Friday Watch Party: The Woman In Green

We don't want to fall too far off pace, so on Friday we'll watch a Sherlock Holmes movie.  Because I like Sherlock and you can't stop me.  There are three women listed, I don't know who they are, and which will look swell in green (in black and white).  

I assume there's a mystery.  This is Sherlock Holmes.  But we're really here for Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce.  And mysteries.  And the *idea* of "green".  

Day:  FRIDAY THE 13th (of January, 2023)

Time:  8:30 Central, 6:30 Rain-Soaked Coast

Service:  Amazon

Cost:  Free if you have Prime

CLICK HERE FOR THE GAME TO BE AFOOT

(link ready 10 minutes before showtime)

Marilyn-Noir Watch: Don't Bother To Knock (1952)

Watched: 01/10/2023

Format:  TCM

Viewing:  First

Director:  Roy Ward Baker

Huh.  This was not at all what I was expecting.  

Essentially a movie about post-war trauma, wrapped up in a taught 76 minute, thriller-like package, it's maybe more *real* than the well-rehearsed, twitter-friendly approaches to mental illness we'd see in a film now.  It's a thriller without a villain, even though that doesn't feel like the set-up - and the movie absolutely has empathy in spades and as a reflection of a nation on the other side of the war, doesn't really have time for your finger-wagging.

Marilyn Monroe plays a woman new to New York City, whose uncle (Elijah Cook Jr.!) - an elevator operator in a hotel - has landed her a one-night job as a babysitter for a rich couple, the husband there to collect an award for his editorials.  While they're at the ceremony, they'll have Monroe watch over their daughter.

Anne Bancroft (in one of her first roles) is the lounge singer in the hotel, and while she's tried to break up with her sometimes boyfriend in the shape of Richard Widmark playing a cocksure airline pilot, he's shown up at the hotel and is looking to ignore her plans for a split.  

Screwball Watch: Ball of Fire (1941)

Watched:  01/07/2023

Format:  Criterion

Viewing:  First

Director:  Howard Hawks  

Skewing towards the end of the screwball cycle, Ball of Fire (1941) is an absolute g-d delight and another entry in the "yes, Stanwyck is that good" file.  

You would think the movie was made during the crush of the war as the large cast of supporting males are mostly over sixty, but also features Gary Cooper (43 here), Dana Andrews and Dan Duryea also popping up (Andrews and Duryea didn't serve for legit reasons).   Directed by Hawks with his usual flair, the script and story is by Billy Wilder in part, something I spent no small amount of time pondering while watching.  

Super Watch: Superman - The Movie (1978 - theatrical cut)

Watched:  01/06/2023

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  1,000,000th

Director:  Richard Donner

Superman: The Movie (1978) is the movie I've seen most of any film, enough so that I have it pretty well memorized.  At this point, I'd hesitate to say how many times I've seen the movie, but it's dozens and dozens of times.  At least 7 in the theater.  Intentionally, I haven't watched it much the past few years.  I mean, I'm trying to watch new-to-me movies, I can replay any scene in my head any time, I know the beats and jokes, and cool elements and emotions in every scene.  But I also know the plot holes, the mistakes, the dated issues with the film, where that's-a-doll, that's-how-that-shot-was-done, etc...  I even look for where extras were at a difference walking pace in various shots.  

What's probably most notable to modern film audiences is that a movie that plays it mostly straight for an hour has a hard jump in the second half to a far wackier vision of the world it establishes, moving from sci-fi epic to American Rockwell-esque pastoral to a cosmic sci-fi fantasy.  And then...  Metropolis, with hustling big-city folk, fast talking journalists, and Otis bumbling along.  And for the next 90 minutes, the movie is a mix of romance, screwball, camp and heroism.  There's something oddly Broadway-ish about that back 90 minutes - I mean, doesn't Miss Tessmacher seem like she needs an "I Want" song?  Because Lois gets one in spoken-word.

Neo-Noir Watch: The Driver (1978)

Watched:  01/01/2023

Format:  DVD

Viewing:  First

Director:  Walter Hill

I'm doing some prep work as SGH and I are in talks to do a podcast on Drive from about a decade ago.  At the time Drive came out, a lot of folks said "oh, this is influenced by The Driver from 1978."  And I'd always meant to go check that movie out.  

I think it's a definitive "well, maybe kinda sorta".  They are absolutely both movies about career criminal getaway drivers in LA.  Both are neo-noir.  But this is like seeing a movie about an assassin and seeing the next movie about an assassin and saying "well, clearly these two movies are same".  

Arguably, The Driver (1978) borrows from some of those assassin movies like Le Samourai or This Gun for Hire.  Rather than a hit-man, we have a guy with no past we'll ever learn about, who has locked up his life to protect himself and perfect his chosen profession - with the mechanisms he's used to protect himself actually creating a lockbox when things go sideways.  He has no friends, no family, no name.  He simply exists to do the job. 

The movie is clever about this - no characters have names.  Everyone is a role.  The Driver (Ryan O'Neal).  The Detective (Bruce Dern at his Bruce Derniest).  The Player (Isabella Adjani).  The Connection (Ronee Blakley).  And - and this is where this film deviates wildly from Drive - the film is about the game everyone is playing, openly acknowledged.  It's the world's greatest ARG.  There's no real stakes for the cops - win or lose, it's just spending tax dollars.  But for the folks playing on the high stakes criminal side, it's jail, death or being flat broke.  

Anyway - I enjoyed it.  I'd watch it again.  It's interesting in that it's both a bit more abstracted from a straight crime film, but also has nothing in particular that it's trying to say.  It's much more about how it's presenting a concept, and I'm down with that, too.  I suspect that when this came out, that approach was saying something, in itself.  But we've got a lot of water between 2023 and 1978.

My Opinions on 2022 Movies!

This is not an end-of-the-year list.  This is just a thing you are reading.  I watched 190 movies, and scanning the list as I was running numbers for 2022, these are movies I jotted down as remarkable one way or another.  

You are welcome to argue with me in the comments, I guess.  It may lead to me thinking you're a dumb-dumb, so go ahead and roll those dice.  

So, let's talk bad movies first.  

Television in 2022

Hoo-Boy.  Did we watch a lot of TV in 2022.

This list is in no way comprehensive.  I started a lot of series, watched 1-3 episodes and then bailed.  Those aren't listed here.  Watching an episode of Seinfeld on TBS, also not listed.  So its basically series I watched the season from start-to-finish.  What's shocking is how hard it is to remember what I watched when I have to surf across services to figure out what I watched.  So, I probably left off a few shows.  

It doesn't include one-hour specials, shark docs, and other time-fillers.  

Look, I don't do a lot of Important Dramas.  I don't do puzzle-box shows.  I am sure you will find your favorite show missing.  Tough noogies.  That's how we roll.  What are you gonna do, come over here and make me watch stuff?  NO DICE.

Most Watched Thing

Astronaut Walter Cunningham Merges With The Infinite

Walter Cunningham, one of the Apollo 7 Astronauts, has passed.  

Cunningham was key to the success of the Apollo missions, and after his tenure as an Astronaut, went on to support myriad technology and space-related ventures and was a prominent supporter of NASA and Houstonian.

Movies 2022 By the Numbers

For the most part, I use this blog to just keep track of the movies I've watched and jot down some thoughts on them.  There's no real reason for it, but I do it.  The PodCast is a lovely bit of product of this habit, and my desire to spend time chatting with pals.  

Since I have the blog, every year for the past few years I've logged how many movies I've watched, and looked at a few stats.  I'm not sure it's of any particular interest to anyone but myself, but there you have it.  

As always, you're welcome to review the spreadsheet yourself.  

So...  how many movies did we watch?

Total Number of Movies Watched

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