We tried watching Top Gun last night, which doesn't get shown much on telly and I've never seen it in its entirety - but had to switch over after 40 or so minutes because we couldn't hear the dialogue and there was no subtitles option. That said, I was quickly going off it - the fondly remembered 'iconic' scene in which Cruise's Maverick serenades Kelly McGuillis' stranger in a bar was just cringey for so many reasons; you'd imagine other poor women having to put up with the same thing for years after and being branded a 'bitch' if she didn't respond with McGuiil's admittedly beguiling bewilderment, embarrassment and sense of fun. It makes me recall with a shudder the antics I myself felt I had to conjur up just to get it on with the opposite sex - the sort of move that, if you were ever a contender, would have had you struck out immediately. It makes me wonder if such movies aren't written by losers for losers, the implication being that to get anywhere with an attractive woman you had to do something out of the ordinary or dramatic rather than just going up to engage with her and see if you occupy any shared happy head space. Back then it was like every encounter was fraught with potential humiliation owing to the implicit fact you were facing a knock back from someone of a lower social status, along with the usual repressed attitudes about sex, like to procure it required some con trick upon an unsuspecting 'target' so was worthy of rejection anyway.
That said I suppose a bar occupied by elite young pilots might be a more competitive context, requiring a stand-out move.
I assumed they hadn't shown this film to tie in with the sequel to preserve it for pay TV but now I wonder if it wasn't more because it would put people off, better to stay with their memories.
Anyway, switched over for the start of The Untouchables which I always enjoy, even if as one critic said, it's a bit like Batman the TV series with a body count. I liked David Mamet's script but a couple of things I never get and overlook because I like the film; when Connery talks of having made a 'blood oath' with Ness, what does that mean? Is it because he shook hands with the bracelet or key hub in his hand? We don't really see that, do we? We see it when Ness shakes hands with one of his colleagues in the final scene, which I guess is a nod back to that. When Connery gets Ness to agree terms, it doesn't seem to me he's got Ness to agree to do anything outside the law so why is there a deal? Why does Connery say 'Well, the Lord hates a coward' - how is that relevant, is it directed at himself or Ness? There are a few little things like that. I suppose the scene were Ness coerces the judge into switching the jury is a mirror of the time Ness asks his colleagues to excuse him, then asks them to come back in when it's clear he's being bribed. I feel the moral degradation of Ness isn't quite deplored in the way the script wants, then again this was the era of Lethal Weapon when the cops take the law into their own hands to get the necessary result, and this is approved. But why would telling the judge his name was in the ledger when it wasn't be effective, it's done very shortly, and why would the judge be unwilling to switch the juries anyway? Why would he need coercion? The final scene when Ness says goodbye to a colleague seems a bit abrupt, 'Okay, bye then!' only redeemed by a sentimental moment that follows.
Over Christmas I prefer to watch familiar favourites with family memories of going to the cinema rather than engage with challenging fare. I never saw Top Gun at the cinema though as I've pointed out, the gap between that and Top Gun: Maverick is so wide, it's as if Connery made Dr No in 62 and then no other Bond movie until returning in GoldenEye in 1996. Or, if you prefer, if Dalton made The Living Daylights and then no other Bond movie until returning for No Time To Die.
A busy animated film that spawned a franchise and put Dreamworks Animation on the cartoon map, as it were, alongside Disney and Pixar. The film is based on a children’s book, but is remarkably adult in its scripting, poking fun at a whole slew of fairy tales as well as the troublesome but adorably twee relationships between the characters. Mike Myers gives a Scottish accent to Shrek, a green-skinned antisocial ogre, but he also gives him character depth, strength and some verbal dexterity. He spars brilliantly with sidekick Eddie Murphy, who interprets the donkey Donkey with fast talking gusto and a healthy kick against the heroic. Cameron Diaz, as the heroine Princess Fiona, is also far more accomplished than you would expect. It helps they are all rather playing to type. The plot is a mish mash and reinvention of fairy story stereotypes and is entirely superfluous to the fun – it is basically Prince not-so-Charming rescues Princess not-so-Perfect – but the award winning screenplay laces all its machinations with lashings of good-humour, both verbal and visual. Essentially, you are watching a pantomime. You can almost sense an audience booing and hissing whenever the villainous Lord Faarquad is on screen. The female dragon is a lovely touch. The animation sometimes looks a bit obvious, but it holds up well enough and a few sequences are exceptionally vivid.
Very funny and very good. Well observed, of both fairy stories and real life. Definitely one for all the family.
Rounding up the Christmas TV movies, when I am sat with a glass of wine or Champagne on New Year's Day, some Xmas dinner leftovers on the stove ready to eat, then Mary Poppins is the best film ever, better than any Bond film (thought it came out the same year as contender Goldfinger).
Everything about it is brilliant.
Love the music, the characters, the comedy especially and it looks brilliant. Okay, same with Goldfinger tbf.
With a drink in hand, I get all choked up at various scenes - this time the arrival of Poppins via umbrella, surely as great a cinematic entrance as Omar Sharif on camel in Lawrence of Arabia, or Andrews herself in The Sound of Music. Another choker is Mr Banks' evening walk across Edwardian (that's right, isn't it?) London for his appointment at the bank for his dressing down. It's the orchestral music and the visuals.
Nice to think its two stars, Julie Andrews and Dick van Dyke, are still alive - you can't say that about Goldfinger now, though I suppose you can about that year's A Hard Day's Night if you count Ringo and Paul as the stars, That said, Poppins' Glynis Johns was also alive this time last year.
Van Dyke's mannerisms put me in mind of a young Suggs from Madness.
Unlike other classics, its attitudes haven't dated as much, say as the Bond films or a few classic musicals. There isn't much sexism for instance, though Poppins herself seems a bit manipulative. Of course, it was set 50 years in the past so had a knowing attitude - like sitcoms such as Dad's Army they tend not to date because they're dated already, and they have a clear-sighted, cleaned up attitude to the situation unfolding, it's like they can self-edit.
That all said, like the Christmas dinner, I'm not sure I'd want to sit down with Mary Poppins for the long haul at other times of the year, unlike Bond. Then again, not like Bond, there seems to be a strict rationing of Poppins along with The Sound of Music - you can't say that about Bond films, they flog them to death. Returning to the theme I think really all those 60s Bonds have unacceptable sexism really, I think Dr No might be the exception but some of Bond's seductions in that seem a bit cool and callous. Then again, same applies now through the 70s movies - Bond's trickery of Solitaire into losing her virginity, his 'delving deeply into Egyptian treasures' in Spy is just horrible... I guess when Brosnan took over the films started to have a knowing edge as if they were depicting the past instead, but I don't think his films are classics really. And the Craig movies don't have that family viewing brief.
I didn't care to watch Casablanca because sometimes these films lose something when you're used to watching it with your parents but... anyway, I tuned in and got swept away by the witty script.
Another triumph was the Wallace & Gromit movie, Vengeance Most Fowl, which had numerous nods to Bond films and other things that I sort of semi-registered but was too tipsy to realise, even on second viewing. Again, some good jokes there keep it bubbling over. In that I'm English and have never been to Yorkshire, it seems a bit odd to feel patriotic about it - then again, the past is a foreign country too and the London of Mary Poppins seems somewhat fictional now, I've even less chance of getting to visit that, it exists only in the movies.
Where Eagles Dare may be my Next Film Seen... it's on tomorrow (or today) 5 January BBC2 2.50pm after Kelly's Heroes at 12.30, a double bill of historically inaccurate WWII mayhem.
I plug this cos WED is a loooooong film and the Beeb doesn't do ad breaks. Usually it's no a channel where the ad breaks make it take up half a day to watch.
And some argue that Eagles is a Xmas film, don't know but it's got that OHMSS vibe with cable cars and snow and whatnot. Nazis too, OHMSS would have worked better with a subtle Nazi vibe.
This passed a few minutes after breakfast on Christmas Eve.
An Oscar nominated short animated film from Aardman Animations and the creative mind and fingers of Nick Park, A Grand Day Out is the first adventure to feature cheese loving Yorkshireman and creatively chaotic inventor Wallace and his faithful, sensible dog Gromit. On discovering there is no cheese in the fridge, the hungry twosome decide the best way to get more of the hard stuff is to fly to the moon [naturally] because the moon is made of cheese [of course it is…]. Rocket quickly constructed, the pair spend a grand day picnicking on the lunar surface and stealing cheese. An abandoned soda machine [abandoned by whom?] goes crazy with indignation and attempts to prevent the rocket from making a swift exit. Foiled, the tin antagonist takes up skiing [as you would…].
It’s all a bit LSD for me, but quite charming, very short and packed full of clever humorous detail and well-observed incident. Peter Sallis voices Wallace and while he is a bit of a social dunce, this early incarnation at least seems in fair control of his inventions. Things went awry later on in the franchise. Interesting to note how few people are involved in the filmmaking process for this 23 minute short – it was almost entirely animated by Nick Park himself, working in his spare time. Subsequently, there is a rugged, almost unfinished quality to the film, mostly reflected in how lumpy the Claymation figures are.
This film is not as refined a project as the later ‘bigger’ episodes, however it is remarkably funny and extremely clever, in content and execution, it isn’t just A Grand Day Out but a grand slice of entertainment. Very good indeed.
Comments
We tried watching Top Gun last night, which doesn't get shown much on telly and I've never seen it in its entirety - but had to switch over after 40 or so minutes because we couldn't hear the dialogue and there was no subtitles option. That said, I was quickly going off it - the fondly remembered 'iconic' scene in which Cruise's Maverick serenades Kelly McGuillis' stranger in a bar was just cringey for so many reasons; you'd imagine other poor women having to put up with the same thing for years after and being branded a 'bitch' if she didn't respond with McGuiil's admittedly beguiling bewilderment, embarrassment and sense of fun. It makes me recall with a shudder the antics I myself felt I had to conjur up just to get it on with the opposite sex - the sort of move that, if you were ever a contender, would have had you struck out immediately. It makes me wonder if such movies aren't written by losers for losers, the implication being that to get anywhere with an attractive woman you had to do something out of the ordinary or dramatic rather than just going up to engage with her and see if you occupy any shared happy head space. Back then it was like every encounter was fraught with potential humiliation owing to the implicit fact you were facing a knock back from someone of a lower social status, along with the usual repressed attitudes about sex, like to procure it required some con trick upon an unsuspecting 'target' so was worthy of rejection anyway.
That said I suppose a bar occupied by elite young pilots might be a more competitive context, requiring a stand-out move.
I assumed they hadn't shown this film to tie in with the sequel to preserve it for pay TV but now I wonder if it wasn't more because it would put people off, better to stay with their memories.
Anyway, switched over for the start of The Untouchables which I always enjoy, even if as one critic said, it's a bit like Batman the TV series with a body count. I liked David Mamet's script but a couple of things I never get and overlook because I like the film; when Connery talks of having made a 'blood oath' with Ness, what does that mean? Is it because he shook hands with the bracelet or key hub in his hand? We don't really see that, do we? We see it when Ness shakes hands with one of his colleagues in the final scene, which I guess is a nod back to that. When Connery gets Ness to agree terms, it doesn't seem to me he's got Ness to agree to do anything outside the law so why is there a deal? Why does Connery say 'Well, the Lord hates a coward' - how is that relevant, is it directed at himself or Ness? There are a few little things like that. I suppose the scene were Ness coerces the judge into switching the jury is a mirror of the time Ness asks his colleagues to excuse him, then asks them to come back in when it's clear he's being bribed. I feel the moral degradation of Ness isn't quite deplored in the way the script wants, then again this was the era of Lethal Weapon when the cops take the law into their own hands to get the necessary result, and this is approved. But why would telling the judge his name was in the ledger when it wasn't be effective, it's done very shortly, and why would the judge be unwilling to switch the juries anyway? Why would he need coercion? The final scene when Ness says goodbye to a colleague seems a bit abrupt, 'Okay, bye then!' only redeemed by a sentimental moment that follows.
Over Christmas I prefer to watch familiar favourites with family memories of going to the cinema rather than engage with challenging fare. I never saw Top Gun at the cinema though as I've pointed out, the gap between that and Top Gun: Maverick is so wide, it's as if Connery made Dr No in 62 and then no other Bond movie until returning in GoldenEye in 1996. Or, if you prefer, if Dalton made The Living Daylights and then no other Bond movie until returning for No Time To Die.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
+1, I think so too.
SHREK (1999)
A busy animated film that spawned a franchise and put Dreamworks Animation on the cartoon map, as it were, alongside Disney and Pixar. The film is based on a children’s book, but is remarkably adult in its scripting, poking fun at a whole slew of fairy tales as well as the troublesome but adorably twee relationships between the characters. Mike Myers gives a Scottish accent to Shrek, a green-skinned antisocial ogre, but he also gives him character depth, strength and some verbal dexterity. He spars brilliantly with sidekick Eddie Murphy, who interprets the donkey Donkey with fast talking gusto and a healthy kick against the heroic. Cameron Diaz, as the heroine Princess Fiona, is also far more accomplished than you would expect. It helps they are all rather playing to type. The plot is a mish mash and reinvention of fairy story stereotypes and is entirely superfluous to the fun – it is basically Prince not-so-Charming rescues Princess not-so-Perfect – but the award winning screenplay laces all its machinations with lashings of good-humour, both verbal and visual. Essentially, you are watching a pantomime. You can almost sense an audience booing and hissing whenever the villainous Lord Faarquad is on screen. The female dragon is a lovely touch. The animation sometimes looks a bit obvious, but it holds up well enough and a few sequences are exceptionally vivid.
Very funny and very good. Well observed, of both fairy stories and real life. Definitely one for all the family.
The Shrek theme park ride at Universal Studios Florida is a blast, too. Totally unrelated, I know.
Rounding up the Christmas TV movies, when I am sat with a glass of wine or Champagne on New Year's Day, some Xmas dinner leftovers on the stove ready to eat, then Mary Poppins is the best film ever, better than any Bond film (thought it came out the same year as contender Goldfinger).
Everything about it is brilliant.
Love the music, the characters, the comedy especially and it looks brilliant. Okay, same with Goldfinger tbf.
With a drink in hand, I get all choked up at various scenes - this time the arrival of Poppins via umbrella, surely as great a cinematic entrance as Omar Sharif on camel in Lawrence of Arabia, or Andrews herself in The Sound of Music. Another choker is Mr Banks' evening walk across Edwardian (that's right, isn't it?) London for his appointment at the bank for his dressing down. It's the orchestral music and the visuals.
Nice to think its two stars, Julie Andrews and Dick van Dyke, are still alive - you can't say that about Goldfinger now, though I suppose you can about that year's A Hard Day's Night if you count Ringo and Paul as the stars, That said, Poppins' Glynis Johns was also alive this time last year.
Van Dyke's mannerisms put me in mind of a young Suggs from Madness.
Unlike other classics, its attitudes haven't dated as much, say as the Bond films or a few classic musicals. There isn't much sexism for instance, though Poppins herself seems a bit manipulative. Of course, it was set 50 years in the past so had a knowing attitude - like sitcoms such as Dad's Army they tend not to date because they're dated already, and they have a clear-sighted, cleaned up attitude to the situation unfolding, it's like they can self-edit.
That all said, like the Christmas dinner, I'm not sure I'd want to sit down with Mary Poppins for the long haul at other times of the year, unlike Bond. Then again, not like Bond, there seems to be a strict rationing of Poppins along with The Sound of Music - you can't say that about Bond films, they flog them to death. Returning to the theme I think really all those 60s Bonds have unacceptable sexism really, I think Dr No might be the exception but some of Bond's seductions in that seem a bit cool and callous. Then again, same applies now through the 70s movies - Bond's trickery of Solitaire into losing her virginity, his 'delving deeply into Egyptian treasures' in Spy is just horrible... I guess when Brosnan took over the films started to have a knowing edge as if they were depicting the past instead, but I don't think his films are classics really. And the Craig movies don't have that family viewing brief.
I didn't care to watch Casablanca because sometimes these films lose something when you're used to watching it with your parents but... anyway, I tuned in and got swept away by the witty script.
Another triumph was the Wallace & Gromit movie, Vengeance Most Fowl, which had numerous nods to Bond films and other things that I sort of semi-registered but was too tipsy to realise, even on second viewing. Again, some good jokes there keep it bubbling over. In that I'm English and have never been to Yorkshire, it seems a bit odd to feel patriotic about it - then again, the past is a foreign country too and the London of Mary Poppins seems somewhat fictional now, I've even less chance of getting to visit that, it exists only in the movies.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Where Eagles Dare may be my Next Film Seen... it's on tomorrow (or today) 5 January BBC2 2.50pm after Kelly's Heroes at 12.30, a double bill of historically inaccurate WWII mayhem.
I plug this cos WED is a loooooong film and the Beeb doesn't do ad breaks. Usually it's no a channel where the ad breaks make it take up half a day to watch.
And some argue that Eagles is a Xmas film, don't know but it's got that OHMSS vibe with cable cars and snow and whatnot. Nazis too, OHMSS would have worked better with a subtle Nazi vibe.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
WALLACE AND GROMIT: A GRAND DAY OUT (1989)
This passed a few minutes after breakfast on Christmas Eve.
An Oscar nominated short animated film from Aardman Animations and the creative mind and fingers of Nick Park, A Grand Day Out is the first adventure to feature cheese loving Yorkshireman and creatively chaotic inventor Wallace and his faithful, sensible dog Gromit. On discovering there is no cheese in the fridge, the hungry twosome decide the best way to get more of the hard stuff is to fly to the moon [naturally] because the moon is made of cheese [of course it is…]. Rocket quickly constructed, the pair spend a grand day picnicking on the lunar surface and stealing cheese. An abandoned soda machine [abandoned by whom?] goes crazy with indignation and attempts to prevent the rocket from making a swift exit. Foiled, the tin antagonist takes up skiing [as you would…].
It’s all a bit LSD for me, but quite charming, very short and packed full of clever humorous detail and well-observed incident. Peter Sallis voices Wallace and while he is a bit of a social dunce, this early incarnation at least seems in fair control of his inventions. Things went awry later on in the franchise. Interesting to note how few people are involved in the filmmaking process for this 23 minute short – it was almost entirely animated by Nick Park himself, working in his spare time. Subsequently, there is a rugged, almost unfinished quality to the film, mostly reflected in how lumpy the Claymation figures are.
This film is not as refined a project as the later ‘bigger’ episodes, however it is remarkably funny and extremely clever, in content and execution, it isn’t just A Grand Day Out but a grand slice of entertainment. Very good indeed.