SugarTits (a post from the past)

The past couple weeks have been exceedingly busy and I haven't even had a chance to sit down and watch movies (it's all I can do to keep up with this season of The Voice - don't judge!).

I originally wrote this in Feb 2015 (so the "last week" mentioned below isn't LAST week). And I hope you all remember the incident which is the reason for the title of this blog:

"What do you think you're looking at, sugar tits?" — to female police officer during 2006 DUI arrest

(I actually was going to point you to a link of all the terrible things Gibson has said over the years, but they are frankly scary as shit.  He's a complete nutter.)

So until we meet again, Happy Cinco de Mayo...have a margarita for me!

Last week I was (again) watching commercial TV and the Lethal Weapon series was on.  Naturally my first thought on this was "Pure Gold"!  I mean, how can you lose?  I could go with two from the series, I could go with Danny Glover or...the obvious choice.

So it's been years since I've seen Lethal Weapon.  I loved it when it came out...cop movie, buddy movie, Mel Gibson's naked ass.  It was released in 1987 and spawned FIVE sequels.  Wow.   The "1987" was so clear in the hairdos (Mel is sporting a fine mullet) and outfits. And the music is all bluesy sax.  The story is that Mel plays a guy who's had a lot of personal tragedy and no one can tell if he's truly crazy or trying to pull a scam to get out of his job.  There is a poignant (heh) scene where Mel is maybe gonna put a bullet in his brain, but ends up all sobby instead.  Danny Glover is a guy who just turns 50 and doesn't want to deal with any of this.  His tagline is 'I'm too old for this shit".  They get caught up in stuff they shouldn't which leads to Glover's family being threatened.  Then Mel gets to show off and shoot a lot of people.

To add to the crazy in this movie is Gary Motherfucking Busey!  I had completely forgotten he was in this!  He's a bizarre guy anyway, but he's playing a really driven second to the main bad guy.  He does shit like burns his arm with a lighter but doesn't flinch.  Oy!

Sidenote: my mother LOVED Danny Glover, she met him at the Bammies one year and he kissed her cheek.  She was over the moon.  Even back then (nearly 30 years!) he still moved like an old man.  I looked up if he had any injuries when he was young...I discovered he's epileptic and dyslexic but nothing about why he runs like he's 80.

(I'd suggest pairing this movie with a PBR.  Seriously, it's such a dude movie)

To round out my Gibson experience, I thought I'd revisit Mad Max.  Mad Max came out in 1978.  I didn't discover it until 1981, after I saw The Road Warrior and my world was rocked.  Some of you may know this, but when I went to college, my dream was to move to Australia and make movies with George Miller and Peter Weir.  I loved their movies so much in the '80s!

Mel Gibson is a baby in this movie.  He is adorable, honestly.  But O.M.G. is the dialog in this film terrible.  There is a whole section where Mel and his wife go on this vacation and he tries to tell her that he loves her but he's crap at it.  He gets teary here too.  What's with the crying all the time, Mel?  Showing your "acting" chops??  The bad dialog is made up for by the excellent costuming and hair-raising chase scenes!  I think this film was made on a shoestring budget (I read that only Mel and one other guy got to wear real leather as their costumes...all the other cops had to wear vinyl cuz it's cheaper), so it's pretty impressive that it's so ambitious.

Anyway, Max actually doesn't get "mad" until the last 15 minutes of this movie.  Seriously?   For an hour and 15 minutes he's all sappy and wanting to quit his job because it's dangerous and his friends are getting hurt (my favorite is the guy who has a throat injury and has to talk through one of those mechanical things!).  Then his family is killed by the crazy gang of hooligans and he gets Mad.  He paints his car all black (Sexy!  Before it was yellow and said Interceptor on the back), gets shot in the leg, run over, whatever.  He's like the Terminator...he doesn't quit until he's killed everyone he wants to.

The music was particularly interesting to me.  It is completely over the top dramatic and was really reminding me of Hitchcock movies.  It turns out the composer's earlier work reminded George Miller of Hitchcock's composer which is why he was chosen.  

(My pairing suggestion for this one is a valium and a big glass of water.  It's a stressy film!)

My take away is this:

#1 - Mel had no choice but to go batshit crazy after all the bizarre shit that is the Mad Max world and Gary Busey. He's been surrounded by it from the get go.

#2 - He really has beautiful eyes.

#3 - I wonder what would have happened if he'd stayed in Australia?  Would he have stayed sane?

#4 - I watched a lot cop/car chase movies when i was young (I still do).

All right...there you have it.  I thought about doing a Mel Gibson flight but there was NO WAY I was going to watch Apocalypto.

xoxo....hashtagSueslife

Strange things are afoot at the Circle K

FYI, I find that I tell you guys the most crazy things in this blog.  I'm always willing to roll over and share the soft underbelly of my guilty pleasures with you.

Here is one of my guiltiest...I kind of have always loved Keanu Reeves.

I'm sure many of you know this about me already.  I mean, Keanu is the reason I even came up with this surprisingly useful motto:  One doesn't have to be good at their job for me to want to have a fling with them.

Because I'm a realist.

And Keanu is hot. 

And Keanu is really not that good at his job.

I feel bad saying that because it's not like I don't enjoy some of his movies. The Matrix is awesome.  I love Speed.  My Own Private Idaho.  So good.  

But then there are really, really bad ones.  Dracula?  What was ANYONE thinking hiring him for that?  PAINFUL. (And out of decency let's not even mention Winona Ryder)   Or Much Ado About Nothing?  My dear friend Lisa reminded me last night of when we saw this movie (I have a terrible memory, so I'm always happy when someone reminds me of things!).  When Keanu makes his entrance (he plays Don John) his first line is "I'm a man of few words."  Apparently I leaned over to Lisa and muttered "Thank God."

He's really never a good actor in any of them, even the ones I like.  Sort of stilted line delivery.  Emotionally one note.  But what's crazy is that he has been in some startling films.  Do directors love him because he's like a lump of unformed clay?

And then there is also this thing going around on FB about how he's led such a tragic life but he's an awesome, generous, lovely guy.  Well, okay...?

I'm just gonna go with the fact that I may not want to see many of his films (action ones are fine but certainly none that contain any emotional vein) but I'd sleep with him in a heartbeat.

Don't judge.

Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure - released in 1989

I remember seeing this movie right when it came out.  I didn't know much about it besides it being about time travel, which is one of my favorite themes.  I also didn't know either of the lead actors in it.  I saw it alone and I still remember completely buying into everything this movie was selling. And by the end, I had a massive crush on Keanu.  To be fair, right around then I was also dating a guy with very similar hair and attitude so I was all in.

Watching it again, I still enjoy this film.  There are a MILLION holes in the plot but the writing is entertaining and witty and some of the performances aren't bad.  Napoleon and Socrates are my personal favorites (Napoleon is over the top and Socrates does some nice, subtle background stuff that's kind of charming).  

There are some interesting contrasting elements that show up in this film.  For instance, our main characters are supposed to be "dimwitted metalheads", yet they have a remarkable vocabulary, using words like egregious, bodacious, odious...smart words.  There are even a couple webpages devoted to "Bill and Ted Speak" (throw that in the "someone has too much time on their hands" bin).   Additionally, even though they are metalheads, the lasting music they create - the music that creates world peace and eradicates hunger (or something like that - I couldn't even remember 10 minutes after watching it) - has this lilting, harmonious, soft sound.  Kind of ambient.  Not terrible. A little boring, actually.

This movie is also an 80's music icon treasure trove.  Jane Wiedlin of the Go Go's plays Joan of Arc (Ted initially thinks she's Noah's wife).  The "Three Most Important People in the World" from the future are Clarence Clemons (E Street Band), Martha Davis (The Motels) and Fee Waybill (The Tubes).  I'd like to think they had a big jam session at the wrap party.

George Carlin is wonderful in this movie as Rufus.  He kept breaking the 4th wall with little eye rolls and brow raises at Bill and Ted's antics.  Early influence for The Office?

And speaking of influences...since I wasn't a Whovian in my youth, I didn't think about this, but their time travel vehicle is a telephone box.  Well played, Bill and Ted writers.

What was really NOT well played by the writers was the lame attempt to wrap everything up by having the guys go back in time after their school presentation to set up situations that make their success possible.  In other words, they didn't think ahead at all and would have completely failed if they didn't have the time machine at their disposal.  I feel like that's just lazy writing, people.

And really, out of all the actors in this film, Keanu was most triumphant (if I may borrow a phrase from the movie) in the long run.  Many immediately faded into oblivion.  Alex Winter, who played Bill, apparently was a Broadway actor prior to this film.  Since this, he's mainly become a director, mostly TV.  My weird bit of trivia is that he's married to an animation producer who is currently on a project at my old company.  Her first name is Ramsey.  Just like my old cat.  I often wanted to call her Ramsamopolous, which was one of my cat's many nicknames.  And if I'm being honest, my Ramsey was cuter and much sweeter.

(My drink pairing for this is a Polar Pop (this also means something else according to Urban Dictionary.  Use your imagination.), which is apparently a popular drink you can create at the Circle K.  It includes the following ingredients:  Go Ape Energy Drink, Mountain Dew, lemonade, a little bit of Slice, a drop of unsweetened ice tea, and some slushee if you are so inclined (mostly to keep it cold)).

Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey - released in 1991

Oh. My. God. This is a bad movie.  I'd never seen it before for the obvious reason of it sucking, but I thought I'd take one for the team and suffer through it.  

I'm not even sure how to describe what happens in this.   It isn't about time travel, although the bad guy does travel from the future to annihilate Bill and Ted (I guess he hates world peace and stuff).  He sends evil Bill and Ted shaped robots to kill them. Maybe this is done to show that Keanu and Alex Winter have acting "range"?  Didn't really work.  Anyway, B & T end up dead and have to fight the Grim Reaper to come back to Earth and fix the situation.  They have to "beat" Death somehow and they choose board games.  They start with Battleship and that's kind of funny but the gag gets totally overplayed (best 7 out of 10 with various games) so suddenly I was all about TSOP (remember that from my last post? Time Spent On Phone).  The film tries really hard to start a new "cool word" campaign with "Station".  It starts as the name of an alien scientist but the alien uses it for EVERYTHING (like Groot in Guardians of the Galaxy but the alien isn't nearly as appealing) and I guess we are all supposed to as well?  They reference it in the websites devoted to Bill/Ted Speak, so apparently we are.  This same alien scientist creates "good" Bill and Ted robots but they look like something I could build (read: remedial) so I'm not sure why anyone is okay with this.

They use the same hackneyed conceit of the guys using the time machine to go back and set up the scenario so they win.  It's a really unsatisfying conclusion.

Death is my favorite character in this film.  He ends up sticking with the guys as they go back to Earth and save the day.  During the experience, though, he becomes fond of them and when he feels slighted he's a pouty bitch.  Pretty funny.  I think the actor is doing a Swedish accent (?) so it clearly was supposed to be the Ingmar Bergman version of Death in The Seventh Seal.  A bit of a highbrow stretch for a movie like this, but I'll give it to them.

Oh, and in a really weird and unnecessary twist, Bill's super young stepmother from the first movie has divorced Bill's dad and married Ted's dad.  For no apparent reason.  Plus, the girl clearly has daddy issues.  Ew.

(My drink pairing for this film is a can of Bud.  They drink some kind of cheap beer in the film, plus I don't want any of you assuming we'd spend good money on this.)

My takeaways:

#1 - Even after seeing B & T again, my motto still stands.

#2 - I can NOT wait to see the Key and Peele movie, Keanu.  It looks amazing.  See trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9zy27apgI8

#3 - I read this on a Bill and Ted trivia page and thought it was hilarious:

Winter says he and Reeves are still close buds.  In a Reddit AMA last year, Winter recalled, "Once we accidentally stepped out of a restaurant into the middle of the NYC Halloween Parade, and someone walked past us and said (without irony), "Hey look, it's two old, fat guys trying to be Bill and Ted."

xoxo...hashtagSuesLife

Back on track and fighting aliens

I fear my blog and I have lost our way for a bit. Blame it on the rainy weather, the horrific January of Celebrity Deaths or stupid Valentine's Day, but we dipped into an infrequently used pool of sentimentality and introspection.  

My blog and I might have even been attempting to revue with an "iew".  God.  How pretentious.  Shudder.

Well, Spring has sprung, mofos!  There's nothing like a crappy movie from the 80's and a crappy movie ABOUT the 80's to give one that well needed perspective.

Let's get snarking, shall we?

Pixels - released in 2015

I was sitting around one Sunday, minding my own business, when I saw that this movie was on.  Now, I'm not gonna say I'd heard amazing things about this film (or anything about it, actually) but I do love me some Adam Sandler and I'm almost always willing to cut him a huge amount of slack.  So I watched.

This film is basically about a group of kids who, like most kids, played massive amounts of video games in 1982.  They grow up and enjoy varying degrees of success (one guy gets a Geek Squad type of job and his childhood best friend gets the job of being...the POTUS.   Sure.  It could happen).  The Geek Squad guy, Adam Sandler, was amazing at finding the patterns in video games when they were kids.  Earth is invaded by aliens who have seen our video games from the 80's because they were sent into space in a time capsule.  They launch video game attacks (Pac Man, etc).  So who's the POTUS gonna call?  His Geek Squad bestie who is good at video games from 1982.  Handy.

There is no getting around it, this movie is DUMB.

And your Suspension of Disbelief skills get a total workout.  Mine were sore the next day.

But here's the weird thing, I liked it anyway.  It's totally stupid, don't get me wrong! But I was in the mood to watch mindless, dumb shit.  (Give me a break, I had worked the whole weekend!)

I will admit, though, there were points when this almost broke me.

The crazy thing is they got a great cast.  Dan Ackroyd has a cameo, which didn't surprise me because this film definitely tips it's hat to Ghostbusters.  Josh Gad plays one of the geeks (duh).  I love Josh Gad.  He is kind of always awesome.  Most especially when he whispers his lines. I think if I hung out with him I'd laugh all the time and possibly have a huge crush.  But there is also the possibility that he might be a little bit stinky.  Not sure.

You know who else is in this movie?  Peter Dinklage. I also love Peter Dinklage.  Peter Dinklage, however, does not always know how to choose good roles.  And when he chooses poorly, it's REALLY bad (I'm looking at you, Knights of Badassdom).  For some reason, he also thought the best acting choice in this was to play it with a weird accenty-dialect thing that made him sound like he was imitating Robert Downey Jr's character in Tropic Thunder.  Thankfully without the black face.  Sigh.

The not surprising thing is the music in this film is perfect.  Sandler clearly loves a good 80's soundtrack and this totally delivers.

It's directed by Chris Columbus of Harry Potter fame...read my Potter post to see how I'm super lukewarm on his directing style.  Therefore, the fact that Aunt Petunia is cast in this is no surprise.

There is a ton of animation, the style looking much like what you might have played on your Atari back in the day.  It's clever and the animation is good.  The end credits are my favorite though, they look like an old time MS-DOS computer game.

This movie is sublimely 1982 boy humor.  The only thing I missed was an Oregon Trail representation.  SOMEONE should have died of dysentery.

(My drink pairing suggestion for this is an Alabama Slammer.  A favorite of mine in the 80's and might dull the pain of actually watching this film.)

The Last Starfighter - released in 1984

I remember when this movie came out.  Why do I remember?  The leading man, the last starfighter himself, was played by a local boy.  Lance Guest.  He grew up in Saratoga, CA and his mom used to come into the Saratoga Community Library where I worked in 1984.  She was a lovely woman who checked out a lot of travel books. And she was VERY proud of her son.  

This movie, upon viewing it now, is truly terrible.  I couldn't even get through it without continually turning to Facebook for relief.  (you guys, I just realized there is an initialism for this. From The Skimm - TSOP: Time spent on phone.  Or a way of quantifying how good a show is.  Use it in a sentence, not just sporadically: "very low TSOP watching the OJ show last night."  Wow, I'm so "on fleek", huh? (psst...did I use that right??))   I was ready to blame it all on the director until I looked him up on the Internet.  His name is Nick Castle.  HE PLAYED MICHAEL MYERS IN HALLOWEEN, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!!  One of the creepiest motherfuckers around.  AND he was friends with John Carpenter.  AND he cowrote Escape From New York with Carpenter.  Fuck.  Now I have to love him.  Nick Castle, how could you have had such auspicious beginnings and fritter them away on this pathetic movie?

So this movie is about a kid from a trailer park who obsessively (even ignoring his 80's-hot girlfriend) plays a video game until he beats it.  It's actually a recruitment device for a different planet or some shit so they "recruit" (kidnap) him and leave a beta version body double who is basically retarded.  The kid witnesses all the other starfighters fall to the enemy, is a whiny bitch about going home, grows a pair of balls and finally helps the nice aliens defeat the mean aliens.

First.  Lance Guest did NOT grow up in a trailer park.  Nor does he look like he did.  He looks like he grew up in an affluent suburb in Northern California.  Sorry Lance.

Second.  The acting in this, across the board, is pretty terrible.  The saddest part of that is the fact that Robert Preston is in The Last Starfighter.  He plays the recruiter alien, Centauri.  I wanted him to be good in this.  He's great in other films.  He's Victoria's GBF in Victor/Victoria. He's the stinkin' Music Man!  But...in the end....it's still terrible.  As terrible as Cilantro, with a capital C which rhymes with T that stand for Terrible!!  Preston really phones it home. (Get it?  He's an alien. E.T.? Phone....oh never mind, it was stupid. Like this movie)

All right, I'm clearly on an unending, pathetic spiral into movie puns and idiocy.  Enough is enough.

(My drink pairing with this is a vodka martini.  I experimented with them in 1984.  I really didn't like them until probably 1987.  But drink enough of them and you'll forget ever having seen this movie.)

My takeaways:

#1 -  I'm going to make a generalization here and you can take it or leave it:  Movies about  video game players who use those skills to save the Earth are as good as they are realistic.

#2 - I don't think poor Lance Guest did much after The Last Starfighter.  Which makes me wonder if he had to move home to Saratoga at some point to live with his lovely mother.  I hope he was a good son.

#3 -  I'm torn about  "TSOP".  While I'm happy that there is a device at my fingertips that alleviates my boredom every second of every day, I hate that it's an initialism because that means it's common and accepted that everyone ignores everything.  Also, I DO NOT condone TSOP when seeing anything in public (movie, play, concert, etc).

xoxo....hashtagSueslife

A fab-u-lous tribute to Bowie

Alternately titled:  What I did this weekend.

I braved the crazy rain storm this Saturday, hauling my ass to the Castro Theatre to see what I thought was just a screening of The Man Who Fell to Earth with a Candy Clark Q&A. What I got was SO much better.

My original movie cohorts were both under the weather, but happily I found out my friends Karekin and Anthony were also going to be there.  So I got to sit with two of the most charming men you'd ever want to meet.

So what did I get besides a movie and a Q&A?  I got an evening of fabulously awesome drag queens sharing their love of Bowie.  Really anyone sharing their love of Bowie is pretty great, but when you think about what a role model/icon this man was for the LGBTQ community...pure gold.

It was parts sentimental and parts irreverent.  Oodles of outfits and glitter and makeup...oh my!  Just what you'd expect.  There were a variety of performers, some were great; my favorite - a long time fave of A & K, apparently - was Veronica Klaus.  She announced her songs by saying something about how she listened to Scary Monsters non-stop back in the day and her dad walked by her bedroom and said "I hope that's not what they're teaching you in school!"  She swept her beautifully clad arm out, smirked and quietly said "And here we are".  Kitten on the Keys also sang a song, which was lovely.  I can almost forgive her for NEVER being able to announce Clandestine properly at Tease O Rama (Clandes-TINE). Some performers weren't so great.  A choir did a really odd and semi-discordant rendition of "Life on Mars" after which Karekin and I looked at each other and grimaced.

The only disappointing part of the evening (aside from having to sit in wet clothes for 5 hours because of the storm) was the Q&A with Candy Clark.  She is the female lead of the film (she was also in American Graffiti - nominated for Best Supporting Actress for that film.) and I discovered (thanks Internet!) that she was also sleeping with the director at the time.  Her answers were pretty lackluster and not very well strung together, even though nearly all of them mimicked past interviews.  Same anecdotes, different day.  But the interviewer was HORRIBLE!  Anthony, Karekin and I all agreed that interviewing is truly a skill and this guy completely lacked it.  At one point, poor Candy couldn't even make heads or tails of his question and had to ask for clarification.  Seriously dude?

Anyway, I'd never seen this film before...so here you have it.

The Man Who Fell to Earth - released in 1976

When first released, the film didn't do that great but over the years has obtained true cult status.  Roger Ebert gave it 2.5 stars originally but 35 years later upped his rating to 3 stars.  His reason for this was that filmmakers just aren't allowed to make films of this style anymore.  Taking chances like that is frowned upon now.

And what is that style?  The film is directed by Nicholas Roeg.  He directed many films to varying degrees of success, but he started his career as a cinematographer and you can totally tell.  The shots in this film are beautiful and expansive.  Each composition conveys a lot of emotion, actually, whether it's a sprawling landscape with one broken down house breaking the emptiness or a claustrophobic shot of a New York high rise.

And you know what else is beautiful in this film?  David Stinkin' Bowie.  Holy shit.  He's this gorgeous, stylish, swan-necked beauty.  His skin is to die for - luminescent and flawless.  Did that guy even shave?  His hair is awesome - red with blond roots.  And the eyes.  Lord have mercy, the eyes.  

This is his first acting role and he KILLS IT.  I mean he is seriously amazing.  Nuanced.  Emotionless on the surface but fathomless underneath. The crazy thing I read is that he said he was high on coke the whole time this film was shooting.  He felt that he was just being himself on coke and that's what was captured on screen.  Damn.  In an interesting bit of maybe revisionist history, there is an interview with Candy Clark much later where she maintains that he had been sober prior to and while making this film.  Heh.

Buck Henry and Rip Torn (who was surprisingly hot in his youth.  Also we see his weenie.) were both really good in this.  Candy Clark was...okay, but I'm gonna say that I'm not a fan.  I think a slew of other actresses could have done this role better.  Sometimes it pays to sleep with the director.

The Man Who Fell to Earth is 100% a 70's movie.  It's meandering, non-linear and parts, frankly, are just a bit confusing.  There is a bunch of gratuitous nudity, which is kind of a 70's trademark, right?  The alien costumes look like white scuba suits and the "space ship" Bowie leaves on is pretty much a trailer on a monorail.  Don't get me wrong, I'm really glad I saw it.  It exemplifies, as Ebert said, how much filmmaking has changed over the years because of audience demand.  You'd be hard pressed - post Star Wars - to find a sci-fi film with a slow pace and no space battles.

(My drink pairing for this film is a Beefeaters gin and tonic in a tall glass.  The alien's drink of choice.)

My takeaways:

#1 - Candy Clark made some EXTREMELY questionable choices in husbands.  She had two.  Each lasted one year.  One was a drug addict (who was also at one time married to Helen Reddy! I am woman!) and the other was Marjoe Gortner who was an actor and an evangelist (from when he was 4 years old, apparently).  Google him.  He's freaky.

#2 - The best way to see ANY movie is with a drag show opener.

#3 - I'm putting it out there that Nicholas Roeg is not my favorite director.

xoxo...hashtagSueslife

Ye Olde Timey Stuff

As many of you know, I majored in Film Studies in college.  I am continually grateful to my parents for not calling foul on that major and just rolling with it.  I think they were just happy I actually WENT to college.

I went to San Francisco State University, which was reasonably well respected for their Film program (they were more well known for their Broadcasting Dept).  Any respect they got was probably because they favored Avant Garde film which made them stand out a bit.  So all my fellow film students were greasy haired, hand-rolled cigarette smoking, beat-up paperback carrying snoots.  Yeesh.

I enjoyed my college years for a variety of reasons (none of which had all that much to do with studying or the Film department) and my favorite film school moment actually happened in my Avant Garde History class.  It took everything I had to stay awake in that class.  When I read the first Harry Potter book and JK Rowling described the History of Magic class with Professor Binns, the ghost teacher, I immediately thought of this class.  The teacher was ancient and soft spoken so he had to use a mic because the class was in a lecture hall (the class must have been required because I NEVER would have chosen it) and he droned on and on and on.  One very rainy day, during the break, our teacher left the room (not uncommon).  The room was a bit more full than normal because of the rain.  The smokers were outside, but the rest of us couldn't get our dose of fresh air and fog like normal; I think I was reading whatever mystery novel I was into at the time - trying to jumpstart my brain after the last hour of lecture.  Anyway, my teacher clearly needed to use the facilities but forgot to switch off his mic.  We heard EVERYTHING (thankfully it was only Number One.  Also thankfully he washed his hands.)  I remember staring at the TA, who was slowly looking around the room.  A huge grin broke out over his face.  I think he might have said something like "And he's peeing."  It was fantastic.  

But I digress.

I managed to make my own way at SFSU despite the snootiness of the Film department.  I bucked the system and let my love of Hollywood show (fuck 'em if they can't take a joke).  I wrote papers about the structure of movie musicals.  I took classes that focused on the history of animation (who knew THAT would come in handy later!?).  And I discovered actors that blew my mind.  Like, I had crushes on actors that were born in the 1800's.  It was maybe a little weird.

Recently I was thinking a lot about my early days and decided to revisit watching my first and only silent screen star crush:  Buster Keaton.

Buster Keaton was born in 1895 and died in 1966. His family had a comedic vaudeville act that was extremely acrobatic and he started his film career by being in a bunch of Fatty Arbuckle films (now THERE'S a guy who really lived up to his name) but studios and audiences started to realize how innovative and funny he was in his own right so he began starring in his own films.  For a while he had complete control over his films (directed and starred in) and he always created and performed his own gags/stunts.  And ohmygod they were amazing.

I remember sitting in class thinking "I've seen stuff like this before" but then having this realization wash over me:  He was the FIRST person to orchestrate these incredibly complex, super innovative, hilarious gags.  And I immediately fell in love.  I am 100% a sucker for someone who makes me laugh.

I have seen a bunch of Jackie Chan movies and it's no surprise to me that Buster Keaton was one of his influences.  Keaton was incredibly athletic, his body was like a rubber band and powerhouse all rolled into one.  Apparently when he was in his 50's he re-enacted one of his old stunts.  Someone asked how he did it and he said "I'll show you" and opened his shirt to reveal a bunch of bruises.  He just. Fucking. Did it.

Besides being really funny - not only with the crazy gags but also with the subtle hand gestures or body movements to convey a wealth of emotion - he had this amazing face.  I guess when he was young and being thrown around (literally) on the vaudeville stage by his dad, they realized audiences thought it was way funnier if he had no expression vs a big "I'm okay!" smile.  So he became The Great Stone Face.  What stayed with me, though (and many, many others obviously), were his eyes.  His face is overtaken by these huge, soulful eyes.  They are beautiful.  They always look a little bit sad but deep inside you see a glimmer of something else.  Maybe resignation that this is what life is?  Maybe hopefulness that everything is going to work out?  Whatever it was, it stopped me in my tracks; hitting me hard in the 19 year old feels.

(These films were both made during Prohibition, so my drink pairing is a glass of bathtub gin in the Speakeasy of your choosing)

Here are a couple films I recommend if you are at all interested in watching silent films:

Sherlock Jr - released in 1924

This is a movie about movies, which the always self involved Hollywood loves.  But honestly, kind of everyone loves them - Singin in The Rain, Get Shorty. C'mon...you know you do!

All Keaton's films are great, but this one might be my favorite.

Buster Keaton plays a film projectionist who is studying to be a detective (the 'stache is fake so he can look more legit). 

He is in love with a girl who is also being wooed by a guy who robbed her father.  Keaton is kind of dejected by the "love" situation while also trying to catch the robber.  There is an amazing scene where he's "tailing" the guy by walking literally a few inches behind him, matching everything the guy does step for step. It's like a beautifully choreographed dance number.  

He also rides through town on the handlebars of a motorcycle after the driver has fallen off.  The modern viewer can tell when cars look like they are going to hit him but actually are stopping or going super slow, but he's still steering the frickin' motorcycle by the handlebars ONLY!  Also, no CG.  He was REALLY doing this stunt.  Amazing.

The most famous sequence of this film is where Buster has fallen asleep at his projectionist job and kind of dreams himself into several movie scenes.  So the scenes keeps switching out and he pops into each one.  Innovative stuff for 1924.

The most amazing shot, though, is a really quick shot where he jumps through a person!  I can't imagine how they achieved this particular effect, but Buster literally dives through a box being held by a man.  Early film making magic!

The General - released in 1926

This is arguably Keaton's most famous film, and after being reevaluated in later years it's considered by critics to be one of the best films ever made.  Keaton had a great love of trains, so this entire film focuses on that.  He plays a train engineer during the Civil War.  He wants to enlist when the war breaks out to impress his girlfriend but the recruiters think he'd be more useful to the cause as an engineer, so they refuse him.  That's the start of the grand misunderstanding which culminates in Keaton not only saving the girl but thwarting an invasion.  He did all his own stunts and this film encompasses some scary ones for the time period.  He jumps from car to car on a moving train in one sequence and sits on the front grill (I learned it's called a cow catcher for obvious and horrific reasons) holding a railroad tie in another.  

The beauty of Buster Keaton, though, is in his subtlety.  There is one shot where he's super dejected and sitting on the train's coupling rod  When the train starts, he starts rotating with the movement, his body completely motionless.  Total deadpan expression.  Apparently this was also one of the more dangerous stunts because he could have been killed if the train threw a rod. Yikes!

Apparently this film had a "huge" budget ($750,000) and didn't get the box office the expected, so after this film Buster lost some of his autonomy.  Sadly, things were never quite the same for him after that. 

My takeaways:

#1 - Buster Keaton died of lung cancer.  No one told him he had cancer so he just thought he was getting over bronchitis or something like that.  I'm not sure how I feel about this deception.

#2 - I am definitely not the only person who loved Buster Keaton.  There is a woman who has a current blog called "What Would Buster Do".  I wish I had thought of that first.

#3 - To me, Buster Keaton vs Charlie Chaplin is a lot like Mel Brooks vs Woody Allen.  I think I respond more to Buster and Mel because their humor is visceral and goofy but still sharply witty.  Charlie and Woody are a bit more highbrow and intellectual in their humor.  They also seem to beg the audience to sympathize with their characters.  Apparently I am a tad hard hearted, because usually their characters bug me.  If you know me at all, you know that I CRY laughing at any video with models falling. Not so highbrow.  Let's enjoy:  http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1rq18v_very-funny-models-are-falling-during-catwalk-on-ramp_fun

xoxo...hashtagSueslife

The one where Sue says Hi to one of her issues and doesn't revue anything

This morning I had a revelation.  For real.

I've been having an extraordinarily hard time deciding what to write about for this post  It made sense to be some kind of Valentine's Day post...about love or some such drivel.  I'm not a fan of the Valentine's Day shenanigans (okay, maybe I would be if I ever actually dated anyone long enough) and while I love a good rom com as much as anyone else, that felt a little obvious.  But then where do you go from there?  I kicked around a few ideas - maybe I write about actors I adore?  Or maybe I write about horrible-things-that-happened-on-Valentine's-Day movies (like Valentine's Day Massacre or My Bloody Valentine).  Or maybe I suck it up and write about frickin' rom coms anyway (I recommend Just Friends or The Wedding Singer!  Love both of them!).  Sheesh.  What to do?

In the end,  I couldn't do anything.  I was stuck. Nothing was resonating.  I couldn't even come up with an opening line. I started watching films starring one of my actor crushes from my college years, but honestly it wasn't firing me up as a "right around Valentine's Day" post.  I froze up; I wasn't watching ANYthing...I was in complete avoidance mode.  I was reading BOOKS, for crying out loud! 

 I. HAVE. BLOGGERS. BLOCK.  Shit.

I was walking to the shuttle this morning, thinking about how I could maybe make the meager scraps I have so far of the college crush idea into a viable post.  Then, just like the stinkin' sun rising over the houses on the other side of the street and blinding me, it hit me.  My commitment issues were showing.  All over the place. I could not COMMIT.  And therein lies the whole of my relationship conundrum.  I get squirrelly.  It's not them, it's me!  (Okay, maybe sometimes it's them but it definitely takes two to tango)  Wow, what a crazy can of worms to be faced with at 7:50am.  I don't particularly want to examine this part of my life through the movies I watch, therefore I'm not gonna be able to figure out what to write about.  It's a squishy, uncomfortable place, and I'd prefer to not think about it, thank you VERY much. 

I have no doubt that most of you are like "Duh, Sue."  And it's not like I haven't flirted with this thought before.  But I'm a fucking AMAZING compartmentalizer.  So let's just have a nice moment with this revelation and then I'll fold it up and put it back into my overstuffed suitcase filled with "I'll think about it tomorrow".

While you probably aren't really enjoying this trip down my own personal yellow brick road of psychology, enjoy your respite from my movie prattle.  That shit will be back soon enough!

**In an added bit of history - Sue's Revue's started one year ago!  I was writing emails to the Bookbabes about the movies I was watching while I wasn't working.  The first one I did officially was my Burt Reynolds email (Feb 11, 2015), which I recreated for this blog a few months ago.   So you can all either thank the Babes for this blog or curse them! It's up to you. I know which one I would choose.

(My drink pairing for this post is lots of pink champagne while you are stumped and avoiding the truth, then a good stout cup of tea on the Monday morning when it all comes clear.)

My takeaways:

#1 - This whole post is a takeaway, methinks.

xoxo....hashtagSueslife

January sucked.

The artistic community in general has suffered some great losses with the start of 2016.  For some reason, the passing of Alan Rickman really hit me hard.  It might be because I had just watched all the Harry Potter films a week or so before, I don't know.  But something about it made me infinitely sad.

And let's not even mention that all my favorite Bowie songs have been circling in my head for weeks now.  So many good ones.

I wanted to honor each of these iconic artists in my blog. probably because I'm not really ready to let go of either of them.  I lucked out that David Bowie was also an actor (if only Lemmy had tried his hand at acting!!), otherwise I would have probably tried to write some blithering, uninformed shit about music.  I can assure you, that would not have gone well.

I was stumped on how I should approach this post.  My favorite films from each of them?  Films I hadn't seen yet?  My usual go-to methods for procuring films let me down (neither Netflix nor Amazon had either Truly, Madly, Deeply or The Man Who Fell To Earth to stream/rent!), so I ended up just watching what I could.  Still, its an absolute treat to spend a bit more time with these guys.

DAVID BOWIE (1947 - 2016)

Labyrinth - released in 1986

I wasn't actually sure if I'd ever seen the whole of Labyrinth before.  I find that I consistently get it confused with Legend.  Why I would think that David Bowie is in a film where Tangerine Dream composed the music??  Clearly I WASN'T thinking.

Anyway, I realized I had seen the film and it just didn't stay with me.  I was too old when this movie came out for me to have that sort of nostalgic, "this movie is crap but I love it because it's my childhood!" feeling about it.  I saw The Last Unicorn only a few years ago for the first time and was SLAMMED over the head with the fact that you needed to have seen this movie before you were 10 to feel any sort of lasting fondness for it. Apparently for me, the same goes for Labyrinth.

Jim Henson directed the film and George Lucas produced it.  One thing I loved about it is that the opening credits listed all the puppeteer's names...because let's face it, they were the main actors.  Jennifer Connolly plays the horrible, entitled heroine who has no respect for her family and clearly is in the "labyrinthian" turmoil of puberty (not super subtle there, dudes).  I mean, I get it that she doesn't like her stepmother (who actually, barring her horrible 80s hair and peach colored clothes, seemed fairly nice) and is OVER babysitting her little brother, but her character arc seemed pretty shallow.  For that, I blame the writers.  Jim Henson, Dennis Lee (mostly a composer, the only screenplay he wrote is Labyrinth) and Terry Jones wrote it.  Terry Jones!? Come ON!  I know you're a better writer than this!  You might not be my very favorite Python (although you always play a good woman) but you wrote Holy Grail and Life of Brian, for crying out loud!!  I KNOW you can write better characters than this!  Disappointed.

The puppets themselves are cute with the exception of Hoggle, who was a main character...his facial expressions were mostly lacking and the ones that were there were insufficient.  There was also one puppet that had to have influenced the look of Maz Kanata from Star Wars: A Force Awakens.  My favorite puppets, unsurprisingly, were the fox, Didymus, and his faithful steed, the dog Ambrocious.  Adorable in the extreme.

And let's talk Bowie.  He wrote the music, which is very 80's Bowie. This movie definitely doesn't highlight his acting skills, but he really was a great performer on so many levels (I mean, The Hunger...come on!).   He also looks amazing..the man can really wear makeup well.  And in the sea of mediocrity that is this film, he shines.  He even seems to connect with the baby...who knew Bowie was a softie?  There is a very sweet shot where he and the baby look at each other and smile.  Melt.   The only thing that was...alarming...was his pants.  Wow.  They are like grey leggings which really highlight how much the costume needed a codpiece.  There were a lot of shots of Hoggle where Bowie and his JUNK were right there (Hoggle comes up to Bowie's waist).  Maybe that's why I couldn't get behind Hoggle's facial expressions.  

(My drink pairing for this film is Kamikaze shots.  I drank them a lot in 1986.  They won't help you navigate the labyrinth, but you won't care.  (Side note (not at all PC, btw):  when I asked my brother John in the 80's what was in a kamikaze he told me "a very little Japanese man who wants to die".  Still cracks me up.))

ALAN RICKMAN  (1947 - 2016)

CBGB - released in 2013

This movie didn't do well at the box office.  It reportedly made something like $4000 on it's opening weekend.  Wow.  And it never really found its legs after that.

This movie is about Hilly Kristal (I kept thinking Did they just call him Billy Crystal?? every time I heard the name) who ran the NYC club CBGB.  He is known as the Father of Punk Rock...his club hosted SO many amazing bands as they were starting out in the 70's: The Ramones, Talking Heads, Blondie, Patti Smith, Iggy Pop, etc.  I would have LOVED to have gone there back in the day.

One of the characters in the film is John Holstrom, the guy who started Punk Magazine.  It was an illustrated mag; it's been likened to MAD Magazine in it's presentation.  There was a different music magazine in the 1970's that had my allegiance (Long live BAM Magazine!), but I would have been interested to check this one out.  John Holstrom is really almost a tertiary character in the film, but I imagine he's in there at all because the filmmakers decided to use Punk Magazine's influence to create the look of the film - each band introduced with a comic book panel.  I expect this is so EVERYONE could figure out who's who.  I also felt the comic book motif was to sort of Disney-fy the world of punk rock.  Like "See, it's not so scary to watch these bands!  They're in a comic book!!  It's charming!"  I kept thinking it's like the Starbucks of film styles.  Coffee for non-coffee drinkers.  

The film really fell apart for me, though, with the musical numbers.  All the songs were lip-synced (with the exception of a song that Hilly sings...Alan Rickman did a darn good job of it, actually) which lends itself to disappointing performances.  It also seemed like the songs they chose for each artist were their recognizable hits (for the most part) and I find it hard to believe it's what each band started their career with.  I could be wrong, but it just felt too easy.

Malin Ackerman is maybe the most disappointing in her depiction of Debbie Harry.  I'm never a big fan of her acting (yawns-ville in The Watchmen) but it seemed in this she couldn't even land on how to do Debbie's accent. It was all over the place.  

Hilly Kristal managed a band called The Dead Boys, so we see a bit more of them.  The lead singer, Stiv Bators, is played by the guy who goes missing in the Hangover, Justin Bartha (I love him in National Treasure, though, where he plays Riley.  National Treasure is pretty much on every hour of every day on some channel or another, so if you are confused on who I mean, you won't have too wait long to find out.).  The real Stiv is a fucking train wreck - he apparently choked himself to death once on stage (they revived him and he lived to punk another day). Hangover Dude puts in a good performance as Stiv.  His bandmate, Cheetah Crome, is played by Rupert Grint.  He's...okay.  I'm gonna be honest.  I'm a little worried that old Ron Weasley might not have the longest acting career.  He's pretty consistently underwhelming.  It was sort of sweet to see Rupert and Alan Rickman playing off each other again, though.  

Maybe the filmmaker, Randall Miller (of BottleShock fame) really just had an extremely nostalgic feeling about this old punk club, which is why the whole film seemed so benign.  I read where he wanted to find the "human story", but I think that does a disservice to punk clubs.  And punk music.  And the punk philosophy.  When I think "punk" I don't think "human story.  I think "loud".  I think "drugs".  I think "raw".  You don't get those things at Disney.  Or Starbucks.  

I kept thinking about this old punk club my friend Lisa and I used to frequent in the 90's.  It was on Valencia St in SF, called the Chameleon Club.  Three bands for $5.  My favorite memory of this club is when we saw a not terrible band from LA, The Leaving Trains (I think this was their name).  The male lead singer was dressed in a slip with full makeup.  The bass player was only wearing his not-so-tighty-anymore whiteys.  In the middle of their set, someone set fire to one of the lead singer's hightop Chucks.  He was COMPLETELY fucked up and didn't notice.  We in the audience started to get a bit nervous, so someone put it out with their beer.  The lead singer started yelling at the guy "Why is my shoe wet?  Why the fuck did you pour your beer on me???"  It was ALL SORTS of awesome.  

The only reason I watched this film was for Alan Rickman.  And honestly, he didn't disappoint.  He never disappoints.  The man can convey every emotion he needs to with a twitch of his eyebrow or a perfectly executed sneer.  He was the king of subtle acting.  It's always a treat to see him on film.

I actually ended up liking this movie.  Hilly aligns with some Hells Angels, and the scenes with the Angels are pretty great.  Also, there is a scene where Hilly's mother visits the club.  Everyone is very nice to her and it's a sweet scene.  It reminded me so much of my mother at the Bammies.  Big 80's rock stars knew who she was and were lovely and respectful to her (I think it was Huey Lewis who called her Mom, which tickled her to no end).

I thought this was Alan Rickman's last film, but in fact it wasn't (he was in A Little Chaos in 2015 and has a voice role in a new Alice in Wonderland film and a role in another film releasing this year).  He wasn't sick yet, he only discovered his cancer in 2015 after suffering a small stroke.  Alan, we will miss you.  Your vocal inflections and facial expressions were sublime and will not be forgotten.

(My drink pairing for this film is a shitty beer and a shot of cheap whiskey. Or two, so you won't realize your tennis shoe is on fire.)

My takeaways:

#1 - We are all a bit poorer for the loss of these two talented, charming, iconic men.

That is all.

xoxo...hashtagSueslife