The Screengrab : burt reynolds

The Screengrab's Top Ten Worst...Movies...Ever!!!! (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 07 May 2009 20:00:00 GMT

Under normal circumstances, with Mother’s Day just around the corner, I’d probably be introducing a list of the Top Ten Best and Worst Movie Mothers of all time (hello, Stella Dallas, Edna Turnblad, Mrs. Robinson, Mrs. Bates and, uh, Mothra)!

But, sadly, these are not normal circumstances, and as your doomed pals here at the Screengrab kick off the first of our Final Four Lists of All Time, we figured we’d better get down to brass tacks with some big-time definitive statements.

And so, this week, we’ve all joined our esteemed colleague Scott Von Doviak down in the deepest depths of the cinematic junk heap to compile our own list of Cinematic Unwatchables. And judging from our picks, it seems Tolstoy was correct when he said, “Happy audiences are all alike; every miserable audience is miserable in its own way.”

In other words, our picks were all over the map, but thanks to the cutting edge calculating powers of the state-of-the-art Screengrabulator 5000, we hereby present our ultimate, irrefutable list of THE TOP TEN WORST MOVIES EVER MADE!!!!!!

10. BREAKING THE WAVES (1996)

I don't know if Lars Von Trier thinks there's something "real" buried in the contrivances and gimmicks and grabs to the crotch that he calls movies, and I don't want to know. I do know that they can do real damage when he persuades talented people who are susceptible to really bad ideas to take part in them. Unlike the auteur, his leading lady, Emily Watson, has since done enough good work to redeem herself for whatever the hell it is she thinks she was doing in this, but at the time, her performance seemed to call less for an award than an intervention, if not an exorcism. (PN)

9. THEY’RE JUST MY FRIENDS (2006)

Bad movies come in all shapes and sizes, but few approach the sheer, wholesale incompetence and awfulness of They’re Just My Friends, an autobiographical indie co-written by and starring World Super Cruiserweight boxing champ “Punchin’” Pat Nwamu that, in terms of aesthetics, narrative, and performance, redefines the very notion of a cinematic failure. It’s a master class in how not to make a movie, made all the more distasteful by the fact that, after two excruciating hours, it abruptly, randomly ends with a cliffhanger that portends a sequel. (NS)

8. WIRED (1989)

John Belushi was a funny, talented guy and a lot of people loved him and enjoyed his work, but Bob Woodward mostly accentuated the negative as he chronicled every drug the late comedian ever ingested in his 1984 exposé Wired, prompting Belushi’s brother Jim to call the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist a cocksucker a few years later in the SNL oral history Live From New York, adding that “Woodward did a really nice job of making John look like a Bluto junkie. I don’t think Woodward’s capable of understanding what love is, or compassion, or relationships,” while Dan Ackroyd noted that Woodward “painted a portrait of John that was really inaccurate.” So I can only imagine what they must have thought of Larry Peerce’s godawful adaptation of Woodward’s book, which begins with Michael Chiklis (whose career somehow survived one of the most catastrophic debuts of all time) emerging from a body bag as Belushi, post-overdose...a concept so jaw-droppingly tasteless it belongs in the Cinema Wing of the Bad Idea Hall of Fame on a shelf with The Day The Clown Cried. And then, remarkably, the maudlin, humorless fiasco gets even worse, as Chicklis’ Belushi revisits scenes from his life, like a faux-SNL skit even more endlessly, painfully unfunny than anything Charles Rocket ever cooked up, and a Second City improv class weirdly depicted as some harrowing cross between primal scream therapy and a Khmer Rouge boot camp. Like HBO’s weirdly overpraised 2004 hack job The Life and Times of Peter Sellers, Wired seems to actively despise its own main character...but not nearly as much as I fucking despise Wired. (AO)

7. FIELD OF DREAMS (1989)

The stench of aging-Boomer anxiety rises thickly from this gross hunk of whimsy. Why did national menace Kevin Costner fall out with his dad? For all Field of Dreams tells you, dad might have been a war criminal and a serial killer and a fan of Black Oak Arkansas, but of course the movie doesn't want to get into any specifics that might interfere with the effectiveness of its guilt trip warning that you must mind your elders so they'll always be there to play catch with you. (Of course, Costner, like a lot of people in the audience, just happens to start regretting how he treated his daddy once he's become a daddy himself. This is self-critical regret as a form of narcissism.) The smarmy smugness taints all that it touches: baseball, Burt Lancaster, James Earl Jones. Check out the scene where Shoeless Joe Jackson (a miscast Ray Liotta) drops Ty Cobb's name just so he can have a laugh about how much he hates the Georgia Peach for a taste of how Costner became, for a while, the movie's poster boy for politically correct claptrap. (PN)

6. CANNONBALL RUN II (1984)

I hate to even mention this one so soon after the death of Dom DeLuise, but not even Captain Chaos could salvage a fiasco of such awe-inspiring ineptitude. The first Cannonball Run was no award-winner either – even longtime Burt Reynolds pal Johnny Carson described it as “an industrial-strength laxative” – but it doesn’t come close to the pure, unadulterated shamelessness of the sequel. Once again featuring enough Burt buddies, big name cameos and Grade Z celebrities to sink The Love Boat, Cannonball Run II takes the coast-to-coast genre into daring new territory by eliminating the race altogether. A few seconds worth of squiggly Ralph Bakshi animation stands in for the actual racing, leaving plenty of time for Jamie Farr to mug in a burnoose, Shirley Maclaine to frolic around in a nun’s habit, and Frank Sinatra to phone in a sleepy cameo, looking like he couldn’t be bothered to cross the street to appear in the same frame as Reynolds and the gang. Who could blame him? (SVD)

Click Here For Part Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine & Ten

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Nick Schager, Scott Von Doviak

Dom DeLuise, 1933 - 2009

Phil Nugent — Tue, 05 May 2009 17:00:00 GMT

The Brooklyn-born actor Dom DeLuise, who died yesterday at the age of 75, was balding and roundish even in his early thirties, when he started getting roles in movies such as Fail-Safe (1964) and The Glass Bottom Boat (1966) and on such TV series as The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. If DeLuise's career had gone in a different direction, he might have gotten typecast as an urban sad sack, of the "I dunno, what do you want to do tonight, Marty?" variety, which would have been a tragic waste. It turned out that, in comic roles, DeLuise could create his own wild man's force field, capable of tearing into a part and investing it with its own glittering, beady-eyed insanity. A skillful actor yet also a burlesque madman, he was, at the peak of his career, both a modern performer and a throwback to the vaudeville-trained character comics of early talkies. And he had an uncanny gift for taking over a scene and making it all his without coming across as pushy or oppressive. He was so wildly likable that, when Anne Bancroft cast him as the lead in her 1980 directorial debut Fatso, more than one heartless movie critic began his review by writing that he sure hoped that Dom was okay with that title.

DeLuise had two major patrons and collaborators, if that's not too grand a term for "guys he seemed to like getting paid to hang out with on the set." He first worked with Mel Brooks--Bancroft's husband--in 1970, when Brooks cast him as the villain in his period film The Twelve Chairs, playing a Russian Orthodox priest on the trail of a lost fortune in jewels. He subsequently appeared in Blazing Saddles (1974), Silent Movie (1976), History of the World--Part One (1981) (as Nero), Spaceballs (1987) (as the voice of Pizza the Hut), and Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993). He also played a villainous opera singer in The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother (1975), a Brooks imitation directed by fellow Brooks regular Gene Wilder. (He also appeared in two other comedies directed by Wilder, The World's Greatest Lover (1977) and Haunted Honeymoon (1986), where he was cast in drag.) His other great association was with Burt Reynolds, who had contributed a cameo to Silent Movie. Reynolds then cast him in a black comedy he directed, The End (1978), in which the director-star seemed no worse than pleasantly bemused by the sight of DeLuise heading over the next hill at top speed with Reynolds's movie tucked under his arm.

Reynolds and DeLuise also appeared together in Smokey and the Bandit II (1980), The Cannonball Run (1981), The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982), Cannonball Run II (1984), the animated feature All Dogs Go to Heaven (1989), and countless TV shows, including an episode of Steven Spielberg's mid-80s anthology series Amazing Stories that Reynolds directed with DeLuise in the lead. DeLuise himself directed one movie, the 1979 crime comedy Hot Stuff, in which he starred; he used the occasion to provide the movie debuts of his three actor sons, David. Michael, and Peter DeLuise. (Their mother was the actress Carol Arthur, who was married to DeLuise from 1965 until his death.) DeLuise also directed a 1997 TV film, Boys Will Be Boys, and in later years turned up in movies and on TV (including a voice role as himself on Robot Chicken) when it seemed to amuse him to do so. A noted chef, he also wrote Italian cookbooks, as well as children's books.

Getting Darrined: When the Sequel Doesn’t Need You

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 19:30:00 GMT

Out on the promotion trail for Fighting, Terrence Howard is still miffed about being replaced by Don Cheadle in Iron Man 2. “‘It was a very, very bad choice,’ fumed Howard, who played Iron Man's Army buddy Lt. Col. James "Rhodey" Rhodes in the first film, to Parade magazine about Marvel Studios' decision to reboot the part with Don Cheadle in the role. ‘You don't make $800 million and then try and shake everyone down. That's not nice,’ he said to MTV News, exaggerating the film's worldwide box-office gross by a mere $200 million.”

As the L.A. Times reports, however, Howard is hardly the first actor to get the “don’t call us, we’ll call you” treatment when sequel time rolls around. Rachel Abramowitz has even come up with a name for it – getting Darrined, as in Dick Sargent replacing Dick York as Samantha’s husband on Bewitched. “Or perhaps being ‘Baldwinized’ is a better term, for Alec Baldwin, who starred as Jack Ryan in the movie of Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Red October but was replaced by the far more popular Harrison Ford for the next two installments.” (OK, but then what do we call it when Ben Affleck replaces Harrison Ford in the same series? Besides a terrible, terrible idea?)

One explanation for Darrenization is simple penny-pinching; in Howard’s case, he was actually the highest-paid actor in the original Iron Man and was asked to take a significant pay cut for the follow-up. Howard wasn’t having it, and “it didn't help that, as some critics pointed out, Howard struggled to hold his own against the razor-sharp comedic stylings of Robert Downey Jr., who played Tony Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man.” Nobody seemed to miss Katie Holmes in The Dark Knight, in which she was replaced by Maggie Gyllenhaal, but then again, Batman himself has been recast so many times, there’s probably not much reason to expect a consistent love interest.

The all-time greatest bit of sequel recasting isn’t even mentioned in the Times article. Of course I’m referring to the third Smokey and the Bandit movie, which was originally titled Smokey IS the Bandit and was allegedly shot with Jackie Gleason playing both roles – his traditional part as Sheriff Buford T. Justice as well as the one vacated by Burt Reynolds when he declined to play the Bandit a third time. I say “allegedly” because no footage or stills of Gleason in Bandit drag have ever surfaced, but the story is oft repeated that this version was screened for test audiences (including by Leonard Maltin in his movie guide). In any case, the finished Smokey and the Bandit 3 sees Jerry Reed taking over the driver’s seat for Reynolds, who does provide a brief cameo as the Bandit. Either way, the movie was a flop. Some roles simply weren’t meant to be recast.

Related:
Marvel Comics is Ready for its Close-Up
Yesterday's Hits: Smokey and the Bandit

Morning Deal Report: Mother Trucker Rolls

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 15:30:00 GMT

Hustle and Flow director Craig Brewer is tackling a literary adaptation as his new project. He’s set to bring Mother Trucker, based on a Maxim magazine article, to the big screen. Good news for us hick flick aficionados, per The Hollywood Reporter: “Pegged as an updated take on Smokey and the Bandit, the classic 1977 Burt Reynolds-Jackie Gleason chase movie that spawned two sequels, Trucker is an action comedy about a man who escapes from jail, steels an 18-wheeler and heads across the South to see his dying mother with police on his trail.” Yeeee-haw!

We’ve had two near-simultaneous volcano movies, two rival Capote movies, and now…two mall cop movies? It’s true: Seth Rogen will be in Austin for the SXSW premiere of Observe and Report. “Written and directed by Jody Hill (Foot Fist Way), Observe stars Rogen as a mall cop who picks a turf battle with local police,” Variety reports. Mr. Rogen, I know Paul Blart – and you, sir, are no Blart!

Broken Lizard auteur Jay Chandrasekhar is set to helm a non-Lizard comedy, Opposites Attract. “Written by Dan Ewen, Opposites is a body-switching comedy involving a young couple who must "walk a mile in each other's shoes" in order to make their relationship work,” THR reports. “Bold and Chandrasekhar are aiming to do an R-rated take on the body-switching genre while looking at the differences between the sexes.” I can see the dick jokes from here!

Related:
Seth Rogen's With Cancer
Yesterday's Hits: Smokey and the Bandit

Screengrab Presents: Cinema's Greatest Comebacks (Part Three)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 22:00:00 GMT

RIP TORN in DEFENDING YOUR LIFE (1991)

A director I know who once worked with Rip Torn described him as a man filled with rage at all times, which may or may not be true. Yes, the actor famously smacked Norman Mailer on the noggin with a hammer in a bizarre fight somehow related to the production of the 1970 film Maidstone (an altercation that may or may not have been staged, but definitely seemed to draw actual blood). And, yes, there was that time he passed on the Jack Nicholson role in Easy Rider (specifically written for him by Terry Southern) after Dennis Hopper pulled a knife on him during a fight in a New York restaurant. So maybe he’s not the mellowest cat in the pet shop (and, sure, the man has been known to have a drink on occasion), but Torn nevertheless managed to maintain a fairly steady career, mostly as a character actor, from the time of his first screen appearance in the 1956 Baby Doll and his Broadway debut a few years later in the original cast of Tennessee Williams’ Sweet Bird of Youth through subsequent decades of TV and movie appearances. Yet, despite the occasional high class gig (like Alan Rudolph’s Songwriter in 1984 and a 1989 Nicolas Roeg adaptation of Sweet Bird starring Elizabeth Taylor), Torn’s later career had a distinct whiff of has-beenery (Jinxed, The Beastmaster)...until, that is, Albert Brooks cast him as the bombastic afterlife attorney Bob Diamond in Defending Your Life, thus unleashing the full, hitherto untapped comic brilliance of Torn (and, to a lesser extent, Meryl Streep), launching a late-period renaissance in the actor’s career as the go-to guy for directors and showrunners looking to capture that “Rip Torn” feeling, including Garry Shandling (who assured Torn’s place in comedy heaven by casting him as uber-producer Artie in The Larry Sanders Show), Barry Sonnenfeld (who assured mainstream theatrical heat via Men In Black) and, lately, America’s sweetheart Tina Fey and the gang over at 30 Rock. Who knew an angry guy could be so frickin’ lovable?

BURT REYNOLDS, BOOGIE NIGHTS (1997)

Burt Reynolds probably thought Rent-a-Cop would be his big comeback vehicle. Or Switching Channels. Or how about Cop and ½ ? That's why Boogie Nights almost has to be considered an accidental comeback; there's no evidence to suggest that Reynolds felt it had any more merit than, say, Striptease or Mad Dog Time – quite the opposite, in fact, as the one-time Bandit fired his agent after seeing the rough cut of Paul Thomas Anderson's opus. Hey, if you throw enough shit at the wall, something's bound to stick, and few have flung as much feces as our man Burt. Indeed, it is perhaps this very quality that makes Reynolds so convincing as porno patriarch Jack Horner, a kindred aging show-biz vet who mistakes his life's work for great art. Reynolds won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Oscar for this performance, then parlayed the resulting goodwill into a string of firecracker roles that launched him back onto the Hollywood A-list. What, you missed Crazy Six, Waterproof, Pups, Grilled, Universal Soldier II and III and Uwe Boll's In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale? Your loss.

BILL MURRAY in RUSHMORE (1998)

Let's maintain a little perspective here. Chevy Chase would probably love a big, spangled comeback, though he turned down the Kevin Spacey role in American Beauty, apparently because he was concerned that it was dirty and would sully his image so that he would be less likely to be invited to do such family fare as Snow Day. Murray, who hasn't always seemed that interested in being a movie star, has never really gone as far away as Chase, who was all but driven from the A-list by a torch-carrying mob. But Murray spent most of the '90s veering between lightly promoted character roles (in such movies as Ed Wood and Wild Things) and star vehicles that he often seemed a little embarrassed about. (In the TV commercials for his 1997 The Man Who Knew Too Little, he offered to personally recompense any dissatisfied viewers for the price of their ticket, vowing, "I will put money in your hand with no anger in my heart.") If his melancholy, graying performance in this Wes Anderson picture feels like a breakthrough and a comeback, one that lifted him to a different level in movies, it may be because it never feels like a gag, or a stunt; you never pick him out in the frame and think, "Hey, there's Bill Murray!" Fourteen years after his weird attempt to stretch himself in The Razor's Edge, Murray, always good company in a movie, had quietly evolved into an actor.

FRANK SINATRA in FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (1953)

Some revisionists (such as David Thomson) have questioned just how desperately Sinatra needed the role of Maggio to salvage his career, or even how badly the career needed salvaging; it's true that the singer was under fire from newspaper columnists and self-righteous "morals" groups for his divorce and his (then liberal) politics, but it's not as if it were dog-food-for-dinner time. But everyone who was there agrees that Sinatra felt as if his world had collapsed; he may still have been rich and famous, but he didn't feel like Frank Sinatra anymore, which is to say that it had been a while since a mob of screaming teenage girls had threatened to lick his clothes off. And anyway, of all the great movie-star comebacks, this may be the only one to have inspired a major subplot in a great movie, and to be based on a rumor so widely circulated that the people who saw The Godfather were assumed to know damn well who "Johnny Fontaine" was and the title of the "new war picture" that he so badly wanted to be in. Though it does seem to be untrue that the Mafia got Frank the job. If it were some piddly-ass thing, Sinatra might have turned to his shadier friends, but for this, he felt he needed to use his big guns. So Ava Gardner got him the job.

MARLON BRANDO in THE GODFATHER & LAST TANGO IN PARIS (1972)

In last year's TCM documentary Brando, Michael Winner, who directed Brando in the 1971 film The Nightcomers, described how he was able to sell the American rights to Universal Pictures as part of the studio's scheme to get rid of its connection to the star. Universal had a multi-picture deal with Brando, and the bosses jumped at the chance to use Winner's film to burn off its contract with the actor whose recent track record -- Morituri, The Appaloosa, Candy, The Night of the Following Day, et al -- seemed to be that of a spent force. Francis Ford Coppola famously had to fight the Paramount brass just to get permission to have Brando do a screen test, even though demanding a screen test of Brando was considered such an insult that many expected that once the request had been made, Paramount would have the relief of never hearing from him again. By all accounts, Brando was always helpful and considerate during the filming, though he later made it clear that he felt that he'd been screwed financially on the deal. The movie was still chugging along happily at the box office when Tango, the adults-only character drama that Brando had done for Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci, was shown at that year's New York Film Festival and set off the first shock waves caused by both the power and sexual directness of Brando's performance. As an actor, he would never dive as deep again, and as a co-worker, he would never be so well-behaved again -- certainly not for Coppola, who he tortured for every perceived Godfather-related slight he'd shrugged off, first by refusing to do a cameo in The Godfather, Part II, then by keeping one eye firmly on the clock while making Apocalypse Now. But the one-two punch of these two masterpieces left him with a mystique that he would carry to the end of his days, and though his post-1972 resume is strange and spotty, no one doubts that he was doing whatever it was he wanted to do.

Click Here For Part One, Two, Four & Five

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Scott Von Doviak, Phil Nugent

Screengrab's Top Guilty Pleasures (Part Four)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 22:30:00 GMT

HAYDEN CHILDS' GUILTY PLEASURES:

ROCK 'N' ROLL HIGH SCHOOL (1979)

I'm generally bad at guilty pleasures lists because I'm not really embarrassed about my taste in pop culture, bad or good. However, some more serious-minded movie critics might mock my love of these movies. So, for your pleasure, instead of just laughing them off, here's why I like these movies. Rock & Roll High School is a Roger Corman film starring P.J. Soles as the world's biggest Ramones fan, Riff Randall. It's directed by Allan Arkush, who went on to helm such thoughtful, profound movies as Heartbeeps and Caddyshack II. Mary Woronov, the former Velvet Underground/Exploding Plastic Inevitable dancer, plays the tyrannical Principal Togar. And the Ramones play the most awesome and beloved band in the world. In the real world, they were indeed awesome, but nowhere as beloved as this movie indicates, which is what we in the business call "a crying shame." Anyway, Principal Togar has boundary issues and enjoys burning albums and generally overstepping her authority. So when the Ramones arrive in town, all hell breaks loose at her school. There's a subplot about a pretty nerdy girl getting the dorky jock guy, but it's slight enough to pass by without sticking to memory. What's important: footage of The Ramones in their prime. And then the school explodes (spoiler!).

HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER (1973)

I seem to love this movie, which is a mostly indefensible horror-Western starring Clint Eastwood. See, this town's got some bad mojo because they paid some bad dudes to kill off a crusading sheriff and then they double-crossed the bad dudes. And now, a few years later, the bad dudes are getting out of prison. Who could have foreseen this? Since when have prison terms come to an end? So, Eastwood appears out of nowhere at the beginning of the movie and immediately starts killing men and raping women because he's a real man, not some namby-pamby liberal who doesn't kill and rape. Naturally, the townsfolk decide that this guy is the guy to help them beat the bad dudes (this is also the reasoning behind the PATRIOT Act), and they go along with his increasingly insane demands because... uh, I don't know. One guy balks and Eastwood kills him, too, so I guess they're scared or something. Eastwood's character is never named, and the end of the movie suggests that he is either a supernatural entity or a semi-famous celebrity with a high opinion of himself. The supernatural angle ought to be some comfort to the women he raped in town, because ghost-rapes don't count. Or so says Camille Paglia. In the swinging spirit of bad '70s movies, both of the women are really into him after he, y'know, violates them anyway. Progressive! So, yeah, this movie is indefensible. And pretty dumb. And yet I watch some of it every single time I catch it playing on TV, which is pretty much every third night. Does this make me a bad person? My religion of choice says yes. Another note: the Wikipedia page for the film includes a picture of Eastwood on his horse with the helpful subtitle, "The stranger on the white horse is symbolic." Thanks, Wikipedia! You're the best.

MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON (1939)

Li'l Jimmy Stewart is a golden-hearted guy with a heart of gold. And I don't know if I mentioned it, but he's a guy. This movie takes place in the 1930s, and only white guys like Li'l Jimmy could be Senators in the 1930s. And most were! At least, those that didn't live in Hoovervilles. The upper crust, if you know what I mean. Our humble director Frank Capra believes the best of the common upper-crust man, or at least, he knows that people will pay good money to hear that they're better than those fat cats in Washington. So Li'l Jimmy (known as Mr. Smith in this movie) goes to Washington as a Senator. But those bad fat cats are up to something nefarious. Something to do with earmarks or bridges to unknown destinations or some fat-cat stuff like that. But they didn't count on Mr. Smith and his golden-hearted maverick ways! Although we don't know what party (Republican!) Mr. Smith is in (Republican!), he bucks the fat cats in a crazy, awe-inspiring filibuster. Yes, a filibuster! The parliamentary procedure whereby a legislator talks for an infinite number of hours about anything that strikes them. It's crazy and awe-inspiring, I say! And much better in montage than real time. Anyway, blah blah maverick blah. After 45 straight days of talking (while the awestruck galleries fill up with spectators, because what person in their right mind could resist an extremely privileged white guy talking about whatever comes to mind for hours upon hours? I get chills just thinking about it), Li'l Jimmy is turning into a broken shell of a man. But then! The indulgent Vice-President presiding over the Senate (or is he the Senate Majority Leader? I don't know. Or care.) smiles at him. And IT'S ON! Suddenly Boy Scout-proxies are trumpeting the news all over his state! And in the face of his waning blather, all the bad-guy fat-cats admit that their earmarks are no match for his mavericky ways and then they all cheer and elect Sarah Palin to be President. WOW! Someone give this movie an award!

Shoot, I forgot to say what I like about all this hokum. But I think the clip says it better than I could.

HOOPER (1978)

In the coveted Oscar category of Burt Reynolds Movies Involving Rocket Cars, there's little that can stand up to Hooper. Directed by former stuntman Hal Needham and starring Reynolds, Sally Field, Jan-Michael Vincent, Brian Keith, and Robert Klein, it's an attempt to recapture the successful hicksploitation (thanks for the term, Scott!) of the previous year's Smokey And The Bandit. Reynolds plays the greatest stuntman who's ever lived, who finds himself being pushed into an extensive stunt involving multiple explosions and the aforementioned rocket car. Despite the constant jokey macho bullshit in the movie, Hooper features a surprisingly tender and complex relationship between Reynolds and Field. And there's a lot of darkness in the depiction of the downside of stuntman life. Who would have guessed that constantly hurting yourself and risking danger could have potentially dire consequences? Not me.

SWEET TALKER (1991)

I've never actually seen this Aussie romantic comedy starring Karen Allen during her lost years, but the soundtrack was composed and performed by cult musician Richard Thompson. Coincidentally, I wrote a book about an album by Mr. Thompson and his ex-wife called Shoot Out The Lights and, seeing as how the holiday season is almost upon us, I thought I would mention it here. Self-promotion: the guiltiest pleasure of all!

Click Here For More Guilt From Andrew Osborne, Scott Von Doviak, Leonard Pierce, Vadim Rizov & Sarah Clyne Sundberg

Contributor: Hayden Childs

Morning Deal Report: Cheech and Chong Re-Lit

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 15:30:00 GMT

Wake and bake! Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong are reuniting for a concert film. "The Cheech and Chong Concert Movie will lense in March during a San Antonio stop on the 'Light Up America' tour, which kicked off Sept. 26. Tour, their first together in at least 25 years, will continue well into 2009," Variety reports.

Chevy Chase, Burt Reynolds, Vinnie Jones, Michael Madsen and "Stuttering" John Melendez…I should just stop there, shouldn’t I? But wait – it gets better. The abovementioned luminaries will star in Not Another Not Another Movie. "Chase plays a studio head who quits his floundering company, leaving his ex-con sibling (Madsen) in charge. Soon their equally inept gangster friend (Jones) takes over and assigns a production assistant (David Leo Schultz) to direct a spoof of spoof movies. Reynolds plays an actor playing the director of the chaotic film within the film," The Hollywood Reporter explains.

Those of us who found Counting Crows to be the most humorless band of the ‘90s are surprised to learn that Crows lead singer Adam Duritz is teaming with comedy troupe Broken Lizard (Super Troopers, Beerfest) for Freeloaders. "Story revolves around five guys and a girl who live in the lap of luxury in a rock star's mansion. But their sweet situation is threatened when the rock star decides to sell the home," per Variety.

Related:
Take Five: Weed
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Honorable Mention: The Top Leading Men of All Time (Part Six)

Andrew Osborne — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT

BURT REYNOLDS (1936 - )

It may be hard for you young whippersnappers to believe, but 30 years ago, Burt Reynolds was the biggest star in the world. He'd be the first to admit that his career management skills were never a match for his good ol' boy charisma and winking, bubblegum-popping likability – in fact, he's practically made a second career out of admitting it. His forgettable early career in television and B-movies (Navajo Joe, anyone?) isn't what convinced John Boorman to cast Reynolds in his breakthrough role in Deliverance; rather, it was his easy command of the Carson panel as a guest host of The Tonight Show that led to his star-making turn as Lewis Medlock. His Southern charm and Marlboro Man looks led to a series of redneck roles, from White Lightning to Smokey and the Bandit, which became the second-highest grossing movie of 1977, behind only Star Wars. Reynolds went to that well a few times too many, famously turning down Terms of Endearment to reteam with hick flickster Hal Needham for Stroker Ace. His career never came close to returning to the heights of Smokey, but he was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role in Boogie Nights. True to form, he fired his agent after seeing the rough cut, fearing his career was ruined…and then when the movie instead revived his career, he squandered the comeback opportunity by going right back to making crap again.

STEVE McQUEEN (1930-1980)

Steve McQueen's best-known roles didn't require him to do much other than be Steve McQueen, but really, who cares? A lot of leading men coast by on personal charm; that's sorta what people like about them. And the thing that made Steve McQueen popular had nothing to do with his acting chops and everything to do with how fucking cool Steve McQueen was. He was so cool that just typing his name over and over again makes me feel cooler. So he made himself a star by stealing The Magnificent Seven from bigger-name actors, just by being cool. He convinced John Sturges to put a motorcycle chase into The Great Escape, because motorcycle chases were cool, and he was Steve McQueen, dammit. He effortlessly makes The Thomas Crown Affair a fun movie to watch. And Bullitt, man! There's nothing even approaching acting in that movie, but McQueen just kills. I think people were surprised when it turned out that McQueen could act after all. His roles in Junior Bonner and Papillon called on him to do something with all that legendary cool, and McQueen delivered in spades. He wasn't so great in The Getaway, and no one got out of The Towering Inferno without some stink. He made only a few more movies before his all-too-early death in 1980. But he left a legacy of untouchable cool backed by unsuspected competence that's unique among actors too fucking cool to break a sweat while making something as inconsequential as a movie.

HARRISON FORD (1942 - )

For a lesson in the importance of Leading Man star power, one need look no further than the disparity between the first Star Wars trilogy and the second. Sure, The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith had shinier special effects, and Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman and even Hayden Christensen have all been known to deliver fine acting performances (albeit in non-green screen environments)...but Ford managed to bring a recognizably human heart to his half of the trilogy despite the hokey dialogue and distracting special effects, and then he went on to prove his Leading Man status in all the Indiana Jones, Jack Ryan and other ‘80s and ‘90s tentpole action flicks that followed. For some, none of Ford’s films matter as much as the cult classic Blade Runner, and his female fan base may have a particular soft spot for Witness or Working Girl...but Ford’s inability to expand his range much beyond the action genre (despite interesting against-type anomalies like The Mosquito Coast, What Lies Beneath and “I’m Fucking Ben Affleck”) keeps him batting clean-up the Honorable Mention list rather than enshrined in our Top 25.

WILLIAM POWELL (1892-1984)

In the days when Americans still dreamed of embodying classy sophistication, before we all started hating elitists and shooting wolves from helicopters, Powell was as classy as you could get without actually turning English. Of all the homegrown American stars of his day, he may be the one who it's hardest to imagine doing time in a Western between trips to Manhattan. He was built to swill cocktails and trade wisecracks, but his eyelids, which he kept permanently at half-mast, signaled that he was dangerously close to becoming jaded. The only solution was for him to find the perfect woman and verbal sparring partner -- you didn't want him turning cold and becoming one of those rich rotters, but you also didn't want him coming after your girlfriend or sister. So when Powell met Myrna Loy for the first time on-screen, the nation must have breathed a collective sigh of relief. He had co-starred with other actresses, notably Carole Lombard in My Man Godfrey, and he also had a well-known off-screen connection to Jean Harlow before she died, but his partnership with Loy struck so many people as so ineffably perfect (like picking up the paper to see if your favorite wastrel buddy from college had been forced into rehab yet and discovering instead that he'd married the first duchess to be crowned Playmate of the Year) that they wound up doing fourteen pictures together, including six installments of the Thin Man series. (Their first co-starring gig, which was released the same year as The Thin Man, was Manhattan Melodrama, in which Powell, as a politically ambitious D.A., marries Loy after Clark Gable, who plays a gangster, has had his fun with her; at the end, Gable winds up happily going to the electric chair after whacking Powell's crooked rival, because he isn't about to stand by and see his beloved New York denied having such a handsome-looking couple make it to the Governor's mansion. Manhattan Melodrama now has its place in history as the movie that John Dillinger was watching just before G-men mowed him down as he was leaving the theater. I'll bet he had a good time.) After supporting Henry Fonda in the 1955 Mister Roberts, Powell retired and stayed that way, for almost thirty years, until his death at 91.

CHOW YUN-FAT (1955 - )

Chow was being called things like "the most photogenic man alive" and "the coolest actor in the world" when his movies were still available only to American movie fans who lived in cities with significant Chinatown districts. As it is, the pull of his image had a awful lot to do with the craze for Hong Kong movies that started among Western film geeks in the late 1980s and would lead to Hollywood trying to buy up most of the hottest Chinese directors. But John Woo, who made Chow a star with the 1986 A Better Tomorrow and then made him the sort of figure for whom words such as "star" seem inadequate with The Killer, Once a Thief, and Hard-Boiled, has yet to do anything as good in Hollywood as his early work, and while there are many factors that might help explain this, the failure of his American films to include footage of Chow's face is one that should not be underestimated. Chow himself has taken to focusing on the great dream of cracking the American market, haltingly and with some very strange results: his role in the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie was scissored by officials in his home country who felt that the characterization was "in line with Hollywood’s old tradition of demonizing the Chinese." At 55, Chow could probably benefit from finding a new stage to sustain his career a while longer. If he does, some of us won't care if it means that he's doing his acting while speaking phonetically-learned Portuguese.

MARCELLO MASTROIANNI (1924-1996)

For most of his long career, and even now, years after his death, Mastroianni was probably the best-known internationally of all Italian movie stars, and indeed, he did seem to have the field pretty well covered. He achieved great popular success in comedies such as Big Deal on Madonna Street and Divorce, Italian Style, but he also happened to arrive in time to embody the tortured-artist/modern man figure that was so important to such directors as Fellini (La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2), Antonioni (La Notte), and Visconti (The Stranger). Though he gave handsome bearing and weight to these iconic roles, he usually seemed happiest playing ordinary men cast into remarkable circumstances that throw their frailties and limitations into sharp relief. At the very end of his career, when he was in his seventies, he worked with such veteran avant-garde directors as Raul Ruiz (Three Lives and Only One Death) and the ninety-ish Manoel de Oliveira (Voyage to the Beginning of the World), as if he were still hoping to learn from those odder and even older than himself. His experiences in English-language pictures -- John Boorman's Leo the Last, Robert Altman's Ready to Wear -- were few and far between and not particularly successful, but he did once send a shout-out to his American fans by appearing on an episode of Laugh-In and giving the camera his best soulful, romantic look while ripping off his toupee.

Click Here for Part One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Seven & Eight

Contributors: Scott Von Doviak, Hayden Childs, Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent

My Kind of Red State: An Election Year Salute to The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 19:00:00 GMT

As a Yankee, born and bred in the heart of America’s elitist, communist, terrorist-embracing, tree-hugging sodomite wasteland (a.k.a. “Taxachusetts”), I grew up with a certain prejudiced view of the South that pretty much disappeared when I actually crossed the Mason-Dixon line for the first time. Driving cross-country with friend and Screengrab colleague (and Hick Flick scholar) Scott Von Doviak after college (and later relocating for a time to George W.’s old stomping ground of Austin, TX), I was pleasantly surprised to discover how generally nice and friendly the residents of the Confederacy seemed up close.

Now, back on the East Coast, the inescapable maelstrom of election coverage has got me shaking my fist at the Red States again on a daily basis...so I was pleasantly refreshed when my lovely Polish bride (in the midst of a recent spate of Dolly-mania) rented The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, which reminded me again of some of the nicer parts of Southern culture, while making me wonder afresh why, to paraphrase Rodney King, we can’t all just get along. Whorehouse, for those who’ve forgotten or never had any reason to know, is the story of the Chicken Ranch, a brothel tolerated (and frequented) by the citizens of a small Texas town for decades until a sanctimonious self-appointed TV crusader decides to improve his ratings by launching a campaign to shut the place down.

The laid-back, no-nonsense charm of the eccentric locals (and the deep-fried chemistry between Southern icons Burt Reynolds and the irreplaceable Dolly Parton) is a far cry from the typical closed-minded, dimwitted, backwards, racist, homophobic, sex-fearing redneck stereotype. In the happy singing, dancing world of Whorehouse, the characters are perfectly happy to live and let live, co-existing with an establishment that may not technically match their ideas of morality or legality, but where, as Parton cheerily warbles, there’s really “nothing dirty going on.”

That is, until Dom DeLuise’s glory-seeking, opportunistic muckraker makes an issue of it, forcing people to choose between their theoretical beliefs and the common sense reality of their day-to-day lives. Frustrated by the cognitive dissonance of the situation, Reynolds attempts to save the Chicken Ranch with the power of fact and logic: i.e., prostitution has existed since the dawn of time, and Parton’s quasi-legal operation isn’t hurting anyone...in fact, he reasons, a regulated, female-run brothel is safer and healthier for both the employees and customers. But sadly, as Charles Durning’s Texas Governor elucidates in his catchy showstopper, “The Sidestep,” politicians are swayed by polls, not logic, leading to an official result that benefits absolutely no one (except, of course, DeLuise’s comically odious pundit).

Election year politics can be maddeningly nasty and manipulative, but The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas (the top-grossing movie musical of the ‘80s, according to Wikipedia, and much better than I remembered) is a charming corrective, offering a pleasant vision of a world where Red State values are represented by sensible, positive, loving and loveable uniters like Parton rather than certain divisive barracudas I could mention.

Screengrab Review: “Surfer, Dude”

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 15:00:00 GMT

It’s not always a pretty sight when documentary filmmakers make the leap to fictional features. See – or rather, do whatever you can to avoid seeing – Michael Moore’s Canadian Bacon and Errol Morris’s The Dark Wind. As I implied in this post yesterday, I’m a big fan of S.R. Bindler’s documentary Hands on a Hard Body. Even so, I wasn’t exactly stoked to learn his follow-up (nearly a decade later) would be a surfing movie starring The Shirtless One, Matthew McConaughey. I dunno, maybe it’s just because I watched the entire goofy-ass David Milch series John From Cincinnati, but there’s something about the whole mystical-spiritual aura surrounding surfing that makes otherwise talented people a little loopy.

Surfer, Dude definitely qualifies as loopy – even that comma in the title is a little too self-consciously quirky. McConaughey, a friend of Bindler’s since high school, produced the film through his production company j.k. livin and brought his essential dudeness aboard in the lead role of Steve Addington, a free-spirited “soul surfer” who lives for the waves. Upon returning to Malibu from his latest world tour, Addington is informed by his manager (Woody Harrelson) that his board and shorts sponsorship contracts have been sold to Eddie Zarno, a former surfer turned multimedia mogul. Zarno has big plans for Addington, including a role in a beach house reality series and a virtual reality videogame bearing his image.

Addington’s “not feelin’ it.” He’s an all-natural dude and all he needs is his friends, his weed and his waves. “I’m not some assclown in a green room. I’m a surfer, dude!” Despite his manager’s warnings that cash is in short supply, Addington wants nothing to do with the digital world. His spiritual crisis arrives when the waves disappear. As the days pass with no surf to ride, he goes on a fast (including the ganja), but can he remain true to himself and resist selling out to the Man? Duuuuude.

Surfer, Dude has a green theme in more ways than one – in addition to McConaughey and Harrelson, Willie Nelson is on hand as a goat farmer to complete the trinity of Texas stoner icons. But the movie is so lightweight, it’s hard to invest too heavily in Addington’s existential dilemma. It’s a vanity project to the core, an ode to its producer-star in all his toned-and-tanned golden glory. With his lazy honeydew drawl, allergy to shirts and “awright awright awright” party-guy vibe in full effect, McConaughey isn’t playing a character so much as his US magazine persona come to life. His wink and nod towards his lovable rogue image recalls the Burt Reynolds of the late 70s, and that’s one way of looking at this movie: it’s Smokey and the Bandit with surfboards.

Related:
Woody Harrelson Eats Your Brains
Trailer Review: Fool's Gold

Jerry Reed, 1937--2008

Phil Nugent — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Jerry Reed has died of complications from emphysema at the age of 71. Reed, who was born in Atlanta in 1937, spent two years in the military before moving to Nashville in the early 1960s to pursue a career in the country music industry. A guitar picker with a unique style, he quickly earned a place in the fraternity of working, sought-after studio musicians while honing his songwriting on the side. His rise to solo stardom was abetted by two legendary figures: Chet Atkins, who produced one of Reed's early singles in the mid-'60s and later teamed up with him for a pair of award-winning albums in the early 1970s, and Elvis Presley, who recorded a couple of Reed compositions, "Guitar Man" and "U.S. Male", while plotting his own late-'60s comeback. (Legend has it that Elvis, who decided to do "Guitar Man" after hearing Reed's own recorded version, decreed that Reed was to be brought in to play on the sessions after finding that nobody else could recreate the self-taught guitarist's "weird tunings.") Reed's own biggest hit, the 1971 Grammy-winning "When You're Hot, You're Hot", established him as an unexpected master of the demented redneck comedy routine set to music, a field that he also plowed in the Elvis tribute "Tupelo Mississippi Flash" and the great, rabid Cajun epic "Amos Moses." During this period, he was becoming a familiar face on TV, thanks to recurring appearances on musical-variety programs hosted by Glen Campbell and Dean Martin. (Reed had his own short-lived series--The Jerry Reed When You're Hot You're Hot Hour--in 1972.) He also slipped into animated (as in cartoon) form to appear on an episode of The New Scooby-Doo Movies, calling in Shaggy, Scooby, and the other personnel of the Mystery Machine to help him find his lost guitar.

In 1975, Reed made his movie acting debut in the redneck classic W. W. and the Dixie Dancekings, starring Burt Reynolds. His movie career, which would displace his music career for several years, became inextricably tied to that of Reynolds's, with whom he co-starred in Gator (which Reynolds directed), Smokey and the Bandit and its first sequel, and Stroker Ace, where his brief appearance was uncredited, a hint that Reynolds probably wishes he'd picked up on. Reed also turned up on Reynolds's TV series B. L. Stryker and Evening Shade; acted in the comedy Hot Stuff, which was directed by its star, fellow Reynolds sidekick Dom DeLuise; and displaced ol' Burt in the 1983 Smokey and the Bandit Part 3, which Reynolds couldn't be bothered with. He also co-starred with Peter Fonda in High-Ballin', part of the trucker-as-modern-American-hero drive-in movie cycle that the Smokey and the Bandit movies (and Reed's own contribution to its soundtrack, "East Bound and Down") helped midwife, went head to head with Robin Williams and Walter Matthau in the 1983 comedy The Survivors, and played an officer in the Gene Hackman-Danny Glover Vietnam drama Bat 21 (1988), on which he was also the executive producer. After contributing redneck authenticity to the Adam Sandler vehicle The Waterboy in 1998, Reed officially abandoned movies to spend the rest of his life concentrating on his music. At that time, he expressed something close to disdain for his acting ability ("When people ask me what my motivation is, I have a simple answer: Money."), but in fact he was an easy, natural presence on-screen, and brought energy and likability to many roles that might have defeated a better-trained but stiffer performer. If the secret to his success in movies was partly that he recognized his own limitations and never strayed to far outside his comfortable range, that at least makes him smarter than say, Kris Kristofferson. Reed is survived by his wife Priscilla, with whom he would have celebrated a fiftieth wedding anniversary next year.

Summer of '78: "Hooper"

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Each Thursday this summer we’ll hop in the Screengrab time machine and jump back thirty years to see what was new and exciting at the neighborhood moviehouse this week in…The Summer of ’78! I’ve been on vacation, so this week we’re catching up on the past few Thursdays.

Hooper

Release Date: July 28, 1978

Cast: Burt Reynolds, Jan-Michael Vincent, Sally Field, Brian Keith, Robert Klein, Adam West

The Buzz: “It just ain’t summer without Burt!” (That is, assuming Jimmy Carter is still the president.)

Keywords: Stuntman, Driving Backwards, Rocket Car, Bar Fight, Person on Fire

The Plot: Sonny Hooper (Burt Reynolds) is the greatest stuntman alive, but some fear he’s getting a little long in the tooth. His latest gig is doubling for Adam West, star of The Spy Who Laughed at Danger. (The notion that West would be headlining a big action movie as late as 1978 is one of Hooper’s more implausible elements.) During a barroom brawl at the Palomino, Hooper bonds with up-and-coming golden boy Ski (Jan-Michael Vincent), who is also working on the film. They develop a friendly rivalry on the set, with each trying to top the other with ever more outrageous stunts. This does nothing to help Hooper with his escalating dependence on painkillers, nor his deteriorating relationship with long-suffering girlfriend Gwen (Sally Field). Hooper’s doctor informs him that one more big jolt could paralyze him for life, but that doesn’t stop Hooper from taking on a risky rocket-car gag that could end his career. Take a wild guess if it does.

The Test of Time: Who knew what a cornucopia of embarrassing admissions this Summer of ’78 feature would turn out to be for me? I’ve already copped to owning novelizations of all the Omen movies as well as the Heaven Can Wait Fotonovel, but I can probably top all of that with the admission that I also had the Hooper soundtrack album. At least Smokey and the Bandit featured songs by Jerry Reed; the title track from Hooper is performed by someone named Bent Myggen and is perhaps the only song in recorded history to feature the line “Set him on fire, it will amuse him.” Of course, this latest revelation of mine comes as no surprise to the bazillions of you who keep copies of my book Hick Flicks within reach of your toilet seats. (And if you aren’t one of them, why not buy a copy today? Come on, people, I’m currently ranked # 1,090,823 on Amazon. Help me out here.) As far as the Burt Reynolds/Hal Needham southern fried ouvre goes, Hooper falls short of Smokey but finishes far ahead of Stroker Ace and the Cannonball Run collection. Allow me to quote myself from my magnum opus: “What sets Hooper apart is its insider’s view of a working class subculture within the motion picture industry. The stuntmen are a tight-knight group, clowning around on the set and playing bumper cars on the freeway en route to their favorite watering hole. They know they’re the workhorses of the picture, but even though they’re basically blue collar guys, they’ve got show biz hearts. They do impressions of stars like Jimmy Stewart and Gregory Peck to crack each other up, and get together to drink beer and watch their stunt reels for the thousandth time. There’s an improvisational spontaneity to such scenes; a “morning after” sequence in which Reynolds and Brian Keith slowly roust themselves from hangover oblivion is particularly well-observed.”

Quotable Quote: “I'm gonna find the guy who invented Zylocaine and kiss his ass on Hollywood and Vine!”

2008 Equivalent: This is a tough one, but I’ll give it to Hancock. Like Burt in the '70s, Will Smith is our current Mr. Summer, with a similar “It’s me, your buddy!” persona winking through every role. Plus Hancock is a two-syllable character name title starting with H – just like Hooper!

Previously on Summer of '78: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

Unwatchable #99: “The Honeymooners”

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 17:30:00 GMT

Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.

The kernel of almost any bad movie is a really terrible idea, and at first glance it appears that 2005’s big screen version of The Honeymooners fits the bill. It reeks of a concept dreamed up in a corner cubicle at Paramount Pictures by a junior development executive desperate to hang onto his job. “I’ve got it!” he shouts, jumping up from his chair and dumping his coffee all over his never-used keyboard. “The Black Honeymooners! Eddie Murphy IS Ralph Kramden! Chris Rock IS Norton!”

Alas, the junior executive’s dream cast fails to develop, and eventually it is Cedric the Entertainer who tries to fill the Great One’s shoes, with Mike Epps as his long-suffering sidekick. As The Honeymooners opens, it is 1999 and Brooklyn bus driver Ralph Kramden (Mr. Entertainer) is putting his “Bustin’ Loose” moves on passenger Alice (Gabrielle Union). He unveils the first of his get-rich quick schemes: a Y2K Survival Kit that’s sure to make him millions when the new year arrives and everything comes crashing down.

Six years later, Ralph and Alice are married and living in a dumpy apartment. Sadly, Ralph’s anticipated global chaos never arrived, so he’s busy with new and even more ill-fated schemes while Alice works at the diner and dreams of home ownership. A little old lady is selling her duplex, which would be perfect for the Kramdens and their neighbors, Ed and Trixie Norton (Epps and Regina Hall), but a slimy developer (Eric Stolz) has his eyes on the property as well. With the help of Jon Polito and John Leguizamo, Ralph and Ed pin all their hopes on a greyhound they find half-dead in a dumpster. Can this abandoned stray win the big race, or is Ralph doomed to a life of sharing a small apartment with Gabrielle Union?

Drained of all that hilarious domestic violence humor that might prove upsetting to a modern audience (Ralph’s “To the moon, Alice!” is transformed into a lovey-dovey sweet nothing), The Honeymooners is a decidedly mediocre but good-natured family comedy that has no business being on the Bottom 100 list. Ralph says it best: “You just a regular UPN sitcom, huh, Alice?” It’s true that the comedic stylings of Mike Epps are so low-key as to be undetectable to the human eye, but Cedric the Entertainer has his effectively blustery moments. And of course, where there’s Polito, there’s quality. In the tradition of Burt Reynolds’ greatest contribution to cinema, the end-credit bloopers prove to be the movie’s high point. Still, I’ve seen at least 100 worse family comedies in my capacity as movie janitor for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, so The Honeymooners rates only a single Maury.

Previously on Unwatchable:

100. Devil Fish

Burt Reynolds Builds a Bandit

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 15:30:00 GMT

First Rocky did it, then Rambo. Indiana Jones is about to do it, and even Dirty Harry is rumored to be thinking about it. So if all of these movie geezers can come out of retirement for one more adventure, why can’t the Bandit? Of course I refer to Bo “Bandit” Darville, the iconic Burt Reynolds rogue who drove circles around Sheriff Buford T. Justice in the Smokey and the Bandit movies. While a big-screen re-launch of the franchise may currently exist only in the sickest corner of my diseased brain, Burt Reynolds has recently reunited with the black TransAm he made famous. Sort of.

In Celebrity Rides: Burt Builds a Bandit, a 5-part series that aired on something called the DIY Network but is now available on DVD, Reynolds teams with car restoration company YearOne to design and build a new custom version of the car using the original 1977-78 model. Actually, saying Reynolds “teams” with the restoration group is a bit generous; he shows up at the shop a couple of times to reminisce and grunt a few suggestions, footage of which is scattered throughout the episodes to make him seem like a consistent presence. In fact, there’s probably less than an hour of actual content in the whole two-and-a-half hour series; the footage is all chopped and shuffled and re-used over and over, following the time-honored TV dictum: tell people what they’re going to see, let them see it, and then tell them what they just saw.

Still, if you’re a know-nothing gearhead like me, it’s fun to see an old-school TransAm pulled out of a field, completely stripped down and rebuilt to modern specifications, even if replacing the CB radio with an Alpine navigation system does seem like sacrilege. Clips from the original Smokey are scattered throughout, and they mostly serve to highlight how shockingly frail Reynolds looks these days. He’s making another big screen comeback attempt with Deal, in theaters tomorrow, but it’s a safe bet that his years of going eastbound and down are long behind him, good buddy.

Screengrab Movie Poster Preview

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 18:00:00 GMT

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’ve been known to review the occasional movie trailer here at the Screengrab. Some people feel this is unfair – that we are making snap judgments based solely on some marketing executive’s dumbed-down notion of how to sell the product. To which I say: fie! (And I rarely say fie.) You know what would be really unfair? Previewing upcoming movies I know absolutely nothing about based solely on their posters! So let’s do it!

DEAL

Burt Reynolds is the aging gambling legend banned from all the casinos in Vegas and forced to undergo radical reconstructive surgery on his face in order to gain entry. When this duplicity fails due to sophisticated facial recognition technology, Reynolds recruits cocky but raw up-and-coming poker star Bret Harrison, offering to share his tricks of the trade in exchange for a cut of the profits. The two men butt heads, especially when Shannon Elizabeth enters the picture as the naïve cocktail waitress. But surprise! She’s actually conning them both.

DECEPTION

Ewan McGregor thinks he has it all – great job, new house, gorgeous wife Michelle Williams. That is, until mysterious stranger Hugh Jackman shows up. Williams claims he’s her uncle and that he’ll only be staying with them for a few days while he’s in town for a grooming seminar. McGregor begins to grow suspicious when he discovers Jackman’s boxer shorts in his bed. He snaps when he catches Williams and Jackman in the hot tub together, and kills both of them…but Jackman was never really there at all!

FRONTIER(S)

It seemed like such a quaint small town, the perfect place to spend the night while driving cross-country. Little did they know this town was actually populated by CANNIBALISTIC DEVIL WORSHIPPERS!!!

THEN SHE FOUND ME

Helen Hunt is a successful lawyer in New York, falling in love with neighbor Matthew Broderick, the advertising exec she met at Starbucks when he spilled his mochacinno in her lap on the morning of her big trial. All is going well until her estranged mother Bette Midler shows up to beg forgiveness for accidentally killing Hunt’s father with a waffle iron. The healing begins, and Hunt is finally able to get over her lifelong fear of waffles.

THE FALL

OK, this one is a challenge, but I’m gonna say it somehow involves a gay pirate, a time machine and an awful lot of peyote.

Yesterday's Hits: Every Which Way But Loose (1978, James Fargo)

Paul Clark — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:00:00 GMT

It’s hard to remember now, but there was a time when Clint Eastwood wasn’t the critics’ favorite and Oscar juggernaut he is today. Back in the seventies, his films were labeled as lowbrow and pandering by most critics. This didn’t stop him from being one of the decade’s most reliable stars, and his thrillers and Westerns were solid hits. Still, there comes a time in almost every star’s career when he decides to broaden his appeal, to step outside his usual comfort zone into the sort of movie few people expect from him. For comedians, this is often a serious role designed to show off their dramatic chops. For larger-than-life stars, it’s something more down-to-earth, a more family-friendly vehicle to bring them down to Earth. And for Eastwood, it was playing opposite an orangutan named Clyde in Every Which Way But Loose.

What made Every Which Way But Loose a hit?: Every Which Way But Loose was originally written for Burt Reynolds, but while with Burt in the lead it might have just been another of his good-natured goofs, for Eastwood it was genuine change of pace. One of the tests of a beloved star is whether he can make his usual audiences follow him when he tries something new. And follow Eastwood they did with Every Which Way But Loose, which became one of the biggest hits of his career. The fight scenes were rough-and-tumble enough to satisfy Eastwood’s fan base, but Clyde’s presence in the film helped to soften his character in other ways. Trucker Philo Beddoe is more sensitive than the enigmatic loners he usually played- friendly, uncertain, tentative around women. As Philo says, “I'm not afraid of any man, but when it comes to sharing my feelings with a woman, my stomach turns to jelly.” This no doubt had some appeal for audience members- especially women- who couldn’t relate to his more stoic characters like Harry Callahan.

But let’s not underestimate Clyde’s appeal. Even for those of us who like to think we’re above lowbrow animal humor, there’s something about primates that strikes a universal note in audiences. Perhaps it’s the way they can ape (sorry) traditional human behavior, but in an outsized, cartoonish way. Regardless, Every Which Way But Loose gets a lot of mileage from Clyde acting like a person- drinking beer, giving people the finger, driving, doing his little victory dance when Philo wins a fight. The Clint’n’Clyde combination provided so irresistible to audiences that the film spawned sequel, Any Which Way You Can (also a hit), and a rash of imitations, most obviously the televised trucker-and-primate series BJ and the Bear.

What happened?: Unpretentious entertainments like Every Which Way But Loose aren’t really designed for the long haul. Its ambitions are modest- to make people laugh, to showcase some popular country songs, to have a fist fight every ten minutes or so, and to let people forget their troubles for two hours. Worthy goals all, but not the sort of traits that help a movie to stand the test of time, or which cry out for critical re-evaluation. Today, Every Which Way But Loose feels like it was practically made to be watched late at night on basic cable. It’s the kind of movie that people remember fondly but don’t feel the need to seek out again.

Does Every Which Way But Loose still work?: Better than expected, but still not quite. Most people only remember the fight scenes and the byplay between Eastwood and Clyde, but the film contains quite a bit of filler to bring it up to a 114 minute running time, and not all of it’s good. Naturally, Philo’s frequent fist fights cause him to run afoul of a number of people, and when he, his friend Orville (Geoffrey Lewis), and Clyde take to the road, they’ve got both a biker gang and a pair of bumbling cops on their tail. It’s hard to say which of the two bands of pursuers are less funny. The cops are pretty superfluous to the plot, and the film could have cut them out entirely without incurring any structural damage. By contrast, we spend more time with the bikers, but it’s not time well-spent. Aside from the moment when Ruth Gordon (playing Orville’s salty-mouthed Ma) hauls out a shotgun and starts blowing up their bikes, the bikers’ scenes mostly feel pointless. In both cases, the scenes distract from the stuff we came for.

Yet other elements of Every Which Way But Loose hold up surprisingly well. Most films would portray Philo’s courting, and subsequent pursuing, of country singer Lynn Halsey-Taylor (played by Eastwood’s then-girlfriend Sondra Locke) as a traditional romance. Yet from the beginning there’s something off about her character. Lynn- who surprisingly isn’t the heiress to the drinking fountain empire- stares too intently and tries too hard to make Philo fall in love with her, and Philo, true to form, falls for it. Watching the film, I thought this might be a fault of the performance, but considering the truth we find out about the character, it ends up making a lot of sense. I was genuinely surprised by the direction the film went with this storyline- not so much because it comes out of nowhere, but because I thought it was too good-natured to go there.

I also liked the ambiguous note the film takes in its climactic fight scene, in which Philo ends up taking a dive against aging legend Tank Murdock (Walter Barnes). It’s rare for a character in this kind of film to not get what he sets out for, but that’s part of the movie’s charm. At the end of the day, Every Which Way But Loose isn’t an especially good movie- it’s too unfocused for that, with too much lame filler that could have easily gotten cut without being missed. But it’s likable enough that I can almost forgive it its missteps. And I think it goes without saying that Clyde is still awesome.

Under the Hood of Eastwood’s “Gran Torino”

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Clint Eastwood has stayed behind the camera since Million Dollar Baby in 2004, but a mysterious new project announced by Warner Bros. finds the 77-year-old back in the driver's seat. Eastwood will direct and star in Gran Torino, due to hit theaters not long after his next directorial effort, Changeling starring Angelina Jolie, is released on November 7th.

Since no additional details about the movie have been released, it's a prime candidate for speculation, both informed and nonsensical. Take this from The Guardian: "If the title is any clue, Gran Torino is the name of a 1970s Ford car model — the same one Starsky and Hutch drove in the TV series." Hmm. . . fascinating stuff, but I think we can rule out another Starsky and Hutch remake at this point, particularly one starring the AARP poster boy.

A slightly more intriguing theory comes courtesy of "Kurt" from North Hollywood, who emailed Harry Knowles at Ain't It Cool News, claiming that a representative of Village Roadshow Pictures had expressed interest in a Gran Torino he was selling. "He told me they were looking for the right car for a new Clint Eastwood movie. He said it was a thriller about a killer that drives a certain torino. His 1972 Ford Gran Torino is the only thing the police have on him. A retired police lieutenant, one Harry Callahan, makes it his mission to track down the culprit when two young police officers, one Callahan's grandson, are shot and killed by the guy."

Harry Callahan is better known, of course, as Dirty Harry, the rule-bending cop Eastwood played in five movies, most recently 1988's The Dead Pool. Sure, it would be a little odd to see Serious Respected Filmmaker Eastwood go back to chasing bad guys with a big gun, but maybe he figures Sylvester Stallone shouldn't have all the fun. Somewhere Burt Reynolds is out looking for a black TransAm.

Yesterday's Hits: Smokey and the Bandit (1977, Hal Needham)

Paul Clark — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 19:00:00 GMT

It may be hard to remember now, but there was a time when Burt Reynolds was the biggest star in Hollywood. Throughout the seventies and early eighties, Reynolds sold millions of tickets using mostly his easy grin and patented good ol’boy charm. And no Reynolds movie made more money than 1977’s bootlegging comedy Smokey and the Bandit. Yet, as Reynolds aficionado Larry Aydlette said in his recent Burt Reynolds blogathon, Smokey has lost a lot of its luster today. Many critics look upon it with scorn, and more importantly the film has taken on the air of a movie that’s more often remembered than revisited. So where did the love go?

What made Smokey a hit? The easy answer is Reynolds, but there was more to the film’s popularity than Burt. The seventies saw a rise in movies marketed to Southern audiences- a rise that helped to contribute to Reynolds’ box-office success- and Smokey and the Bandit came along at just the right time to benefit from this movement. But Smokey was a big hit all over the country, not just down South. Audiences loved the character of Bandit, the legendary outlaw truck driver who was smooth and confident but also life-sized. The movie also benefited from the era’s CB radio craze, and contributed more than a few colorful expressions to the vernacular. Smokey and the Bandit had something for everyone to enjoy- comedy, vehicular mayhem, anti-authority sentiments, a little romance, Bandit’s iconic Pontiac Trans Am- and as such it reached a broad base of moviegoers who made Smokey the second-biggest hit of 1977 (after Star Wars) and kept the film in some theatres for years on end.

What happened? Reynolds may have been the era’s biggest draw, but his biggest downfall has always been an unfortunate inability to discern quality from junk. While Reynolds occasionally leveraged his Smokey popularity to take on more adventurous projects (1979’s Starting Over, 1981’s Reynolds-directed Sharky’s Machine), more typical were the rash of Smokey sequels and ripoffs designed to piggyback on the original film’s success. So began a string of Bandit-like cocky showoff roles for Burt, most of which are indistinguishable today. By the mid-eighties after Burt had made three Smokeys, two Cannonball Runs, and many other movies in this vein, audiences decided they’d been to this well too often, and Reynolds’ popularity went into free-fall.

Does Smokey and the Bandit still work? That’s a big 10-4 there, good buddy. The plot is simplicity itself- Bandit (Reynolds) and best pal Snowman (regular Reynolds costar Jerry Reed) take a bet that they can make a round trip from Atlanta to Texarkana, Texas and back in 28 hours, bringing back 400 cases of (then-illegal in Georgia) Coors beer for Big Enos and Little Enos Burdette (Pat McCormick and Paul Williams). But after they’ve picked up the beer and started heading eastbound and down towards home, Bandit picks up a runaway bride who he christens Frog (Sally Field), and in doing so runs afoul of Texas Sheriff Buford T. Justice (Jackie Gleason), the father of Frog’s betrothed.

OK, so Smokey and the Bandit will never be mistaken for great art- as far as onscreen cross-country drives go, it’s no Two Lane Blacktop. But in the intervening three decades, the movie has lost almost none of its charm. Much of the film feels like a live-action Bugs Bunny/Yosemite Sam cartoon, with Bandit smooth-talking his way out of scrapes while the rootin’ tootin’ Sheriff Justice fulminates about his ever-slippery quarry. However, the film is made with real style and wit, and even if the film hits every note we expect it to- there’s even a short romantic interlude where Bandit and Frog take time out from the drive to do a little offscreen he-in’ and she-in’- it’s pretty darn irresistible.

The key to the film rests in the performances, which for the genre are first-rate. At the center of the film is Reynolds, who gives the best star turn of his career. It’s tempting to say that Reynolds was only playing himself, but to do so would be to underestimate the comic verve and star presence he brought to the film. Whether he’s trying quips over the squawk box with Snowman or pissing off Justice, Reynolds makes it all look easy.

For her part, Field makes a funny and surprisingly romantic counterpart for Reynolds- a talky, insecure, very seventies leading lady who’s a far cry from the damsels in distress and one-dimensional sex symbols that populate most movies of this sort. In addition, she and Reynolds have a palpable chemistry (which later translated into an offscreen romance between the two), and it’s this comfort level between the two that really sells their scenes together, most of which consist primarily of two people talking in a car. And Jackie Gleason remains, as ever, a treasure, giving a blustery performance that’s as agreeably salty as a bag of pretzels. Sheriff Justice may be a sumbitch with a badge, but darn if Gleason doesn’t make the guy lovable.

Like its star, Smokey and the Bandit is an unassuming movie with no ambitions except to show audiences a good time. It’s what you might call cinematic comfort food- there’s nothing new or bold about it, but it’s highly satisfying all the same. Thirty years down the line, Smokey also evokes a bygone era in movies, both in terms of its pre-CGI car chases (courtesy of stunt driver turned director Needham) and its pre-irony iconography. Nowadays, it’s hard to imagine a big-screen hero sporting a cowboy hat without so much as a wink to the audience, but it’s a testament to the enduring appeal of the film, and of Burt Reynolds’ performance, that Bandit can still pull it off with ease. And of course, that Trans Am is as awesome today as it ever was.

Vanishing Act: Bill Forsyth

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Some vanishing acts are harder to explain than others. Who could possible have a problem with Bill Forsyth? He’s no budget-busting megalomaniac like Michael Cimino, nor a purveyor of edgy indie curiosities like Harmony Korine. Maybe you could blame him for inspiring the plethora of quirky British comedies that overtook arthouses in the mid-to-late 1990s – The Full Monty, Waking Ned Devine, Saving Grace, etc. – but that would be excessively ungenerous. The first Scottish director to break through to an international audience, Forsyth began his film career in collaboration with the Glasgow Youth Theater, with whom he produced two low-budget comedies: That Sinking Feeling and the breakthrough hit Gregory’s Girl. With his third film, the fish-out-of-water tale Local Hero, he whipped up a delicate blend of appealing regionalism and low-key whimsy that has often been attempted – and rarely duplicated – since.

After 1984’s Comfort and Joy, Forsyth moved to America, though it would be an exaggeration to say he went Hollywood. His U.S.-made movies weren’t particularly successful; although Housekeeping and Breaking In (featuring one of Burt Reynolds’ many comeback performances) both have their admirers, the 1993 Robin Williams vehicle Being Human was an unmitigated disaster. The closest thing to a big-budget picture Forsyth ever attempted, the film suffered from a troubled production and a nearly non-existent theatrical release.

So much for Forsyth’s American career. Six years passed before the director resurfaced with Gregory’s Two Girls, the Scottish-made sequel to his second feature film. (This is what the experts call “coming full circle.”) Never released theatrically in the U.S., it remains Forsyth’s final film to date. Judging from a recent interview with the London Times, he plans to keep it that way. “I have to put my hand on my heart and say I'm ten times happier not making films than making films.” he says. “I did it 'cos they let me. It's not something you decline…I can't stand the cinema. We did go once three or four years ago just to experience it. We went to a mall outside Glasgow and had a pretty horrendous experience.”

Retirement from filmmaking doesn’t always stick, however, and Forsyth’s vanishing act is one we wouldn’t mind seeing come to an end.

New Horizons in Online Criticism: The Burt-Reynolds-a-Thon

Paul Clark — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 17:00:00 GMT

One of the most interesting aspects of online criticism is the diversity of films being spotlighted. Sure, there are plenty of good web-based critics who remain devoted primarily to the old masters and the classics of world cinema, but more and more people are breaking with that mold and giving serious consideration to corners of film history that in the past were passed over by the critical establishment.

For an example of this, look no further than the blog Welcome to L.A. Proprietor Larry Aydlette formerly known by his noms de 'net That Little Round-Headed Boy and The Shamus — has devoted the entire month of February to mounting the mammoth one-man Burt-Reynolds-a-Thon. Every day this month, Aydlette will be spotlighting another aspect of Reynolds' long career, from his seventies-era salad days to his Oscar-nominated comeback in Boogie Nights, as well as all the somewhat leaner years both between and since. So far, Aydlette has taken on a Super Bowl weekend double feature of Burt's football-playing roles in Semi-Tough and The Longest Yard, as well as writing a reassessment of his only Oscar-nominated performance to date, Boogie Nights' porn paterfamilias Jack Horner.

While I wouldn't necessarily consider myself a Reynolds fan, there's no denying his status as a pop-culture icon, something people have a tendency to forget given his current ubiquity and presence in more than his share of regrettable roles. Bear in mind that in the era of Pacino, Nicholson, Hoffman and Beatty, it was Reynolds who was Hollywood's biggest moneymaker. Even today, we all know his name and his face. In Aydlette's words, "Some thirty years after his peak of stardom, you never have to ask: Burt Who? How many of today's stars will be able to say that thirty years from now?" For this reason alone, Reynolds' career deserves to be taken seriously, and I'm glad that Aydlette is putting forth the effort.