Wednesday Double Feature

by on September 23, 2015 at 9:05 am
Posted In: Test

This week I took a chance and tried something different. Bollywood rip… er remakes of Hollywood movies. This was very much a risk since I had heard horror stories about some of the bad ones but at the same time I’d had a few of them recommended as guilty pleasures most notably one of Mel Brooks’ The Producers.

I made a large list of possibilities since I had no idea what Scarecrow Video would have but I intended to stick to one genre depending on what I found. Regrettably they did not nave the Producers film but they had a number of the films on my list and I ended up choosing thrillers, specifically remakes of two very similar films, Reservoir Dogs and Usual Suspects

220px-Kaante_Official_PosterMy First film Kaante is mostly an adaptation of Reservoir Dogs though the way it starts out with the main characters meeting in a police precinct when taken in for questioning on a trumped up charge it at first seems to be an adaptation of Usual Suspects until the second half of the film when the caper they plan together goes terribly wrong.

All in all this isn’t a bad film though I think it’ll be a long time before I ever get used to the pacing of these films both longer than what I’m used to. The other thing is the singing. Obviously I’ve known about the musical numbers in Bollywood films but I didn’t know they were in ALL of these films so seeing the cast break into a musical number in something as serious as this film came as a big surprise. .

Chocolate_(2005_film)_posterThe next film on my list Chocolate was a remake of Usual Suspects though an extremely loose version. It had the same framing device, and the same ending mostly as well as a mysterious master criminal (though in this case a terrorist) Everything else was completely different, the main characters are a group of friends and musicians who turn to crime and the two surving members are interviewed by their defense attorney and a reporter. All in all this gives the film a tone of a general romp, but all in all entertaining… as were the musical numbers.


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Wednesday Double Feature

by on September 16, 2015 at 8:05 am
Posted In: Test

For this week’s film I did a selection of lesser known Billy Wilder comedies, specifically ones with an international flavor.

220px-One_two_three43This selection started with a conversation I had with a friend at a favorite hangout that went something like this.

“Say Bill you like films you know the name of that film with James Cagney as a Coca-Cola executive trying to sell Coke to the communists?”

“No but I can look it up and get back to you.”

It turned out the film was “One, Two, Three” and after that I just had to see it.

Cagney plays C.R. MacNamara, Coca Cola’s man in West Berlin in 1961 right before the wall went up. He is assigned to baby sit his boss’s out of control dim-witted daughter, Scarlett, only for her to sneak through the Brandenburg Gate and marry a cute but outspoken communist… Hilarity ensues as MacNamara desperately tries to fix things before his boss arrives in Berlin.

This film is fast paced, satirical and hilarious with Cagney giving a tour de force in a way I’d never expected from him.

220px-Avanti!PosterTo follow this up I watched Avanti starring Jack Lemmon and Juliet Mills. Lemmon plays Wendell Armbruster a straight laced successful businessman, who is summoned to a hotel in Italy to pick up the body of his father, who had been going to there every summer and died in a car crash. It turns out his father had been having a long term affair with another woman who was also killed in the crash.

While he is there fighting a seemingly endless amount of red tape he meets the woman’s daughter Pamella Piggot who is also there to retrieve her mother’s body. As the insanity of the situation continues they are drawn together.

This was a quieter comedy but Lemmon and Mills are great together.


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Wednesday Double Feature

by on August 26, 2015 at 12:37 am
Posted In: Test

I was completely stumped for an idea for this week’s theme this week. But as I walked past Scarecrow’s music section I found inspiration and on a whim picked Elvis Presley.

I won’t say that I was ever Elvis’s biggest fan though growing up on classic hits I certainly knew what I liked. As for his film career the only one I was really familiar with as it showed up in many of my movie textbooks was the first film on my list. Jailhouse Rock.

jailhouse_rock_60To my surprise Jailhouse Rock was nothing like what I expected. All I knew about it was the title song and the over the top performance with Elvis dressed in prison stripes dancing with his fellow prisoners. This turned out to be a scene near the end of the film with Elvis’s character Vince Everett in his first televised performance.

  What it turned out to be was a drama about a young man who learns how to be a musician during a stay in prison for manslaughter when he gets out he becomes an overnight sensation. The rest of the film deals with his rise to fame in fortune and the consequences this creates.

Elvis gives a surprisingly strong performance along with his great musical numbers but what I liked best was the supporting cast led by Judy Tyler, and Mickey Shaughnessy.

As I said Jailhouse Rock was the only Elvis film I had even heard of so for my second pick I pretty much went with the film with the songs I liked the best whether this was a good strategy is anyone’s guess. (a good friend of mine has been chastising for not picking Blue Hawaii.)

220px-Viva_Las_Vegas_1964_PosterAnyway in my second pick, Viva Las Vegas Elvis plays racecar driver Lucky Johnson who comes to Vegas to compete in the city’s first annual Grand Prix Race. This is complicated because his car needs a new engine and he looses the money while pursuing the hotel’s swimming instructor Rusty Margaret played by the wonderful Ann-Margret

Unlike Jailhouse Rock this is pretty much just a fun romp and a framing device for the musical numbers. This is definitely a double act with Ann-Margaret’s numbers being just as entertaining as Elvis’s. This is all done to the fantastic choreography of David Winters.


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