Category Archives: movies

Galactica 1980 post part 5; I only wish the 6th episode starred Janeane Garofalo and David Hyde Pierce

Wet Hot American Summer is a highly under-rated Janeane Garofalo movie about the last day of summer camp.

Toward the end of the film the motley assortment of awkward campers prepare for the requisite softball championship scene. The dialogue goes like this:

Counselor:
So I say, when those anonymously evil campers from Camp Tigerclaw get here we give it our best shot and we try to come from behind at the last minute with some kooky trick play that we made up and we win the game! What do you say, campers?

The campers are skeptical.

Girl Camper:
It sounds like pretty well-worn territory.

Boy Camper:
The whole thing feels kind of trite. I say we forget it.


All of the campers agree.A bus arrives.The Counselor goes to the bus and confers with the counselor from Camp Tigerclaw, and then the Camp Tigerclaw bus pulls away.

Alas, “Spaceball”, Galactica 1980 epsiode 6, trods upon that well-worn baseball/softball game territory, and it hurts every bit as much as you’d expect. It’s funny, but not in the way they intended. If I think too much about it today my head might actually explode, and we can’t have that.

In closing, avoid Galactica 1980 and rent Wet Hot American Summer. It’s much, much better. The official website is even still active. It has a good cast. It’s relatively short. It’s dumb, but it’s fairly clever in it’s dumbness.

And most importantly, it actually means to be funny.

Silverdocs

Last night Husband and I were guests of the AFI and Discovery Channel at the presentation of the Charles Guggenheim Award as part of Silverdocs, I’m so greatful to the person who put us on the guestlist, it was such an incredible evening. Not only did I get to speak with two of my heros, Barbara Kopple (the night’s honoree) and Al Maysles (one of the great gods of documentary film), but I got to see Harlan County, USA on the big screen.

After the symposium and the film we attended the closing night gala and ate terrific food and consumed yummy drinks and listened Hazel Dickens perform. I really would have liked to talk to her but she and her band were still going strong when I ran out of steam. I did get to catch up with lots of colleagues who I haven’t seen since I went back out on leave, so that was fun, too.

It’s been an enjoyable documentary weekend. Friday we finally caught Super Size Me and tonight we’re going to see Metallica: Some Kind of Monster.

Hellbound

Last night I was listlessly watching the channel channel, the usual endless parade of crappy offerings scrolling round and round. Suddenly, a movie description yanked me out of my stupor. Something along the lines of “Chuck Norris as a Chicago cop trying to keep the evil sceptor out of the hands of the devil.” I underestimated what I was about to view, that’s for certain.

Hellbound turned out to be even better than it sounded.

For starters, it’s a circa 1993 Miami Vice rip off. Chuck Norris is Kung-fu Grip Chicago Cop Frank Shatter. His partner is the quintessential neatly dreadlocked, effeminate and non-threatening, endlessly wise-cracking Black man played by an “actor” named Calvin Levels. The IMDB links to a Calvin Levels who is most assuredly not the Calvin Levels in this movie, because that Calvin Levels is an older white actor while the Calvin Levels in Hellbound is none of those things.

Levels gets a lot of weird lines that are either cloying and ineffectual in-jokes about his character’s sexuality or just painfully bad writing, such as when he tells Norris that the reason he told him to turn left because “he was tired of (Norris) going straight all the time.”

So anyway, Shatter (Norris) and Jackson (Levels) are partners and for some reason they have to accompany the body of a murdered rabbi back to Jerusalem and answer some questions for the Israeli police. The biggest question, why a demon needed to go to Chicago in person to kill this rabbi, is never answered. Apparently, despite having loyal satanic minions, this particular demon is a bit of a control freak.

So Shatter and Jackson go off to Jerusalem, Jackson protesting all the way because, as a Black man, it’s cruel to make him miss the basketball playoffs. It’s necessary for Jackson to go because otherwise there’s no one to play the comic foil to the lovable pickpocket scamp they of course take under their wing. (And then forget about in the middle of a car chase – presumably the kid spends 45 minutes of the movie laying on the floor in the backseat of their car???)

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Jackson and Shatter go to Israel. Jackson is allowed to cart a priceless gold sceptor-top in his jacket pocket, despite the fact that it is the murder weapon. And a priceless and mysterious artifact. And the murder weapon. Did I mention that?

Now, of course, before they head off to Israel for much wackiness, they show the sceptor-top to a beautiful archeologist at The University, for reasons that are too stupid to bother to explain, but which do explain to us that it’s a priceless and mysterious artifact. She tells them that the sceptor belonged on the staff of a demon, but some monk broke the staff into 9 parts and buried it in 9 different holy places so that it could never be put back together – although the monk left a map that shows where each piece is located of course.

She knows this because her boss, who is played by the guy who does the voice of the baby on The Family Guy just happens to specialize in this particular myth but he can’t talk to them because he’s on a dig in…Jerusalem.

You’ll never guess where that’s going.

So Shatter and Jackson go to Jerusalem, which is portrayed basically as Baghdad circa 1932 so that we can have much Indiana Jones type wackiness while the producers take advantage of the non-union ultra cheap labor, er, I mean, the authentic locations.

We learn that “flea market” is Israeli for “swap meet.” Really. But that’s not my favorite part of the movie. My favorite part is when Shatter and Jackson wait for the Jerusalem police department to close for the night, break in, disarm the police station’s night security guard and…

They wait for the police station to close. For the night. They break in to the police station, which is closed, for the night. The police station has a security guard.

Excuse me, I have to put my head down for a moment.

You know, what happens in this movie isn’t really important. What is important is that this film take it’s place at the right hand of the Exorcist II in the temple of Bad, Bad Movies. Although Hellbound lacks a drunk Richard Burton, James Earl Jones barfing up a leopard, or a gratuitous Linda Blair tap-dancing sequence, it is, nevertheless, a thing of great Badness.

This fine, fine film, incidentally, was directed by stuntman Aaron Norris, brother of Chuck Norris. What a wacky coincidence!

Don La Fontaine, the most famous man you’ve never heard of

(post is part of the corrupted archives restoration & may includes old comments as text at the bottom)
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Fade In has a nice little interview with Don La Fontaine. You know, the voice-over guy who intones “In a world…” or “In a town…” in thousands of movie trailers.

I’m tired. That’s all I really have to say about this guy. Sorry, Faith. I can’t find the post I had and I’m too braindead to try and rewrite it.

Before I go, I would like to say one thing. I made her buy nothing. Nothing. I was an innocent bystander.

OK. That’s a lie. There was a little bit of peer pressure. Just the tiniest bit. But…but…but…they were really great shoes. They were. I swear to you. I’m too tired to explain the excursion, but it’s been sort of documented in the Bat’s comments if you care to read more. (See what happens when you leave your comments unattended people. Let that be a lesson to you all).

Ponch and John on the Planet of the Apes

If we don’t go to the movies tonight, maybe I’ll get out my pixelvision camera and make my own movie. We bought a lot of Chips action figures from a clearance bin so we can create a world of Ponch and John clones.

I think the Ponch and John might be fixing Georgetown University Barbie up on a blind date with the Charleton Heston/Planet of the Apes doll. Later, maybe the Cornelius and the Ozzie Osborn dolls can crucify her!

[there were two versions of this post in the archives. I think the one I’d previously restored was a draft, so I’m replacing it with this one].