Cold War Tagged Articles at Cinematical
The Most Outdated Films and Conventions
Filed under: Critical Thought », Fandom », Summer Movies »
Our ongoing Favorite Summers retrospective has thrown the past into a painful (but hilarious) clarity. Saying"The films of the '80s and '90s are dated!" is like pointing out the sky is blue, but I do think that the past 30 years were more awkwardly captured than the '60s and '70s were before them. Despite the clothes and typewriters, All the President's Men seems far less dated than The X-Files: Fight the Future, and I can't put my finger on why this is except for a vague notion of cultural relevance, and the fact that '70s sideburns and tight pants will always look cool.
Perhaps nothing defines this better than the '80s Cold War films. That decade took our Soviet paranoia to a level of shrillness. In my Russian history classes, we used to joke about how much we feared the Soviets and how much of our dread was fueled by the movies, films that are now nothing but pure cheese after Gorbachev. But they're pretty incredible relics because of the sheer terror they're filled with. To paraphrase my esteemed colleague Scott Weinberg, if all that remained of our civilization was Rocky IV, what the hell would archaeologists think? The only conclusion you could come to was that the Soviet Empire was something akin to the Huns, a terrifying force that had attacked the North American continent for decades. I mean, freedom's up against the ropes ... does the crowd understand? Those futuristic scholars won't, unless they find the right history book, and not a copy of Red Dawn.
So, here's your midweek Cinematical essay question -- what are some films that are terribly outdated to the point that they warp a historical outlook? What films are so dated that they're nearly unwatchable? What about archiac movie conventions? Costumes, clothing and technology are acceptable answers, but I'd love some really creative examples.
So, here's your midweek Cinematical essay question -- what are some films that are terribly outdated to the point that they warp a historical outlook? What films are so dated that they're nearly unwatchable? What about archiac movie conventions? Costumes, clothing and technology are acceptable answers, but I'd love some really creative examples.
Review: The Shaggy Dog
Filed under: Comedy », New Releases », Disney », New in Theaters », Family Films », Remakes and Sequels »
There is a moment in Joe Dante's neato kitsch comedy, Matinee, when Cold War kids Gene (Simon Fenton) and Dennis (Jesse Lee) are sitting in a movie theater, bored silly by the zany (and entirely fictional) body-switching family comedy, The Shook-Up Shopping Cart (a double bill with the equally non-existent The Bashful Bobcat). It was Dante's way of simultaneously mocking and paying tribute to the low-concept filler that Disney made in between what are now the company's enduring classics, and it was a hilarious moment.
While Disney's remake of their 1959 mega-hit, The Shaggy Dog, is not loaded with hilarious moments, it is, as they say, what it is, even if it is that same sort of self-congratulatory jape. Tim Allen plays a dog-hating lawyer who by convenient magic becomes one, makes a fun enough show of it, rolling together nicely the parts played by Tommy Kirk in the original and Dean Jones in the 1976 sequel, The Shaggy D.A. Like My Three Sons star Fred MacMurray in the original, Allen is a Disney contract player, and while he may not be the fatherly comfort that the MacMurray was, he can certainly sell a movie in the same way. People know Tim Allen from Home Improvement; they know him as the voice of Buzz Lightyear from the Toy Story movies; they know him from The Santa Clause, and that is all the selling/warning that most people need.
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