Ghost Story Story

In 1981, they made "Ghost Story," a cool movie about four old men with a terrible secret. It was a horror movie but instead of teenagers getting killed it was old men. Think about it, there's never been a movie like it since. All horror movies are teenage driven.

But let's look at the casting. Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Fred Astaire, Melvyn Douglas and John Houseman.  All but Houseman were major movie stars from the 30s, some 50 years earlier.

Hollywood ultimately remakes everything. If it were to remake "Ghost Story" today, who would they get? Let's see. Fifty years ago was 1963. Which young movie stars from 1963 would they get?

It's easy to say Jack Nicholson and Clint Eastwood, but they're still  major movie stars. Astaire at the time was voicing TV holiday specials and Fairbanks was on the "Love Boat." Only Douglas was making major Hollywood motion pictures (see "Being There").

OK, so we want major movie stars from the 60s, who are not movie stars now (i.e. affordable). This rule would exclude Sean Connery.

Michael Caine
Roger Moore
George Hamilton
Christopher Plummer
Frank Langella
Albert Finney
Peter Fonda
Burt Reynolds

Who am I missing?

Comedies with plots: A Fish Called Wanda

I've been bemoaning the lack of plots in modern comedies. This was spurred by "Bridesmaids," whose plot was "woman upset best friend is getting new best friend." And this was then padded with set pieces (Kristen Wiig drunk on an airplane, Kristen Wiig throws tantrum, everyone gets diarrhea.)

I was thinking today of "A Fish Called Wanda." A diamond caper goes hilariously off the rails. Great performances, characters with motivation, twists and turns, subplots! No padding, and, no diarrhea.

If you haven't seen it, do yourself a favor.

Flying Down to Rio and mental illness in the '30s

As I've posted before, I'm a sucker for movies from the 30s. TCM was showing "Flying Down to Rio," and I was stunned by the climax in which chorus girls are shown dancing on the wings of biplanes.

This is insane!

The girls would dance, then they'd cut to the ground where people would ooh and ahh.

Of course it was all done with rear-screen projection, but you'd have to be insane to even come up with an idea like that.

Then it gets better: Under the planes are trapezes, and two trapeze artists are tossing a girl back and forth. And they drop one! But it's OK, she lands on then wing of another plane. They gives a thumbs up to the crowd, and everyone claps.

Truly the work of maniacs!

DC Comics Presents #56

And what makes this book so special? The story is OK, (Superman, Power Girl meet, pre-Crisis, without crossing over dimensional border!), art is not spectacular, yet it makes two little moments of history.
a) the cover will parallel the cover for Crisis on Infinite Earths #7 (the only difference being Supergirl would stay dead longer.)
b) It's the first/only time Power Girl would be drawn by Curt Swan, making her officially a member of the Superman family. Now, if they could only have gotten Kurt Shaffenberger and Jim Mooney to draw some Power Girl stories, how cool would that have been?

Review: 30 Rock, last episodes

Great, nonstop jokes, and it managed to end on a hug without any actual hugging. ("I love you too, Jack.") (it pisses me off to this day that every episode of "Family Ties" ended with a hug.)

Kenneth's immortal
Every woman in L.A. looks like Cerie
Julianne Moore and Selma Hayek have lost their accents
"I shouldn't have gotten such a loud pacemaker"
The cancellation of the show doesn't sink in until they take away Jenna's mirror.

Really a great way to go.

Some niggling things. Parts of it though reminded me of those dreadful 1980s reunion movies, where we see what Gilligan/girls from "Fact of Life," Rhoda and Mary are doing now. Kenneth is now president of the network, Jack is having an identity crisis in his new role of CEO. If 30 Rock was awful, and they did have a reunion show 15 years from now, that's the kind of plotting we'd have.

But all in all, a great finish to a great show. It should have gotten a complete season to tell this story though.

Film review: Oscar

Yesterday I was bemoaning the state of modern comedy films. Particularly, the absence of plot/plethora of poop jokes. Then today I caught "Oscar," a John Landis homage to 1930's screwball comedy with lots of (perhaps too much) plot and no poop jokes. How refreshing. Critics hated it at the time because it had Sylvester Stallone, and when is it ever fashionable to give Sylvester Stallone a good review?


According to IMDB it cost $35 million to make and made $25 million which explains the absence of Oscar II. And Hollywood then learned that when making comedies use as little plot as possible, and as many poop jokes that can fit.

Film Review: "Bridesmaids," the overdue free HBO weekend edition

For a hit movie, it was really not very good:

Extra-long sequence of dueling toasts which outlasted its funniness
Extra-long sequence on airplane which outlasted its funniness
Extra-long sequence at bridal shower that outlasted its funniness
Diahrea sequence which is somehow mandatory in every modern comedy
I read once that in any movie that centers on women it has to be about competition between two women, either for a man, or in this case, the friendship of another woman.

This was a thin thin story. I keep thinking the original version of "The Producers" is the last comedy that had a plot. Every comedy since "Porky's" has been about people pooping, and isn't it hilarious when people get the runs.

OK, no one got kicked in the balls, somehow they forgot to do that, probably because there were so few men in the movie.

Great cast, some good set up, meeting all the characters, then it loses momentum with the dueling toast scene and never recovers.