Yaphet Kotto Was A Bond Villain, But He Really Wanted To Be Bond Himself

When the great Yaphet Kotto passed away a few days ago, quite a few obituaries singled out his two most famous roles: the villain in the 1973 James Bond adventure LIVE AND LET DIE, and a spaceship engineer in the 1979 sci-fi classic ALIEN. Of course, the accomplished actor played a variety of roles over multiple decades in such notable films as HARD COLLAR, MIDNIGHT RUN, ACROSS 110TH STREET, THE RUNNING MAN, BRUBAKER, and many others, but in a 1985 interview in the sci-fi/fantasy magazine Starlog, it was Bond that he wanted to talk about most.

As a kid, I used to subscribe to Starlog, so shortly after Kotto’s death I dug up the interview. After discussing turning down the iconic parts of Lando Calrissian in THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (“I decided I didn’t want to be king of the science-fiction movies”), and Winston Zeddemore in GHOSTBUSTERS (“the first time that producers actually sought after me to play a comic role”), Kotto explained to Starlog’s Brian Lowry that “When I did LIVE AND LET DIE, the only thing I regretted about it was that I was playing the wrong role. I was the arch-villain that James Bond was after, and all. Through the film, I said, ‘You know, I should be playing James Bond.’ Ever since I was a kid, I've wanted to play James Bond!”

But it’s one thing to simply want to play James Bond - so many people have had the same dream - but Kotto tried to make it happen.

Kotto: “I wrote a script that was a James Bond-type film - the only difference in this high-action/chase/adventure picture being that it would be a black man. And, I’m prejudiced so I cast myself in the lead role.”

The interview reveals that the title of the 007-ish project was TOMORROW IS THE SAME DAY, and Kotto was hoping for it to be ready for release in late 1985 or early 1986. “The whole purpose of this movie is to change my image in the marketplace,” Kotto said. “I get to wear a tuxedo, nice clothes, say cute lines - you name it.”

As film geeks like me well know, TOMORROW IS THE SAME DAY (love that title!) never came to be, but Kotto kept working, including co-starring on all seven seasons of Homicide: Life on the Streets in the ‘90s and a handful of film roles until retiring in 2008.

I can’t find any mention of Kotto’s supposed Bond-like dream project anywhere else. The Starlog interview is the only source for this information I can locate so I am tempted to think he was just toying with the sci-fi monthly. That makes some kind of sense as it was a publication aimed at teenage nerds, and maybe he thought making up a movie about his playing a master spy would be fun.

I really can’t say, but I like the idea anyway. In conclusion, here’s the cover of the Starlog issue that Kotto’s interview appears in, which really takes me back.

Such a busy roster that this mag features: STAR TREK! Space! E.T.! BABY! LADYHAWKE! V! CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR! A VIEW TO A KILL! And then, at the very bottom of the cover “Yaphet Kotto of ALIEN.” They really buried the lede. They should’ve risen it up on the cover and changed it to something like “Yaphet Kotto reveals that he’s the next Bond.”

Yeah, that would’ve sold more copies for sure.

R.I.P. Yaphet Kotto

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March Film Babble: LIFE & THE LAST WORD

I’ve been too busy working on a book project (more on that later) to babble much these days about movies, but here’s a few films I’ve seen recently that I’ll weigh in on:

LIFE (Dir. Daniel Espinosa, 2017)

It’s often been said that ALIEN, is a “haunted house in space” movie, and that’s certainly the case with this movie which takes Ridley Scott’s 1980 sci-fi classic, and mixes it with Alfonso Cuarón’s GRAVITY.

LIFE concerns a crew made up of Jake Gyllenhaal, Ryan Reynolds, Rebecca Ferguson, Hiroyuki Sanada, Ariyon Bakare, and Olga Dihovichnaya returning from a mission to Mars on the International Space Station with a soil sample that contains a single-celled organism.

The organism, which is named Calvin by schoolchildren in a Times Square ceremony back on earth, quickly grows into a multi-celled Flubber-like creature that starts killing the crew members one by one.

That’s basically it for the plot, as it’s all about the familiar fight for survival tropes that keep trapping the remaining cast members at every turn. There is some genuine suspense, and some stellar effects, but I found a great deal of tedium to be in orbit with these one-note characters.

I will give kudos to the dark, twisted ending, despite the fact that it could easily set up a sequel as the idea of a LIFE franchise makes me cringe. But since this film flopped at the box office, it doesn’t look like that’s something I have to worry about.

THE LAST WORD (Dir. Mark Pellington, 2017)




If you didn’t get enough of Shirley MacLaine as a controlling, crotchety old woman that everyone in town hates in Richard Linklater’s BERNIE, then this is the movie for you.

MacLaine plays Harriett Lauler, a wealthy, retired divorcee who wants to shape her legacy by getting newspaper obituary writer Amanda Seyfried to craft her eulogy before she’s dead.

This leads to all kinds of cutesy-ness, with MacLaine’s Harriett mentoring an underprivileged black 9-year-old (AnnJewel Lee Dixon), becoming a DJ at a college indie rock radio station, and sticking it to the suits at the advertising agency that screwed her over.

It’s one of those movies where everybody appears to be a familiar face.

There’s Gedde Watanabe, best known as Long Duck Dong in SIXTEEN CANDLES (don’t expect a gong here), as Harriett’s gardener; there’s Tom Everett Scott from THAT THING YOU DO! As Seyfried’s editor, Joel Murray (Bill’s brother of many credits, but you may know him best from Mad Men) as Harriett’s former colleague, Thomas Sadoski from The Newsroom as Harriett’s radio station manager, Phillip Baker Hall as Harriett’s ex-husband, who has one of the film’s better scenes; and, yes, that’s Anne Heche as Harriett’s estranged daughter, who has one of the film’s worst scenes.

The script by first time screenwriter does have ambition at times so there are moments of wit and honesty, but more often it feels like TV melodrama sprinkled with hot or miss one-liners.

The irony in this movie about a woman wanting to be fondly remembered when she’s gone, is that MacLaine should have no such worry. She has an impressive filmography including a few of my favorite films, like THE APARTMENT and BEING THERE, so a lightweight piece of cheese like this won’t hurt her legacy at all.

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The Colony Theater Closes Tomorrow So One Last Ditch Plea For Stories

After tomorrow night’s showings of BROOKLYN (at 7:15 and 9:20) and TRUMBO (7 and 9:30), the Colony Theater in Raleigh will be ceasing operations. Tonight's showing of the 1988 action classic DIE HARD, which I wrote about in the N & O last Friday, will be the last Cool Classics screening at the theater (the series moves to the Rialto in January).

A couple of months back after it was announced that the theater was closing, I posted asking local folks to send in their stories about their experiences with the venue, but I only posted a few of them for a few reasons.

First, there were pesky rumors that the rent might be re-negotiated or that new owners would swoop in and continue its long run as an indie theater. I didn’t really believe they were true, but I still had some small hope that the Colony could be saved.

Second, I didn’t get that many stories. My friend, Anthony Rhodes, who worked there several years ago shared several entertaining ones, and there was a funny anecdote that Brian Hill shared about going to see PULP FICTION there with a girl who was tripping on mushrooms, but mostly I got folks emailing that they were sorry that the theater was closing, and that they went to many movies there.

So, in one last ditch effort to try to job folks’ memories I posted this on Facebook today:

The Last Days of The Colony Theater Thread: I was hoping I could get folks to share their favorite movie experience at the Colony as they are closing tomorrow. I’ll start: Three or four years ago, I attended the Colony’s Cool Classics screening of Ridley Scott’s sci-fi horror classic ALIEN.

I sat up close and got more engrossed in the film than any other time I had seen it. Of course, this was largely because I had never seen it on the big screen before, but it was different this time because this time I felt like I was watching the movie back in 1979 when it first came out.

That’s right, I seriously felt transported into not just the world of the movie but the world of the theater that had probably shown the movie back then. Those who are well acquainted with the décor of the shag carpeting on the walls can probably imagine the feeling somewhat as the theater never lost its ‘70s looks. This vivid memory of that ALIEN screening is one I’ll never forget - when the Colony became a time machine.

Anybody else got a favorite movie experience at the Colony story?

Here are some responses:

Matt Pennachi (Former Cinema Overdrive Series curator): I'm not sure how to craft it into a story that is actually interesting to read, but having a chance to run SLAP SHOT on 35mm was a real thrill to me. In particular, having the opportunity to run the National Film Board of Canada cartoon of "The Sweater" (which was a childhood favorite of mine) before the film was awesome.....particularly when I had to manually chance the masking from scope to flat as we transitioned from the cartoon to the feature.

Jennifer Love (Rialto Theater Manager): When Ambassador first bought the Colony, I remember being there when the new floor carpeting was being installed and helping paint the restrooms. Someone had decided to be creative on the stalls and go for that speckled look. We had old toothbrushes and dipped them in white paint and splattered spots onto the stall walls. That's how we did it and why there are so many different sizes of spots. I think I had more white paint splatters on me than the stalls!

I also worked matinees back when Colony ran them everyday. Food lion was being constructed next door at that time. Clif and I worked the unexpected hit, LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL and a sold out show around the holidays (can't remember which) of SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE. just the 2 of us! I still don't know how we did that. My favorite memories are of the midnight late shows. They played in house one: THE ABYSS, HEAVY METAL, THE SHINING and so many more. I know everyone will continue to love the Colony and all the memories made there. Good times.

Daniel Matti (Schoolkids Records Manager): I saw 13 ASSASSINS twice there. The only Takashi Miike film I've seen in theaters. I will miss the Colony.

Joel Frady (Fellow Film Critic): REQUIEM FOR A DREAM in 2000 - there must have been 50 or so people in the right theater, and when the credits rolled not a single person moved. Then, when the lights came up everyone slowly exited - but nobody said a word. We were almost back to NC State when I finally broke the silence with “Who wants a fucking Dairy Queen Blizzard?”

Joe Corey (Cinema Overdrive host): Fond memory of going over for a midnight screening of FASTER PUSSYCAT KILL! KILL! for the projectionist inspection. Also the joy of attending my first Cinema Overdrive and feeling at home. It was good to attend a program where I had utter trust in whatever Adam (Hulin) and Matt (Pennachi) programmed. Was so grateful for the months that I hosted the series while Adam was away.

Goodbye, Colony Theater (1972-2015). I, and many others, will miss you greatly.

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Get Me A Cat That Can Act!: 10 Great Movie Cats (Live Action)

If you’ve seen any of the trailers, TV spots, or posters for the Coen brothers’ newest film INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS (opening wide this Friday) you know that it prominently features an orange tabby cat.

As I live in a home full of cats (both our own and fosters as my wife and I volunteer for the Raleigh cat rescue Alley Cats & Angels), I thought it would be fun to kick off the new year with a good ole top 10 list, or a piece of “listicle linkbait” as some cynical critics call it, this time spotlighting other felines that stole their respective movies.

Of course, some of these cat characters were played by more than one cat but as the Village Voice’s Stephanie Zacharek wrote in her review of INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS, “Technically, we’re talking about several cats, but let's look the other way for the sake of movie magic.” Also, as this post’s heading indicates, I’m excluding cartoon or CGI-ed cats. So don’t go looking for Garfield or the Cheshire Cat here. No cats who have overdubbed human voices either - so sorry, Sassy from HOMEWARD BOUND.

So here are 10 Great Movie Cats (Live Action):

1. Jonesy in ALIEN (and ALIENS)

As many critics have called Ridley Scott's classic sci-fi thriller ALIEN a “haunted house in space” premise, it made sense that a cat would be one of the crew members aboard the commercial vessel Nostromo so that there could be some fake-out scares of the “oh, it's just the cat” variety. Jones, nicknamed Jonesy, was officially there to rid the ship of rodents, but he became one of the most memorable of the film's characters. This is especially because he and Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) were the only survivors of the Nostromo's deadly alien encounters, and he even made an appearance in the sequel. For those who can't get enough of Jonesy, there's this fan fiction in the form of a free e-book: “Alien, From The Point Of View Of Jones The Cat” by Anne Billson.

2. Tonto in HARRY AND TONTO

When I first saw the trailer for INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS, I was reminded of Paul Mazursky’s 1974 drama HARRY & TONTO, which also featured an orange tabby being carried around New York and across country (although he was often walked on a leash as well).

Art Carney’s Oscar winning role as Harry Coombes, a retired schoolteacher who goes on a cross country trip after his apartment building is demolished, is greatly enhanced by his loyalty to his cat. Interestingly, Carney was far from a cat lover before shooting, but after the film wrapped he told an interviewer that they both got along great, and that “when it was over I wanted to buy Tonto. His trainer wouldn’t allow it.” 

3. Blowfeld’s cat in the James Bond series

007’s arch enemy, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, portrayed by Donald Pleasance, Telly Savalas, and Charles Gray during the classic Sean Connery era of Bond, was always seen stroking a white fluffy Turkish Angora in his lap. We are never told the name of the cat beloved by the head of the global criminal organization SPECTRE, but reportedly a couple of cats named Soloman and Tiddes were used in the three films YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE (1967), ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE (1969, the lone George Lazenby entry), and DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER (1971).

Only once did Blofeld and his cat appear (neither played by any previous participant) in the Roger Moore era, in the pre-credits sequence of 1981’s FOR YOUR EYES ONLY, but the evil genius was never called Blofeld because of legal reasons. These same legal reasons amounted to a competing Bond movie by a rival production comapny, 1983’s NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN, in which Max von Sydow’s Blofeld stroked yet another fluffy Turkish Angora. 

Showing how much of an impression the cat made on pop culture, a parody of Blofeld’s pet was included in the Mike Myers AUSTIN POWERS films (themselves parodies of the Bond series and the entire ‘60s spy genre): a hairless Sphynx named Mr. Bigglesworth, the beloved cat of Blofeld lookalike (and satiric equivalent) Dr. Evil.

4. Don Vito Corleone’s cat in THE GODFATHER 

In his commentary on the DVD and Blu ray of the 1972 gangster classic, director/producer/writer Francis Ford Coppola explains how Marlon Brando's iconic character came to have a furry friend on his lap: “It's interesting - the cat in Marlon's hand was not planned for. I just saw the cat kind of running around the studio, and I just took it and just put it right in his hands without a word. I said ‘here Marlon,’and he, uh, of course, he loves children and animals and he immediately took to the cat. And the cat took to him and it became part of the scene - not at all planned, just a random idea.”

5. “Cat” in BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S

  
The unimaginatively named Cat is yet another orange tabby that stole the show as Holly Golightly's (Aubrey Hepburn) cat in the 1961 classic. 

6. The Black Cat in THE BLACK CAT 

It's about time a black cat made the list, and who better than the creepy cat title character in the 1934 Universal horror classic THE BLACK CAT? As this was way before the internets, not much is known about the cat, who seemed to be suggested by the Edgar Allan Poe short story of the same name. There were a bunch of remakes (even back then they were remaking the Hell out of horror flicks), but let's just stick with the first and best one.

7. This little kitten in LA DOLCE VITA

One stand out scene in Federico Fellini's 1961 classic had Anita Ekberg playing with a tiny kitten that she found walking the streets of Rome. One could say she reduces the kitty to a fashion accessory but it's a cute scene nonetheless.

8. Mr. Jinx in MEET THE PARENTS

On the audio commentary for the hit 2000 comedy, Ben Stiller asked man of few words Robert De Niro what he thought of his toilet using cat co-star, who was played by two five year-old Himalayans. De Niro: “I like cats. Cats is good.” Well put, Bob.

9. Phillip Marlowe's cat in THE LONG GOODBYE

Yep, another orange tabby. Elliot Gould isn't able to hold on to his cat in the 1973 detective thriller (of sorts) for long as director Robert Altman put it on the “Rip Van Marlowe” featurette on the film's DVD: “The cat was around as long as it got fed. But he didn't get fed - that's the end of the cat.” The cat exits the apartment's window, and the film, when Elliot's Marlowe tries to pull one over on him by putting the label of his favorite food on a can of a generic brand.

10. A cat extra in DAY FOR NIGHT

The heading of this post comes from this scene in François Truffaut's 1973 Oscar winner DAY FOR NIGHT, in which a crew member on the film-within-a-film can't get a cat extra to hit its mark and orders: “Get me a cat that can act!”

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GRAVITY: The Film Babble Blog Review

Opening today at nearly every multiplex in the Solar System:

GRAVITY (Dir. Alfonso Cuarón, 2013)

Sandra Bullock and George Clooney are our astronaut audience surrogates in Alfonso Cuarón’s GRAVITY, the first great movie of the fall season.

After so many overblown sci-fi epics, it’s so refreshing to find a film set in the heavens, on the edge of Earth’s atmosphere to be exact, that doesn’t need attacking aliens or big ass asteroids to be scary - the prospect of being stranded, untethered in outer space is terrifying all by itself.

Bullock and Clooney find themselves in this predicament after debris from a destructed Russian satellite hits their space shuttle during their space walk on a Hubble Telescope repair mission. All other crew members were killed, and contact with Houston, represented by the voice of Ed Harris as Mission Control (nice shout-out to Harris’s roles in THE RIGHT STUFF and APOLLO 13) is lost, so there’s just the two Oscar winning A-listers lost in space.

Clooney, cocky and confident as usual, retrieves Bullock after she spins out of control away from the devastation of the accident, and, with the help of thruster packs, they make their way back to the shuttle. Finding that the shuttle’s been totaled and therefore not their ride back home, they then head towards the International Space Station.

Along the way we get a bit of insight into the characters, though less about why Clooney is driven to break the world record for longest spacewalk, and more about why Bullock prefers the quiet of space to life on Earth, i.e. she’s mourning the death of her four year old daughter.

When it comes to 3D, GRAVITY joins Martin Scorsese’s HUGO and Ang Lee’s LIFE OF PI in the small club of films that make spectacular use of the format. Cuarón and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (who also shot Cuarón’s Y TU MAMÁ TAMBIÉN and CHILDREN OF MEN) glide through the spectacularly imagery with an electric energy that will make you feel as weightless as its leads. It's definitely worth the price of admission for the IMAX 3D Experience.

Clooney is his regular charming self, but Bullock acts her ass off. It’s such an impressive and emotionally invested performance that I wouldn’t be surprised if it garnered her another Oscar nomination.

From the point-of-view visor shots from inside of Bullock’s helmet, to the expansive CGI-ed shiny space station surroundings, there’s a lot of immersive imagery in GRAVITY, a lot of technical beauty, but the film’s most amazing feat is how satisfyingly stressful it is.

One fake-out fever dream scene aside that I won’t spoil, the film is heavily grounded in reality with only existing technology available which adds greatly to the film’s frightening grip.

Although it begins with text telling us how unlivable outer space is, recalling Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci fi classic ALIEN’s tagline: “In space nobody can hear you scream,” GRAVITY is not sci-fi. It’s a thriller in which the cold darkness of the great beyond is more terrifying than any made up monster. 

Seeing it will make you feel as if you’re really starring into the void, and when it’s over you’ll be happy to be safe back on Earth. That’s just a few of this bold, amazing, and breath taking movie’s many sensations.

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DISTRICT 9: The Film Babble Blog Review

DISTRICT 9 (Dir. Neill Blomkamp, 2009)


WARNING: This review contains Spoilers!

The documentary-style opening with faux cable news coverage and staged interviews with various talking heads depicts diseased extra terrestrials quarantined in a section of Johannesburg, South America that quickly becomes a Hellish slum. Because this is presented so soberly with flawlessly faked footage, this sci-fi concept is immediately easy to accept and go with. 

Political red tape and alien racism are all the rage as we are introduced to Sharlto Copley as a field operative for Multi-National United (MNU), a huge conglomerate that, surprise surprise, may not have the aliens best interests in mind. Copley is promoted to the position of relocating a million or so of these slimy creatures that talk with voices that sound like Jabba the Hut with a vocoder (don't worry, subtitles are provided) and who are derisively labeled as "prawns."

Copley's gung ho demeanor - he's acts like he's never been out from behind his desk on the job before - gives the film a comic tone for a brief bit; going from door to door to get grotesque CGI creations to sign eviction notices is more like something out of "Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy" than it is ALIEN. It goes quickly from sci-fi social satire to an extremely unpleasant yet still gripping sequence in which Copley accidentally sprays himself with icky black fluid from some alien device he happens to pick up and confiscates. After his left arm mutates into a "prawn" claw, MNU officials sequester him for experimentation.

Once they determine that his changing DNA allows him to operate alien weaponry they decide to dismantle him in true Josef Mengele fashion. This seems appropriate as Copley tells one of the "prawns" that the new district 10 they are being moved to is more like a concentration camp than a new housing situation. 

 There is so much invention amid the brutality and visceral impact of this film that it's just a bit of a letdown that it descends into a 3rd act of routine action movie convention bombardment. However Copley's interaction with an alien that goes by the name Christopher Johnson, who may be able to help reverse the effects of Copley's virus, saves the concluding scenes from soullessness. 

As a protégé of Peter Jackson (who produced this film) Neill Blomkamp has for the most part made a sturdy study of alien/human conflict that actually comes off as plausible considering all past human conflicts. DISTRICT 9 isn't a rousing crowd pleaser - the summer season may not be the best time for it - but it's an incredibly strong sci-fi flick as well as a gritty thriller that has a lot of guts.

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Son Of Space Oddity

Now playing at the Colony Theater in Raleigh:

MOON (Dir. Duncan Jones, 2009)


The directorial debut of the British born Duncan Jones takes place almost entirely on the surface of the moon with the sparest of casts and the eeriest of vibes. 

It makes a certain sci-fi sense for Jones since he's the son (originally named "Zowie Bowie") of pop superstar David Bowie and grew up with heavy up close and personal exposure to his father's otherworldly output such as the classic albums "Space Oddity" and "Ziggy Stardust", along with his films THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH and LABYRINTH. 

So, with that unique upbringing in mind, we are given Sam Rockwell as a Lunar Industries employee, alone and very lonely, on a 3 year assignment to extract Helium-3. His only companion at the lunar base Sarang is a robot named Gerty - voiced by Kevin Spacey. Except for a few blurry video messages on the monitors of his wife back home (Dominique McElligott) and a couple of corporate guys calling the shots, it's the Sam Rockwell show. He's burnt out as Hell; schlepping around the base in a daze donning shades to shield from the blinding glare around him as he counts down the days to when he can go home. He sees odd flickers of images of himself on the monitors and the fleeting vision of a woman in a yellow dress, but brushes these off as weary hallucinations until crashing his rover. When he awakes he finds there is another man on the base - another Sam Rockwell to be exact.



Because there are only so many pieces that make up MOON, it would be wrong to give any more away than that - from just that simple description I bet one could imagine story threads involving clones and delusion; dammit I'm still giving things away. It must be noted that while the Bowie background can't be ignored, this is more spiritually rooted to the seminal sci fi of the '70s and '80s - Jones cites SILENT RUNNING, ALIEN, OUTLAND, and, of course, the obvious connection: 2001 as major influences.

These were the antithesis of the commercial appeal of STAR WARS and its ilk; films that were about probing the depths of character's alienation instead of space laser fights and cute robots.

MOON can be a slow dry ride, but it's one that lingers darkly though thoughtfully. Rockwell's performance never falters especially in scenes when he's interacting with himself; he's as on as any time in his career. Rockwell's no stranger to sci fi either from his roles in GALAXY QUEST and HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY so he is at home here.

It was nice to see models and matte paintings instead of CGI, though I bet that choice was budgetary rather than artistic. There's a low key yet absorbingly spooky mood to MOON that is still with me the next day, while the parts that didn't quite add up (like the unsatisfying ending) are fading. As it still processes, right now I can only concede that it's a fine film debut as well as a promising chip off the Bowie block. 

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Those Damn DirecTV Movie Tie-In Ads - Offensive To Film Buffs?

To cut to the chase - yes. Those commercials (most running for 30 seconds) that re-create a scene from a well known movie oft played on cable with an actor re-outfitted in their old characters duds and mugging to the camera about the better picture quality benefits of DirecTV have been irking me for some time now. Let's take a look at a few of them shall we? : The first of these that I have seen wasn't too bad - it had Christopher Lloyd dressed and made up to look like his 1985 Doc Brown character from BACK TO THE FUTURE (Dir. Robert Zemeckis) in this ad designed to make you feel like you're coming back from commercials to a movie you forgot you were watching. Lloyd hams it up saying "I forgot to tell Marty when he gets back to the future he needs to get DirecTV HD!" As Wikipedia notes "Marty would not actually be able to get DirecTV once he got back to the future as it did not exist in 1985 and the Doc of 1955 would obviously have no way of knowing about it. However, this blatant illogic can be regarded simply as a joke." Uh - okay! You can't really fault Charlie Sheen for turning a fast buck revisiting his MAJOR LEAGUE (Dir. David S. Ward, 1989) role of Rick 'Wild Thing' Vaughn. It's a movie that seems to always playing on some cable channel (mostly TBS) and he was likable in it which is seriously unlike just about all of his other films so he and DirecTV are in the clear here. Major points would have been added if Dennis Haysbert (who played Voodoo practicing Cuban defector Pedro Cerrano in the 1989 film and its sequels) did some add-on shot (he's probably too busy doing AllState ads) - but I'll still put this in the acceptable pile. Now those were somewhat cute - if you stick to mainstream movies and B or C-list celebrities popping up in mock scenes from their movies sure we can look the other way but Sigourney Weaver resurrecting her female-empowering alien-ass-kicking heroine Ellen Ripley in this ALIENS ad attrocity that just starting airing recently really gets my goat! To see this classic character who was named by the American Film Institute as the #8 greatest hero in American cinema history shilling for DirecTV is just depressing. Maybe we can tell ourselves that it's one of Ripley's clones from ALIEN RESURRECTION - no, it's still sad. I mean it makes some kind of marketing sense to have Jessica Simpson break the 4th wall from her role as Daisy Duke in the apocalypse-warning signpost that was THE DUKES OF HAZZARD (Dir. Jay Chandrasekhar, 2005) and chastize her leering viewers by taunting them by saying "Hey - 253 straight days at the gym to keep this body and you're not going to watch me on DirecTV HD? You're just not going to get the best picture out of some fancy big screen TV without DirecTV." Though incredibly eye-rolling inducing it makes some kind of sense because it's a completely disposable commercial movie and nobody will care if a character steps away from that kind of cinematic enterprise to do a sales pitch for a company. Speaking of stepping away from the Enterprise ... "Settling for cable would be illogical" Captain Kirk (William Shatner) says to Spock's (Leonard Nimoy) grimace. Shatner is surrounded from footage from STAR TREK VI mind you in this commercial. Not the first time he's acted reacting to nothing and it won't be the last. This one is understandable because Shatner with his Priceline.com pitches, MCI, and the UK Kellogg's All-Bran cereal ads has been a commercial spokesman * almost more than he's been an straight actor, no wait he's never really been a straight actor. Still, I get a bit pissed off watching his laconic walk-through in this ad I'm reminded by comedian Patton Oswalt's put down from Shatner's Comedy Central Roast -when he held up a paper bag and dared Shatner - "Could you act your way out of this?" * To see the hilarious origins of Shatner as a commercial spokesman checkout this hilarious Commodore Vic20 Ad. I just feel like we're one step away from having Ralph Fiennes popping up as his evil Nazi personage Amon Goeth in a mock scene from SCHINDLER'S LIST looking right at the camera and saying "don't you want to see me personally execute masses of Jews in the crystal clear clarity of DirecTV? Don't you?!!?" Okay, maybe that was a bit over the top - none of the ads so far have been from serious dramas or Oscar-caliber prestige pictures but I think these ads are bad for the film community. Okay, maybe just the online film community. Okay, maybe just me. Now this one with Pamela Anderson playing her iconic character C.J. from the television show Baywatch is just about right - hear that DirecTV! Stick to TV shows and low-brow comedies that were cheesy to begin with and all is forgiven. Okay? Postscript : I know I haven't covered all of those damn ads - Leslie Nielsen revisited his 1980 Dr. Rumack performance in a AIRPLANE! one, Ben Stein again asked "Bueller? Bueller? ..." for a FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF throw-back, Bill Paxton once again chased a tornado in a TWISTER take, and shortly before his death in Pat Morita brought back Miyagi from THE KARATE KID ('86). If there are any others that irk you or that you actually like - send 'em on in to : boopbloop7@gmail.com Oh yeah - I read somewhere that Bill Murray was all set to re-Carlize himself for a spot from CADDYSHACK ('80) but he was either out of the country working on a film or he came down with a case of integrity... More later...

10 Sequels That Don't Suck

After the response, both good and bad, to The Top 50 Sequels That Should Have Never Been Made (March 12, 2003), it seemed like it was time to take a stand the sequels that don’t suck. It’s a much shorter list, but a damn good one:

10 Sequels That Don't Suck

1. THE GODFATHER: PART II (Dir. Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)

Undoubtedly the greatest sequel because it was better than the original, won a best picture Oscar, and because unlike all the sequels on the top 50 worst list it actually has more story to tell. The casting of Robert De Niro as a young Vito Corleone didn't hurt either. Like Part I this was written by Mario Puzo who also wrote:

2. SUPERMAN II (Dir. Richard Lester, 1981)

This supreme sequel works as a follow-up because it's actually an extension of the first film. It was filmed at the same time for the most part (there was a bit of a rough transition from director Richard Donner to Lester, resulting in some controversail re-shooting) and it satisfyingly concludes the Krypton villains’ subplot set-up from the original.

3. STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN
(Dir. Nicholas Meyer, 1982) 

It wasn't hard for this one to be better than the first because the first one (1979’s Robert Wise-directed STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE) was an overblown bore. Meyer’s follow-up jettisoned the celebral egghead exposition of the original, and brought on the shoot 'em up back to sc-fi basics with William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, and the rest of the iconic crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise facing off against the genetically engineered super-villain Khan Noonien Singh, portrayed by Ricardo Montalbán in a career best performance. Still considered the best of the series.

4. STAR WARS: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (Dir. Irvin Kershner, 1980) Despite the numbering of this as “Episode V,” I still think of this as the second STAR WARS movie. Whatever the case, this is a dark and layered entry luckily not directed by Lucas.

5. THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING (Dir. Peter Jackson, 2003) After GODFATHER: PART II, this was the second sequel in Academy Awards history to win Best Picture. 

6. THE EVIL DEAD II (Dir. Sam Raimi, 1987) The third one, 1992's ARMY OF DARKNESS is pretty kick-ass too. Let's hope Raimi pulls off another great sequel this summer with SPIDERMAN 2.

7. IN LIKE FLINT (Dir. Gordon Douglas, 1967) Many forget Flint James Coburn's suave American equivalent to 007. They really shouldn't because this is some sharp slick '60s stuff.

8. INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE 
(Dir. Steven Spielberg, 1989) 

Dennis Miller once joked on SNL that Star Trek VI ought to be subtitled “The Apology” (you know because of the Shatner helmed fiasco of Star Trek V), but this is the sequel that really should have that subtitle. This was a pure return to form after the way-too-dark TEMPLE OF DOOM. And 007 himself, Sean Connery as Indy’s father really seals the deal. The word that there may be a 4th Indiana Jones movie is troubling though.

9. MAD MAX 2: THE ROAD WARRIOR (Dir. George Miller, 1982)

10. ALIENS (Dir. James Cameron, 1986)

Honorable mentions: FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE, TOY STORY 2, and A SHOT IN THE DARK.

More later...