Rhapsodies

Wednesday Double Feature – Fixer-Uppers

by wpmorse on September 12, 2018 at 9:17 am

Posted In: Test

This week I watched comedies about homebuilding, more specifically the horror that is a fixer-upper.

The first film on my list was H. C. Porter’s Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House starring Cary Grant, Myrna Loy, and Melvyn Douglas. Cary Grant plays Jim Blanding a successful Ad executive who feels cooped up by his New York apartment. When he and his wife Maureen (Loy) realize that buying a new house is actually cheaper than the apartment remodeling they have been planning, they jump at the opportunity to buy a house in Connecticut, despite the warnings of their friend and lawyer Bill Cole.

They soon realize that the house is not quite the steal they thought soon having to tear the whole thing down and start from scratch… and that’s just the beginning of their troubles!

I had mixed feelings about this film. Make no mistake, Loy and Grant had great chemistry, but I found the humor to be inconsistent. Considering a lot of comedy comes from witty dialogue, it is a bit of a contrast that a lot of the plot being carried by sheer stupidity with the Blandings bringing almost half of their problems on themselves.

The other thing I found strange about this was how much culture shock this film provided me. The big one was how Bill Cole merely hanging out at the house raising peoples eyebrows. The other one was realizing how much inflation there has been since the forties. I kept had trouble believing that the main character had a New York apartment with a wife, kids, and a maid, with an income of 15,000 a year!

The next film on my list Richard Benjamin’s The Money Pit starring Tom Hanks and Shelley Long. Hanks and Long play Walter Fielding and his girlfriend Anna Crowley. THey’ve been having financial problems ever since Walter’s father embezzled millions of dollars from his firm. To make matters worse they’re thrown out of the apartment they’ve been subletting from Anna’s ex-husband Max (played with narcissistic glee by Alexander Godunov. Finding a place in New York is impossible though.

Walter gets a tip from on a great deal, for a beautiful old house out of town that he and Anna jump on. However, this turns out to be a con with the house starting to fall apart nearly as soon as the purchase is made.

It was interesting to watch the Hanks’ early career as a comic actor along with Long’s attempt to break into film. Otherwise, this film suffers from most of the usual problems of eighties comedies with most of the humor dependent on physical humor and dumb pratfalls (and face it once you’ve seen Tom Hanks fall through a floor once you’ve seen it a hundred times.)

└ Tags: Movie Reviews

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Game of Thrones – Bran vs Tommen

by wpmorse on September 11, 2018 at 11:45 am

Posted In: Rhapsodies

For today’s picture, we go near the beginning of Game of Thrones, before Bran wasn’t crippled and things still looked like things were all right for the Starks.

“There was a shout from the courtyard below. Prince Tommen was rolling in the dust trying to get up and failing. All the padding made him look like a turtle on it’s back. Bran was standing over him with upraised sword, ready to whack him again once he regained his feet. The men began to laugh.”

└ Tags: Game of Thrones, Illustration, Pen and Ink

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Game of Thrones – Theon

by wpmorse on September 10, 2018 at 9:03 am

Posted In: Art

Inktober’s coming soon, and I’m very much looking forward to it. Since in my experience it has taken me about a week to get into my grove in past sketch challenges, I thought Id’ start warming up a bit with a little side project. In this case, I’ll be doing illustrations from the first book of George R R Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, Game of Thrones. Picking a page at random for illustrations. Since A Song of Ice and Fire is loosely based on the War of the Roses, I’ll use the fifteenth century for most of my references, With any luck, this will mean it won’t look anything like the show or any of the other versions.

This isn’t an official Challenge. I’ll try to stick to it but I’m not going to beat myself up if I skip a few.

So anyway the first one is from chapter 50 with Catelyn returning to Riverrun where she runs into Theon While looking for Robb.

“Theon Greyjoy was seated on a bench in Riverrun’s Great Hall, enjoying a horn of ale and retailing her father’s garrison with an account of the slaughter in the Whispering Wood. “

└ Tags: Game of Thrones, Sketch Challenge

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Wednesday Double Feature – Martial Arts and Blaxploitation With Jim Kelly

by wpmorse on September 5, 2018 at 1:14 am

Posted In: Test

I’ve been considering checking out Blaxploitation films, ever since Cartoon Network’s animated version of Black Dynamite came out. I knew that, while it certainly was a very fun show, I didn’t have the vocabulary to know why it was utterly hilarious. Rather than start with many of the classics my friends recommended me, I decided to take some baby steps and watch the works of Jim Kelly.

My only experience with Jim Kelly’s was his co-starring with Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon. Regrettably, in that film, he was one it was one of the most egregious examples of the trope black man dies first I had ever seen at the time. So I was very interested in seeing films where he got to be the leading man rather than the film’s sacrificial lamb.

In the first film on my list, Robert Clouse’s Black Belt Jones, Kelly plays the eponymous character, a local hero. When the Mafia has his old friend Pop Byrd (Scatman Crothers) is killed, in order to buy the building his dojo is in. Jones teams up with Boyd’s daughter, Sydney,(Gloria Hendry) to take them on.

This film was… okay.

Of the three films, I watched it was the only one that fit my definition of Blaxploitation in that it was the only of them that took place in the inner city with Jones being very much part of the community.

For the most part, the action was pretty good and the film never took itself too seriously (whether this was on purpose or not is anyone’s guess) Scatman Crothers seems to be having a lot of fun hamming it up.

On the same DVD was Oscar William’s Hot Potato which pretty much is for all practical purposes Black Belt Jones II. Jones and a team of mercenaries are hired to rescue a senator’s daughter who is being held prisoner in an imaginary Indochinese country.

This was the weakest film of the lot getting very close to so bad its good territory. I spent a lot of time wondering if it was actually a comedy or not.

Finally, I ended my marathon with Al Adamson’s Black Samurai. Kelly plays Robert Sand agent of D.R.A.G.O.N. He has his vacation interrupted by his boss to rescue the daughter of an eastern ambassador, who happens to be Sands girlfriend, who has been captured by a cult leader. It’s up to Sands to stop him before his plan comes to fruition.

That is all there is about all there is to the plot. It’s pretty much an excuse for Kelly to have fights with just about anyone his enemies have to throw at him. This includes dwarfs, African tribesmen, and a vulture. Still, this was the only one of the films with decent choreography allowing us to see just how good a martial artist Kelly is.

└ Tags: Movie Reviews

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Wednesday Double Feature – More Hustlers

by wpmorse on August 29, 2018 at 11:16 am

Posted In: Test

This week I took another look at films about Hustlers.

The first film on my list, Ron Shelton’s White Men Can’t Jump starring Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson, tells the story of Sidney Deane (Snipes) a fast-talking streetball hustler who works the courts all over LA. He’s very surprised one day when he gets beaten by Billy Hoyle (Harrelson) a seemingly easy mark of a white chump ready to be taken but is actually an ex-college basketball star who’s been using his exceptional basketball skills to try and pay back some debts.

Wesley recruits Billy to be his partner in a series of scams. Using Billy to draw in potential marks, because everybody knows that white men can’t jump, they hope to win a local competition.

I remember this movie tripping my radar because it was the first time I’d ever seen Harrelson in anything besides Cheers. For the most part, this movie was okay but not particularly memorable. Still, it had its good bits. Snipes and Harelson have good chemistry (I’m always embarrassed that I keep forgetting how good an actor Snipes is.

The next film on my list, Martin Scorsese‘s The Color of Money starring Paul Newman and Tom Cruise, is a sequel to the great classic, The Hustler.

It is twenty years later, and Fast Eddie Folsum (Newman) has quit pool and is making a fairly good living selling liquor (while sort of managing some pool hustlers on the side). One night he runs into a young charismatic player named Vincent Lauria (Cruize). He’s a fantastic player with “natural flakiness” and Eddie sees him as having the makings of a truly great pool hustler. He offers to train and manage cruise, taking him on a six-week training trip before competing at a tournament in Atlantic City.

I won’t say this will be my favorite Scorsezzi film but it is definitely my favorite Newman performance. In comparison, Tom Cruise is just there to be pretty.