Scenes We Love »
Scenes (Songs) We Love: "Lunatic Fringe" from 'Vision Quest'
Filed under: Music & Musicals, Sports, Fandom, Trailers and Clips, Scenes We Love
We've had some time to get used to the truly terrible idea of a 3D Stretch Armstrong flick with Taylor (Team Jacob) Lautner as the flexible hero in question. But on the upside, at least now I can hold out hope that maybe if Lautner's busy getting all bendy, he won't have time to ruin the memory of Louden Swain in a remake of the sports/teen drama Vision Quest -- which brings me to today's Scenes (Songs) We Love, and while most people focus on Madonna's Crazy for You as the musical highlight of the flick, I thought I would offer up a pretty viable alternative: Lunatic Fringe from Red Rider.
Vision Quest was based on the novel by Terry Davis and centered on a high-school wrestler (played by Matthew Modine) who decides to take on the top dog in a fight to do something meaningful with his life -- which I guess means rolling around on the floor with other guys. But, in the pursuit of his dream, he sacrifices his health and his love life with an older woman (played by Linda Fiorentino).
The song was written by the Tom Cochrane (and I'm sure my fellow Canadians know that name), and was originally released in 1981 before making its way onto the soundtrack, and even though the song is actually about the rise of anti-Semitism in the 1970's, when I hear this tune I just think of Matthew Modine in a spot-lit gym.
After the jump: a slice of Canadiana...
Scenes We Love: To Live and Die in L.A.
Filed under: Scenes We Love
William Friedkin's To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) debuts on Blu-Ray this week, and I hope more people start give it a chance. It really deserves to be ranked as an American classic, alongside Friedkin's The French Connection and The Exorcist. Friedkin is one of my favorite directors, though a deeper appreciation of his work comes when you hear him speak, either in person or on his DVD commentary tracks. He's deeply intelligent and an incredible storyteller. He's also a survivor of early success in a time of great creative output in Hollywood. He has lived life and knows a little something about it. He began as a documentary filmmaker and on television, and he's a meticulous researcher. The main attribute to all his films is the abundance of rich details. But one thing Friedkin knows -- and it's perhaps the main reason he switched from non-fiction to feature films -- is that, no matter how much research one does, nothing is ever known for sure.
And so it follows, perhaps ironically, that he has directed three of the finest car chase sequences in the history of film. He understands that the muscle of a car chase is in the details, in establishing the place and time, and elements like space and atmosphere. But he also understands that the heart of a chase is in the unknowable factors; how on earth is something this screwy going to turn out? In The French Connection (1971), the bad guy tries to escape in an elevated train, while the cops chase him in their car below. In Jade (1995), the hero goes on a car chase that unfortunately detours into San Francisco's Chinatown, which is a crowded street on any normal day, but on this day there is also a parade.
Scenes (Songs) We Love: "Know the Ledge" from 'Juice'
Filed under: Drama, Music & Musicals, Fandom, Trailers and Clips, Scenes We Love
In 1992, we were in the tail end of the golden age of hip-hop. Dr. Dre had just released The Chronic, and G Funk was on the rise, but for fans of the east coast sound, there was still Eric B & Rakim. So as a nod to the good old days, today's Scenes (Songs) We Love is all about Eric B & Rakim's Know the Ledge from the 92 crime flick, Juice. The 90's timepiece was directed by cinematographer Ernest R. Dickerson (The Wire and long-time cinematographer for Spike Lee) and centered on four friends in Harlem: Bishop (Tupac Shakur), Q (Omar Epps), Raheem (Khalil Kain) and Steel (Jermaine "Huggy" Hopkins) as they wrestled with the usual urban tropes about making it out of the 'ghetto'.
Music was a big part of the film, and if you are of a certain age, the songs in this movie will seem like the best house party you never got to attend. The soundtrack was a relatively big success, landing in the top 20 of the Billboard 200 with songs from Naughty by Nature, Big Daddy Kane, EPMD and the ambassadors of New Jack swing: Teddy Riley and Aaron Hall.
Probably one of the things that stood out in this film was that it tried to highlight the shift to a new kind of star in the world of hip hop: the gangster. In Dickerson and Gerard Brown's script, an idea emerges about the price of street cred' and the moral of the story falls on Epps' decision to put the guns down. But here we are almost 20 years later and when you take a quick look at the current state of hip hop, it looks like we haven't quite learned that lesson yet.
After the jump; "In a puddle of blood, I lay close to the edge..I guess I didn't know the ledge...."
Scenes We Love: A Night at the Opera
Filed under: Scenes We Love
Deep within the halls of the movie buff zone, a quiet battle has been raging for the better part of a century: which is the best Marx Brothers movie, Duck Soup (1933) or A Night at the Opera (1935)? They were made a mere two years apart, and yet the difference between them is vast. Duck Soup runs 68 minutes and looks like a low-budget B-movie. It was directed by silent-era comedy specialist, and unsung master Leo McCarey (who would go on to win two Oscars for Best Director, as well as earning several other nominations). It moves lightning fast over a seriously sketchy plot, taking all kinds of side trips and leaps of logic, and yet it manages to be a clever satire of the impulses behind war. It's so manic and frenzied and anarchic that some consider it an avant-garde film. Not even the title is ever explained onscreen. At one point, everything goes completely silent for three minutes for the famous "mirror" sequence. For these reasons and more, I am planted firmly in the Duck Soup camp.
Scenes We Love: This Gun For Hire
Filed under: Classics, Noir, Mystery & Suspense, Trailers and Clips, Scenes We Love
My obsession with all things L.A. Confidential has extended to the real life Veronica Lake. I think she may have been the epitome of the 1940s -- the hair, the sassy line delivery, the glamor. She's also the epitome of Hollywood's dark side too, as she went from great success to a penniless and tragic end.
Over the weekend, Netflix finally delivered me a copy of This Gun For Hire, which is a pretty cool noir. (Trivia nerds probably know it's the film Lynn Bracken and one of her clients are "reenacting" when Bud White shows up.) If you've never seen it, it's worth a watch for Alan Ladd's icy assassin, who makes many of our modern killers seem weak in comparison. It also features one of the quirkiest heroines ever in Ellen Graham. Graham is a spy for the U.S. government, a nightclub singer (did down-on-their-luck singers ever look better than they did in the 1940s?), and a magician. I'm not kidding! Lake even gets two song-and-dance numbers where she performs a string of illusions that Gob Bluth would kill to know the secrets to, and her magic tricks end up saving her life later on.
Nowadays, a spy-singer-magician would be laughed off the screen. But in the good old days, it not only worked, but it reeked of cool sexiness thanks to Lake. Check out the scene below.
Scenes (Songs) We Love: Les chansons d'amour
Filed under: Comedy, Drama, Foreign Language, Independent, Music & Musicals, Home Entertainment, Trailers and Clips, Scenes We Love
While a different French bad boy is terrorizing Sundance with his latest movie (that would be Gaspar Noé and Enter the Void), I'm at home watching a slightly more romantic French movie by Christophe Honoré -- a weird and wonderful hybrid of a musical, love story, and drama, Les chansons d'amour (Love Songs).Ismaël (Louis Garrel) and Julie (Ludivine Sagnier) have been together for eight years, and, as we learn from their chansons, their relationship is getting rather rocky; adding a third party to the mix, Alice (Clotilde Hesme) certainly complicates things even more. The story and its songs are occasionally playful and sexy, or, as the movie progresses, plaintive and sad. I love this strange little French film and its audacity to turn a story about a ménage à trois into a musical, despite some frustrating twists.
My favorite songs from the movie, "De Bonnes Raisons" and "Inventaire," are on YouTube.com (but without lyrics), so after the jump I've also put the subtitled trailer on there for you to (hopefully) enjoy. "De Bonnes Raisons" is a quirky, bittersweet song where Ismaël questions why he is really still with Julie after so long ("Is it your lovely pair of buttocks / The fear of loneliness / Chance and laziness / Or a bad habit?"). "Inventaire" is more of a typical fight between lovers -- he leaves his pubes in the shower, she found mysterious panties on the floor, and her mom calls too often. Will they last? Both are upbeat and catchy, the characters playful and sensual, despite the lyrics.
Scenes We Love: Strange Days
Filed under: Scenes We Love
It appears that the Oscar race has come down to a battle between Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker) and James Cameron (Avatar). (Jason Reitman and Up in the Air are running a close third.) Many people have pointed out that Bigelow and Cameron were once married, for about two years, between 1989 and 1991, so it has become a battle of the sexes as well as a battle of the exes. It might be revealing, then, to revisit their one cinematic collaboration, Strange Days (1995). Cameron is credited as the writer of the original story and co-authored the screenplay with former film critic Jay Cocks, while Bigelow directed. It was an expensive film, with a budget of around $42 million, and a flop, with a U.S. gross of only about $7 million. The few people who praised the film found it to be technically and visually dazzling, though most complained that it was empty and/or conventional.
Scenes (Songs) We Love: "Country Place" From 'The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas'
Filed under: Music & Musicals, Fandom, Trailers and Clips, Scenes We Love
If you look back at the movies of the 80's, the lives of sex workers weren't the cautionary tales that have become the norm these days. But if you were making a list of 'happy hooker' movies, the 1982 musical comedy, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas would definitely be in the top five. So today, I decided to give a little love to the movie that gave me my first lesson on 'working girls' and a musical number that I had no right to sing along to as an impressionable little girl: Lil' Bitty Pissant Country Place.
Whorehouse was the story of a plucky madam (Dolly Parton) and her fight to save her brothel, all the while dealing with a complicated romance with the town sheriff (played by Burt Reynolds). The original Broadway show premiered in 1978, but the film was forced to undergo a few changes, and some states even demanded a title change before displaying the poster for the film. But it wasn't just the title that raised eyebrows, and minor changes were also made to the music, and in Country Place, a verse surrounding the challenges of hiring 'married girls' was taken out in the theatrical cut. But there are still plenty of surreal moments in the song to enjoy -- with my personal favorite being Miss Mona sharing her theory on pimps.
The song was our introduction to the lovable hoes that work with Miss Mona, and reminds us that 'there's nothing dirty going on', so if you like what you see, head on over to SlashControl where you can watch the movie for free in all its glory. Besides, what's not to love about a movie starring Burt Reynolds, Dolly Parton, Dom Deluise, and a chorus line of singing and dancing hookers?
After the jump; 'She pays the food and the rent and the utilities..."
Scenes We Love: Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
Filed under: Animation, Columns, Scenes We Love
Before Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs was released in theaters last fall, I had a couple of opportunities to preview footage from the film. It only hinted at the twisted and yet somehow purely earnest charms that directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller embedded in ambitious inventor Flint Lockwood's fantastical story. Suffice it to say that I loved the film as a whole -- although I'm not quite sure where I would have fit it in, in retrospect I would have included it in my Top Ten of 2009 -- but of all of these sequences I saw, one had me in stitches every time and ultimately became one of my favorite scenes in any movie released last year: the snowball fight.
The scene starts innocently enough as the town's top cop, Earl Devereaux (Mr. T) asks Flint (Bill Hader) for a favor for his son Calvin's (Bobb'e J. Thompson) birthday. Flint obliges and sends ice cream snowballs raining down from the skies in all sorts of colors and flavors (in a terrific visual gag, children invade rivers of vanilla and chocolate, while only one investigates strawberry). Calvin invites Flint to join in on their snowball fight -- a concept that he's entirely unfamiliar with -- but the scientist turns mad with enthusiasm as he embraces the challenge to decimate his adversaries.
Scenes (Songs) We Love: "I Want to Hold Your Hand" from 'Across the Universe'
Filed under: Trailers and Clips, Scenes We Love
Some mornings you wake up and you need music. As my brain bounces back between Thee Milkshakes and Jimmy Scott, another musical urge comes to mind: T.V. Carpio singing "I Want to Hold Your Hand" in Julie Taymor's Across the Universe. Being one of my favorite scenes from the film, let alone favorite song from it, I thought I'd take a cue from Jessica and throw it up as a Scenes (Songs) We Love.It's so easy to mess up a cover -- especially when it's shaped into a cinematic or stage musical. For many, Taymor's rejigging of Beatles tunes was too much to bear. But aside from a spine-gritting, all-too-fast "I've Just Seen a Face," the film's music created a whole new world for me -- each piece encapsulating the magic of the original, while also infusing each with new spirit. And in no case was this more clear than "I Want to Hold Your Hand."
Written "eyeball to eyeball" by Lennon and McCartney, it wasn't a song that evoked any memory in particular ... the pair were simply tasked with the challenge of coming up with a commercially relevant song for the States. But Taymor's take on the song pulled out the yearning and desire resting in the lyrics and intermingled it with an unbreakable wall between desire and reality. The lyrics fit the story as if it was written for it, as Prudence yearned for her fellow cheerleader. And really, that makes for the best songs in musicals -- when they fit so well into the storyline that it isn't a momentary break for song and dance, but rather the emotional need to release music and further the story.
Check it out after the jump.
Tom Cruise and J.J. Abrams Reunite for 'Mission Impossible 4'
'Big Top Pee-Wee': The Original Benicio Del Toro Wolfman
Spin-ematical: New on DVD and Blu-ray for 2/9
Watch This: Brilliant Oscar-Nominated Short 'Logorama'
Chris Nolan to Lead 'Superman' Reboot!?
_thumbnail.jpg)
_thumbnail.jpg)
