Thursday, July 3, 2025
Tuesday, June 24, 2025
Father's Day Sean Connery Double Feature/Robert Rodriguez Paramount Summer Classic Film Series
Highlander (1986)
I saw this film with my wife when it first came out and we enjoyed it but frankly, I did not think it was a great film. It is a popcorn picture that looks a little cheaper than it should. They must have spent most of the budget on Sean Connery for his brief time in the story. I enjoyed Christopher Lambert in "Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan" two years before. He was okay in this film, but it was clear that he was going to get by on physical charisma in his career and not acting chops. Clancy Brown on the other hand, understood the assignment and went full on nuts. He mugs and hams it up, just the way his character should.
Sean Connery, shows up for the second act and plays the part of a mentor to Lambert's Conner MacLeod. Much ridicule has been made over the years of his being cast as an Arab, from Spain, with a Scottish Accent. However, it may not be inconceivable that in the 1200 years he was alive, he picked up some traits from all the places that he's lived. Also, if that is the credibility stretcher for you, you have not been paying attention.The best element of the movie is the notion that immortality takes it's greatest toll on those that we love and must leave as they die. MacLeod suffers from his loss obviously, but the strain on his Scottish wife was pretty well drawn in the film. Another character from the 20th Century illustrates it as well. I don't want to give the movie too much credit, it is still a cheesy piece of pop fantasy, but it is completely watchable and I enjoyed the revisit.
Local Director and friend of the Paramount, Robert Rodriguez, hosted and scheduled this program. He does a nice job talking about the films and the film makers that he had connections with. He shared his story about this movie in the conversation you can listen to below.
Friday, June 20, 2025
Babe (1995) Paramount Classic Film Series
Saturday, June 7, 2025
Sunset Blvd.-Paramount Summer Classic Film Series (2025)
Dr. Strangelove-Paramount Summer Classic Film Series (2025)
Saturday, November 30, 2024
An Evening with Josh Brolin-The Paramount Theatre
Mr. Brolin read one of the chapters of the book, and the experience introduced the style of writing he is using. The chapters are really random essays on some moments in his life. It is not really an autobiography but a place where he can share his poetry, narrative prose and reporting, all to different degrees. Rodriguez shared that he keeps a journal of moments in his day, everyday, and he was able to prompt Brolin into telling some stories by referring to his own journal. This journaling approach is what Brolin used when writing, and his ability to recall details was pretty solid. Listening to him tell about his Mother, driving them a thousand miles when he was a kid, from California to Texas, just because she had a hankering for Whataburger was fun, although when the two of them talked about the burgers they had delivered to the theatre, their shrug about the quality mirrors my feelings exactly.
Saturday, October 26, 2024
Panic! at the Paramount Double/Double Feature
I fell behind this week, had six films to catch up with. After writing about two of them, I thought it was time for a change of pace. I went to a Friday Double Feature and a Sunday Double feature at the Paramount Theater here in Austin Texas. The programming had some horror themes, I especially liked the idea of "the fun ones". So here is my video commentary on the four films.
Friday Nights they'll be Dressed to Kill, down at the Paramount.
The drinks will flow and the blood will spill.
Saturday, September 7, 2024
Paramount Summer Classic Film Series-What's Up Doc?
The Paramount Summer Classic Film Series finishes off with another presentation by Robert Rodriguez, of the film "What's Up Doc?" This is the same film that finished the summer series last year, and it was hosted by Rodriguez then as well. His presentation before the film continued to be interesting but it was not as elaborate as the introduction he gave last year, but it was just as enthusiastic. This is clearly a movie that he loves and is happy to share with the audience. While sitting in the theater which was packed, I listened to the sound of laughter coming from several hundred audience members, I was reminded about why seeing a movie in a theater with an audience matters. This kind of experience reminds us that we all can find something in common, and that we are human beings capable of enjoying a shared experience, even without interacting with one another. Of course since it was the closing night film, there were some special events that went along with the evening, and that did encourage us to interact with one another. Two guys we had met in the garage elevator of the parking structure across the street, were seated right behind us. There was a trivia contest going on and we teamed up with them to participate. I know I had a lot of fun, and I think they did as well. The fact that we came in second place was only mildly disappointing because we were one wrong answer off, and we'd guessed ourself out of the correct answer on one of the questions. Oh well, we still had the movie to look forward to.
At the time this movie was made Barbra Streisand and Ryan O'Neal were huge stars in Hollywood. O'Neill was coming off of "Love Story" which was the biggest Blockbuster of 1970, and Streisand was an academy award-winning actress who also had huge successes with a variety of films in the previous four or five years. Director Peter Bogdanovich was also on a hot streak. This film he made to explicitly be a screwball comedy in the mode of the great 1930s films that he loved. Rodriguez told the story about how the original script ended up being rewritten, by Buck Henry, who apparently had a pretty good idea about what makes something funny.
The movie introduces us to Madeline Kahn, who would become a comic icon for the next 20 years. Her role in this part might be thought of as thankless, because her character is such a wet blanket. But she turns out to be a wet electric blanket, shocking us with how funny she could be while playing a drudge. She gets a surprising number of laughs as the straight man in the story. Of course she is surrounded by a cast of secondary characters who are equally good at getting laughs from some of their few moments on screen. Austin Pendleton and Kenneth Mars both delight us with their ridiculous delivery of some of Buck Henry's lines. Mars uses an accent that seems like it will show up again in "Young Frankenstein" a couple years later.
The slapstick in this film centers around four identical suitcases that all have varying degrees of valuables in them. One suitcase contains nothing but rocks, but they are important rocks. One suitcase is full of secret government documents revealing a scandal. Another suitcase is loaded with jewelry that belongs to a wealthy visitor to the hotel where everyone is staying. The final suitcase simply contains the personal items of our leading lady. The pursuit of these various suitcases, and the comedy of changing hotel rooms, opening and closing doors, and hiding under beds, in closets, and on window sills, is exactly the kind of humor that you would find in one of those old movies. Here it is just multiplied.
The climax of the film is a street chase thru the city of San Francisco. O'Neal and Streisand are on a delivery bicycle, careening down the hills, crashing through a Chinatown street parade and generally causing havoc. Of course in the 1970s, there have to be car crashes, and there is an abundance of them from all the pursuing vehicles. The bit with the giant window pane is staged beautifully so that the payoff is much funnier than it would have been in someone else's hands. The rapid film style follows the same pattern as the patter in the first section of the film, with multiple points, finished off by a topper. Bogdanovich was a film scholar who understood how to read a scene.
I saw this movie years ago on television, but I had very little memory of it. I have seen it the last three times, in a theater, with a packed audience and it is such a treat. I'm sad the Summer season is over but I am grateful for all the movies I saw at the Paramount in the last three months. This cherry on the top will have me thinking about next years programming, all Fall and Winter long.
Paramount Summer Classic Film Series-Streets of Fire
Let me Begin by telling you how excited I was to see this movie. When it showed up in the schedule for the summer series, I wrote it down in pen on a calendar, and put it in all of my electronic calendars, with a heavy emphasis on the date. I was not going to let anything else interfere with my ability to see this on the big screen. Since 1984 I have loved this film, for a whole variety of emotional issues. There is of course the nostalgia factor, because 1984 was not only one of the great years of film, it was my greatest year of films. I saw more films that year that have influenced me and made me want to go see another movie, than I have ever seen in any subsequent year. A second reason that I was so anxious to see the film, is that the music of the band in the movie, is mostly attributable to the late Jim Steinman, a writer and composer of epic rock arias. I've been a fan of his style of music since the original Meatloaf album "Bat Out of Hell". Finally one other reason that I was so anxious for this screening was that it was to be a 70 mm presentation at my favorite theater here in Texas. So that's how anxious I was to see the movie. Now I had bought tickets for a concert that was scheduled 2 weeks before. That show got postponed... to this date. I basically had to choose, and I chose this film.
It's not that the story is so fantastic, or that the performers are so compelling, since everybody is talking about the "vibes" in the world today, I will honestly say this is a vibe movie. The film is loaded with the kind of imagery that movie fans love. There is a combination of wet streets and neon lights, there are shadowy alleyways and gleaming diners, and everybody in the film is dressed in a way it is stylish as hell. And some of those styles look like they came right out of hell. This is a movie that thrives on its looks. The opening of the movie is a flash cut concert video which feature that driving propulsive song from the damsel in distress in this story. As she's singing in a near hypnotic state, we see the ominous motorcycle gang arriving in their town, entering the auditorium, and lurking in the shadows waiting for their moment. When Willem Dafoe is backlit and we can't see his face but only the ominous silhouette, we know danger is coming. When the light finally hits his face and reveals a demonic expression, we know that danger has truly arrived. This is the kind of visual artifice that director Walter Hill uses to tell his story throughout the film. The hero Tom Cody, arrives alone ss the sole rider on an elevated, train. Later in the movie, The Sorrells, a singing group who gets hijacked by the rescue team, perform an acapella song on a dimly lit bus. Hill knows how to take the environment and make it a character in the story, that happens repeatedly in this movie. There are two different bars, a diner, an auditorium, and a street, that are all important characters in the narrative. The fact that these sets sometimes outshine some of the actors is a deliberate choice to emphasize style. And boy is this movie stylish.
Most of the background characters in the film, dress as if it's 1955. They do it up with pizzazz. Bill Paxton plays a feckless character named Clyde, but regardless of whether he is a wimp or a stronger than expected person, he knows how to dress and put his hair up in a pompadour that would do any Elvis fan proud. This is a little ironic considering that last night I saw him dressed down as a punk with spiked hair in "The Terminator". His character could have been the same person, but just dressed differently. The costume of Willem Dafoe in the last half of the movie always gets a laugh, but as the movie goes on, it feels more and more ominous. Who needs a high-waisted vinyl set of waders? What the hell was he doing at Torchy's that required such an outfit? We never figure that out, but we do know that his character might very well have just been described as Satan.
The film also features actors Rick Moranis and Amy Madigan as members of the rescue team. Madigan is great, as a soldier out of the army and looking for any kind of work that might fit with her skill set. She plays a tough character, with a no-nonsense attitude, but she never is going to be a threat to the relationship between the two separated lovers at the heart of the story. She might be a better match in temperament with Tom Cody, but is she makes clear he is not her type. The coded implication that she has a different sexual identity is not particularly subtle and probably fulfills a few too many stereotypes. Speaking of stereotypes, poor Rick Moranis is trapped as the belligerent buffoonish and nebish manager of the kidnapped singer that everybody is trying to free. He's also supposed to be something of a romantic rival to Tom Cody. That is just laughable on its face. He does what he can with a thankless role, but it is grating every time we have to listen to him b**** about something. If this film has a flaw, is the amount of time granted to his character Billy Fish.If this were a straight action film, the fight near the end between Cody and his nemesis Raven, using sledgehammers, would be the climax of the movie. As I've already said though, the narrative here is less important than the emotions and the style. So it is the final song performed in front of a large audience as Cody makes his farewell from the scene, that is really the centerpiece of the last Act. "Tonight is What it Means to be Young", turned into the tagline for the movie, and it is a perfect summary of the attitude the film is taking. We see nobody in the film who looks like they're over the age of 30, or under the age of 20. This is a rock and roll fable designed to specifically stimulate the emotions of people in this age group. I'm happy to say that although I'm 30 years over that demographic, I still feel the way I did when I saw this movie in 1984 and I was in the prime age that it was shooting for. Once again I'll just say I love this movie and the vibe that it exudes. I'd watch it again tonight, because it makes me feel young.
Friday, August 30, 2024
Paramount Summer Classic Film Series- 2001: A Space Odyssey
Paramount Summer Classic Film Series-The Searchers
Thursday, August 29, 2024
Paramount Summer Classic Film Series-Josie and the Pussycats
Tuesday, August 27, 2024
Paramount Classic Film Series Double Feature-The Breakfast Club and 10 Things I Hate About You
The Breakfast Club (1985)
10 Things I Hate About You
Friday, August 23, 2024
Paramount Summer Classic Film Series- The Man who Knew Too Much (1956) Hitchcock Week
Thursday, August 22, 2024
Paramount Summer Classic Film Series Double Feature-Dial M for Murder and Rope (Hitchcock Week)
Dial M for Murder
Rope
Friday, August 16, 2024
Paramount Summer Classic Film Series- Notorious (Hitchcock Week)
Wednesday, August 14, 2024
Paramount Summer Classic Film Series Double Feature-Romancing the Stone/Three Amigos