked then and would purchase now.***

The movie is more or less fifteen minutes of set up and then what feels like following Thomas in real time across what looks like a really nice place to be - which IMDB tells me is Yuogslavia - which is super weird in 1984 or whenever they filmed this.  

Anyway - I can't recommend this enough.  It is absolute nonsense of the highest order.

*Rhonda Shear!  Simply the best pal for late night movie watching

**Thomas passed in 2020

***But they aren't good, just so you know.  I just liked them in the 1990s.

Boat Noir Watch: Dangerous Crossing (1953)

Watched:  08/17/2024

Format:  Criterion

Viewing:  First

Director:  Joseph M. Newman

Criterion is being a bit silly for summer and added a collection of "Vacation Noir" films.  I've seen most of them, but will likely rewatch Niagara, because technicolor Monroe is in it, and it's pretty great, from what I recall.  

This one I'd never heard of.  Maybe that's because it doesn't star anyone with whom I'm particularly enamored and Joseph M. Newman has directed things I've seen, but he didn't quite set my world on fire.  I chose it in part because it was late and the movie ran under 80 minutes.  

It's...  fine.  Essentially the lovechild of The Lady Vanishes and Gaslight, Dangerous Crossing (1953) is a paranoid thriller aboard a steamer bound from New York to England.  Jeanne Crain plays a newlywed who boards a ship with whom she's rushed into marriage.  Once onboard, they split up so he can drop money with the ship's purser, and she heads to the deck to wave good-bye to NYC before hitting the bar.

The husband does not show up as planned.  And when she goes to find him, her room is locked and she can't get in.  No one can recall seeing him - but they do remember her.  She's shown she's checked into a different room under her maiden name and with none of her husband's luggage.  

Michael Rennie of space-movie fame plays the ship's doctor, who may also want to be on the lady who is either married and traumatized, or insane and traumatized.

Mostly the movie is Jeanne Crain running around looking for her husband and everyone else insisting she should rest.  

SPOILERS

No, you won't get out ahead of the mystery unless you throw common sense to the wind.  The villains' plot requires Crain to have chanced upon our baddie, fallen for him, immediately married him without telling anyone, and then getting on the exact ship in order for the scheme to work.  And for this guy to cook up this plan after seeing a rich girl's father died, just assuming he was that much of a player, is a bold, bold call.

I mean, it's a lot.  

Crain is... fine in the movie.  But watching her just run around a ship set looking frantic isn't much of a way to spend a movie.  

The movie did one thing that worked shockingly well that seems like it should have been annoying.  The ship is stuck in fog for a good chunk of the film's time, and so the fog horn just keeps blowing.  And it becomes a weird, ominous tone - and it really does get you into Crain's headspace.

Anyway, it's okay.  On the letter grade scale, an uninflated C+ or B-.  It's not original enough to suggest as a novelty, and it's too convoluted to feel they knocked the concept out of the park.  The performances are solid, but this is clearly not a huge blockbuster.  But it's entertaining!  And as a thriller, it kinda/sorta works.