Doc/ Review Watch: That's Entertainment (1974)

Watched:  12/31/2022

Format:  TCM

Viewing:  First

Director:  Jack Haley Jr.

I'm not clear on where this first showed - I guess wide release?  It has a box office take listed, so I guess it was put out in theaters.  Which is pretty wild.  The movie is essentially a review/ clip show of MGM musicals and the greatest generator of a punchlist for movie nerds I can think of.  

What's even wilder is that the movie was released as a 50th Anniversary celebration of MGM - and we're about 50 years from the release of this film.  Time.  It does roll on.  

The film is hosted by an array of folks who were still living and vibrant, from Frank Sinatra to Bing Crosby to Elizabeth Taylor to a Mickey Rooney (who'll de damned if he's gonna shoot in the sun and manages the worst lighting you'll see in a major release as he wanders down a tree-lined sidewalk).  But it's all a celebration of what made the movie musical great - and it makes a stunning case for the idea.  Spectacle, talent, artistry and a bit of hokum all combine in an electric mix across about 100 clips supporting the thesis and the arguments presented for the musical. 

Clips cover everything from the Depression-era Busby Berkley opuses to Andy Hardy films to Eleanor Powell, Ann Miller and of course Fred and Ginger (and Fred and Cyd).  And a reminder that the most insane Hollywood may have ever gone was staging Esther Williams movies.  It's impossible to imagine happening in the past 40 years.  

1974 - the year of release - is an interesting inflection point.  Liza Minnelli appears to remind you she's the daughter of Judy Garland and Vincent Minnelli and that she just won an Oscar for a musical.  It's the promise of a new generation taking on musicals, which may have seemed possible in '74.  But, clearly, that's not what happened.  Sure, these days we get one or two a year, and most Disney cartoons are musicals for all intents and purposes, but as much as westerns would fade, musicals became a novelty.  And, frankly, it seems like people my age feel weirdly threatened by musicals that don't start as Broadway shows.*

Trotting out the old guard is a fine idea for a retrospective, but in 1974, there's no home video.  They weren't going to re-release 45 years of musicals, I don't think.  So what was this for?  One last hurrah and a trip down memory lane?  The stars walk the now clearly dilapidated sets, around a decaying MGM lot, and I have to ask "why?"  Why would MGM show their own sets in such a state of disrepair?  I don't know what happened to MGM in the 1960's, but the story of MGM by the 1980's was about purchases, mergers, real estate sales...  the company had gone from being a force of nature to a has-been.  Even today, MGM seems to exist to put out Bond movies and not a whole lot else.  If this film hoped to push people to clamor for musicals, I guess - not so much.

That said, it's a stunning reminder of what Hollywood - at least MGM - did on the regular to deliver wildly imaginative productions, the kind of talent they had on staff, and what movies can do.  And maybe what we lost when the 1970's taught us to rely on "realism" in film, or at least pivoted us to space epics for our visions of flights of fancy.  

Clearly Broadway tells us there's still an audience for musicals, and you do wonder - with today's techniques - what would an Esther Williams film look like?  Who could star in it?  Can an audience sit for a tap number?  Do people still get swept up in ballroom dancing by the best, or just when it's a reality show with D-level stars trotted out for two minute numbers and people pretending to be judges?

And, honestly, even TCM doesn't play musicals like it used to.  I'm sure the numbers track better to other kinds of films for whatever reason, but it would be nice to have some play of those big spectacle flicks.

MGM produced enough of these musicals that it spawned several sequels - That's Entertainment 2 and 3, as well as That's Dancing.  So clearly they were making some money off of these things.  

*I will never get the hostility to La-La Land

PodCast 227: "The Sea Wolves" (1980) - A SimonUK Cinema Selection - w/ Ryan

Watched:  12/27/2022

Format:  Amazon Prime

Viewing: First

Decade:  1980's

Director:  Andrew V. McClagen

For more ways to listen

Simon and Ryan return for one last mission.... AGAIN! It's a based-on-a-true-story adventure of old dudes leaping into action for King and Country and to protect the sea-ways of the Indian Ocean from duplicitous Germans in WWII! Join our band of adventurers and let's blow some @#$% up!

SoundCloud 

The Signal Watch PodCast · 227: "The Sea Wolves" (1980) - A SimonUK Cinema Selection - w/ Ryan

YouTube

Music:

The Sea Wolves Opening Titles - Roy Budd

Precious Moments - Matt Monro 

SimonUK Cinema Series

The Signal Watch PodCast · SimonUK Cinema Series

Marvel Watch: Captain America - The First Avenger (2011)

Watched:  12/31/2022

Format:  Disney+

Viewing:  ha ha....  no idea

Director:  Joe Johnston

This was actually the last movie I watched in 2022.  I have cedar fever something fierce, so it was not really time to watch something new I'd never seen before.  So in between naps, I watched a favorite.

The movie has flaws, and maybe even feels like it's part of a wave of movies that came before the Marvel-era, which makes sense.  Directed by Hollywood staple Joe Johnston and with an eye toward what I'd consider the 1960's-era of WWII movies which inspired the Howling Commando comics it borrows from, it's also got a terrific old school story about a guy with a good heart and the girl who believes in him.  I recall concern when the movie was being made and headed to release that Captain America was too old fashioned and not in line with the view of today - not like hip, wise-cracking Tony Stark - and that's missing the point of Cap.  And the line Cap draws from what we know and acknowledge as outright evil in humanity worth fighting, and that that brand of heroism and clarity of purpose is something that absolutely makes sense in any era.

It's a Marvel villain who is truly villainous, not someone with a perspective worth considering - from the comics, I have wanted to hit the Red Skull with a sledgehammer for years before the movie, and the movie *nails it*.  

The pacing of the movie is also flatly incredible.  A two-hour run-time, it covers over a year of time, something other Marvel films don't ever really do, even if they include flashbacks (see: Captain Marvel).  I kept trying to find a place to pause the movie to do things that needed doing, and suddenly I was looking at the flying wing and knew we were in the last twenty minutes.  

And, of course, an all-star cast, which is maybe the secret-sauce to Marvel Phases 1 and 2.  Sure, Chris Evans was somewhat known, and Sebastian Stan, Hayley Atwell and Dominic Cooper unknowns here, but Tommy Lee Jones, Toby Jones, Stanley Tucci and Hugo Weaving?  Not a bad foundation of talent to make sure the kids knew what was what.  Throw in Neal McDonough as Dum-Dum and the rest of the Howling Commandos, and it's a fascinating mix.  

Anyway - this movie also produced one of the longer podcasts we did early on.  

Barbara Walters Merges With the Infinite

Journalist and television personality Barbara Walters has passed.

By the time I was aware of who was on TV, Barbara Walters was already an institution.  What I didn't really appreciate til college was what a pioneer Walters was.  There were other women in the newsfield, certainly, but Walters had become a national figure, hosting the national news and then becoming the person who had the most important interviews on television (that used to be a thing that was part of journalism before Oprah made soft-ball interviews her bag).  

Through countless stories delivered, interviews, and - of course - establishing the TV hot topics program The View (back before the show was about talking about the show itself, it was intended to discuss current events) - Walters brought the world to people's living rooms for decades.  

Mystery Watch: Glass Onion (2022)

Watched:  12/29/2022

Format:  Netflix

Viewing:  First

Director:  Rian Johnson

I don't really know how to talk about this movie.  A podcast would be better.  

This was a very, very good film.  But we knew that going in, I think.  

Look, I've never seen a movie by Rian Johnson I didn't like.  His turn to becoming the cinematic Agatha Christie of the 21st Century is more than welcome in a landscape of movies that - in lieu of being about superheroes - have mistaken drudgery and being sad and/ or tortured as film for grown ups.  Sometimes you just need a clockwork mechanism of a mystery movie with deeply charismatic talent, an amazing backdrop, and a satisfying ending.  

But the movie isn't just (remarkably) well written.  It's hard to argue with the cinematography and choice of locations, which gives the movie a unique multi-level perspective.  And, of course, editing.  There are a lot of characters, a lot of parts, a non-sequential timeline and a sprawling geography to the main location.  It's a remarkable feat to see how this all still makes perfect sense.

Anyway, I'll either podcast it later or give it a go with a longer write-up.  Maybe.  

In the meantime: recommended.

Doc Watch: Call Me Miss Cleo (2022)

except, literally everyone knew she was a fraud and the network a scam?

Watched:  12/28/2022

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  First

Director:   

Celia Aniskovich, 

Jennifer Brea

I dunno.  

This doc is weirdly under-developed and under-researched for something that's getting a fairly well-promoted release on HBOmax.  If I was Perry White to this team's Lois Lane, I'd say "you have a lot of facts.  You haven't proven anything and there's no story.  Get back out there."  The doc feels like it's something handed in at a deadline, not something actually something complete, and the final bit that tries to give Miss Cleo absolution feels like the last great con a successful con-artist pulled from beyond the grave.

Maybe the spirits DO talk to us!

But you'll get more facts without any of the tediously dramatic build up out of the anemic Miss Cleo Wikipedia article.  Somehow the doc misses that she had a child?  

Christmas Watch: A Christmas Story (1983)

Watched:  12/24/2022

Format:  TNT, baby

Viewing:  ha ha ha ha

Director:  Bob Clark

No real need to write this up.  Annual watch of Christmas Story (1983) as we wound down from Christmas Eve festivities.  

Way, way back at episode 34, Laura and I talked about this movie as our very first Christmas episode ever!

A Century of Stan Lee

Today marks the 100th birthday of Stan Lee.  

It's hard to measure the impact of Stan, but it's sure looking like Stan, Jack and the Merry Marvel Bullpen may be among the most important and influential writers and artists of the past century.  

Among comics fans, Stan's legacy and life are hotly debated, but there are a lot of versions of the truth.  I understand the various viewpoints, but life is complicated and if anyone understood that and related it in a medium often caricatured for its simplistic morality plays, it was Stan.

When I think of Stan, I think of a guy who wanted to push a medium reeling from years of being a political pinata, that had become a punchline and a disgrace for many in America, and tell stories that were both wondrous and relatable.  That's not nothing.  Making gods feel like people you could talk to is no mean feat.  And, of course, the Mighty Marvel Manner of storytelling he pioneered with his colleagues has come to define how we tell serialized stories, inter-connected stories, and allowed for flawed and multi-dimensional characters.  

In the end, this meant Stan helped push the medium to become something of interest to older readers, college kids and created the life-long comics reader and fan and make the fantastic something that climbed out of the kiddie-lit gutter and into the mainstream - even if it meant getting off the newstand and into theaters, like he'd worked towards for decades.

Like all lives, Stan's was complicated.  The amazing, explosive success of the Marvel Universe of characters didn't come until Stan was on the edge of retirement - after decades of trying.  It took a generation of kids raised on Stan's characters in television, cartoons, comics, t-shirts and toys to become adults and start making the movies we always knew were possible - because those characters truly did inspire us and make us want to be better people.

Remembering Carrie Fisher

Today marks the sixth anniversary of the passing of Carrie Fisher.  Still miss her.

Christmas Noir: Blast of Silence (1961)

Watched:  12/24/2022

Format:  TCM

Viewing:  First

Director (Writer, Starring):  Allen Baron

SPOILERS

There are a lot of movies about lone assassins being lonesome and weird and (spoilers) meeting their end.  It's frankly shocking how well this formula works.  Honestly, once you see "oh, this is about an assassin and it's not a major studio release?" you can swiftly follow that with  "Well, he'll die at the end."  Because there's something inevitable and inexorable about the very set-up.  If someone is selling you "noir" and it's about a hitman and the hitman isn't dead at the end, you can ring the shame bell.

So it becomes less about "what are they doing?" and more of "how are they doing it?" and - if I can ask - "what are they saying?"