Wait, Ray Liotta Was In Two MUPPET Movies?!!?

When Ray Liotta passed away last week, tributes poured in largely citing his intense performance as Henry Hill in Martin Scorsese’s 1990 gangster classic GOODFELLAS, and his touching portrayal of Shoeless Joe Jackson in Phil Alden Robinson’s 1989 baseball drama, FIELD OF DREAMS. Liotta’s other notable work in various films and TV series got some print as well, but one vital item got glossed over, and that's the surprising, and very fun fact that the man appeared in two of the Muppet movies.

In Tim Hill’s MUPPETS FROM SPACE (1999), Liotta appears in the third act credited as “Gate Guard,” a typical authority-figure-our-heroes-have-to-get-past part. In order to infiltrate a top secret national security facility called C.O.V.N.E.T., Miss Piggy utilized her Mind Mist spray to manipulate Liotta, basically turning him into an agreeable, smiling idiot. Watch the scene:

15 years later, Liotta’s second cinematic run-in with the Muppets found him on the other side of the law. In James Bobin’s MUPPETS MOST WANTED (2014), Liotta plays a Gulag inmate named “Big Papa,” who mostly lingers in the background like an extra until the Siberian Gulag Revue, the prisoners’ annual talent show. That’s where we hear Big Papa declare “we like Boyz II Men,” and display some rough, but invested harmony singing.

In an interview with We Got This Covered, Liotta explained his involvement: “With the Muppets? We sing and dance. Me and Danny Trejo are in prison, Kermit is there as well as scattered other Muppets. Kermit gets thrown into jail because they think he’s somebody he’s not, and the identical of him, this guy Constantine, is going out and doing bad things. So yeah, we’re just singing and dancing. Tina Fey is the Warden, Ricky Gervais is somebody in it, it was a lot of fun. It’s really funny. It’s all singing and dancing.”

 

Another interview with Liotta, from the set of MUPPETS MOST WANTED with ScreenSlam, also shows us a bit of how much fun he was having on the shoot:

Now these cameos may seem trivial, maybe even the definition of trivial, but it’s significant to me because of Liotta’s tough guy persona, and that over the run of eight Muppet movies, the human guest stars rarely repeat. The only other example I can find is that Elliot Gould put in cameos in THE MUPPET MOVIE (1979), and THE MUPPETS TAKE MANHATTAN (1983), but Liotta’s walk-ons were just a little more substantial - one of them even has a name (“Big Papa”) while Gould’s were just “Beauty Contest Compare,” and “Cop at Pete’s” respectively.

 

It must be noted that Zach Galifianakis played the same character, Hobo Joe, in both THE MUPPETS (2011), and MUPPETS MOST WANTED, but the scruffy comic feels like more of a fit in the world of funny felt than Liotta for sure.

 

Liotta was only in a few other films of the family-friendly variety (or maybe only one, the animated Jerry Seinfeld vehicle, BEE MOVIE), which is why having two outings with Kermit the Frog and company stands out in his distinguished, and fairly dark filmography. It also seems like a necessary side-line since when looking over Liotta’s career, which spanned over four decades, and contained over 70 movies, I’m not seeing anywhere else where he could really get in some singing and dancing.  

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Film Babble Blog’s Top 5 Oscar Best Picture Beefs

Just like every year, in anticipation for the latest Academy Awards ceremony (this year's, the 88th, airing tonight on ABC), film buffs/blowhards like me can't help bitching about the great movies that didn't win Best Picture in previous years while some incredibly undeserving film took home the gold. 

I've had these conversations many times, especially when I worked at a video store (remember those?), about how a favorite movie, like, say PULP FICTION, got passed over for some forgettable piece of fluff, like, say, FORREST GUMP, that was nowhere as influential and hasn't held up in the long run.

So these Top 5 picks are pretty f-in' obvious, and predictable if you know me (2 Scorsese films are on the list), but they stand as the five instances where I most thought the Oscars got it dead wrong.

Counting down:

5. Robert Benton's (who?) KRAMER VS. KRAMER winning over Francis Ford Coppola's APOCALYPSE NOW. (1979) 

That's right, this:

won over this:

Crazy, huh?

4. THE ENGLISH PATIENT winning instead of the Coen brothers' crime comedy drama masterpiece FARGO! (1996) Yeah, I mean who even mentions Anthony Minghella's weepy war rom drama THE ENGLISH PATIENT now? It's probably better remembered as a reference point on a episode of Seinfeld than as an actual film that people saw and liked. At least Frances McDormand won Best Actress for her peppy portrayal of police woman Marge Gunderson, one of the greatest movie characters of all time.

3. Robert Redford's ORDINARY PEOPLE winning instead of Martin Scorsese's RAGING BULL. (1980) This is just silly. However, I did appreciate ORDINARY PEOPLE, but just thought it came nowhere near the majesty that was Scorsese's fourth film with Robert De Niro.

2. John Ford's HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY won over Orson Welles' CITIZEN KANE! (1941)

Now I obviously wasn't around when this happened, but I can sure feel the 7 decades plus ripple effect from what many consider the greatest film of all time losing out to a movie that has been pretty much left in the dust bin of history. Actually, HGWMV isn't a bad film - I watched it a few years back and found it be a well made drama. And it's much better than the next film for sure:

1. Kevin f-in' Costner's DANCES WITH WOLVES winning over Martin Scorsese's mangum opus mob epic GOODFELLAS. (1990). This one still kills me. Scorsese makes two of his greatest movies and they both lose to pretty boy actor's directorial debuts. I'd like to think that Marty and co.'s reaction to the announcement looked like the picture above. At least Joe Pesci won the Best Supporting Actor award, and Scorsese went on to grab the gold with 2005's THE DEPARTED. That one was one of the biggest example's of payback in the entire history of Oscar.

#5 on this list also has to do with my biggest Best Actor beef ever, that Peter Sellers' brilliant work in Hal Ashby's BEING THERE, one of my all time favorite films, was passed over.

Sellers could walk on water, but he still lost to Dustin Hoffman in that damn divorce drama.

Anyway, let's see what beefs tonight's Oscars show will give me. You'll know immediately as I'll be live tweeting the event (follow @filmbabble).

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THE WOLF OF WALL STREET: The Film Babble Blog Review

Opening today at a multiplex near you:

THE WOLF OF WALL STREET
(Dir. Martin Scorsese, 2013)

While last year’s Oscar winning ARGO summoned the ‘70s in its opening moments by using the old bright red Warner Brothers logo, and the recent release of AMERICAN HUSTLE did the same by way of a vintage Columbia Studios logo, THE WOLF OF WALL STREET, just goes with the current Paramount Pictures silver mountain design, proving upfront that it doesn’t need any help bringing the retro.

Martin Scorsese’s 23rd film, and fifth with Leonardo DiCaprio, nails the rampant excess of the ‘80s greed era with such a fearlessly funny, and raunchy as Hell glee that it makes Oliver Stone’s 1988 insider trading spectacle WALL STREET look like Sesame Street.

DiCaprio portrays Jordan Belfort, an ambitious Bronx-born stockbroker (or more accurately Stock swindler), who hit it rich in his ‘20s by founding the Long Island firm Stratton Oakmont. As our protagonist puts it in voice-over narration (and at times breaking the fourth wall asides to the audience): “The year I turned 26, I made 49 million dollars as the head of my own brokerage firm…which really pissed me off because it was three shy of a million a week.”

DiCaprio’s Belfort also tells us that he gambles “like a degenerate,” screws scores of hookers, has three different federal agencies looking to indict him, and, as if it’s the most important part of his personality, that he really loves drugs (a large mix of Quaaludes, Xanax, pot, and cocaine make up his daily regimen).

As DiCaprio’s partner in white collar crime and coke, Jonah Hill plays Donny Azoff (name changed to protect the guilty Danny Porush). Hill, with blindingly white capped teeth and funnier than he’s ever been, could be seen as the Joe Pesci to DiCaprio’s Ray Liotta if we were going to go down the GOODFELLAS goes to Wall Street route that many critics will no doubt take.

We witness DiCaprio’s corrupt character’s rise and fall by way of a furious pace provided by Scorsese’s longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker. It’s such an electrifying ride that it never drags or feels like it’s anywhere close to its actual length (it’s just under 3 hours at 179 minutes). In fact, I’m seriously hoping the Blu ray/DVD release features the four hour cut that’s been reported).

Everybody in the cast shines especially Matthew McConaughey in a short but sweet role as a mentor to DiCaprio who extols the virtues of jerking off, Kyle Chandler as a hard-nosed FBI agent looking to bust DiCaprio, Rob Reiner in an amusing performance as DiCaprio’s father who affects a fake British accent when speaking on the phone, THE ARTIST’s Jean Dujardin suavely playing a Swiss banker, The Walking Dead's Jon Bernthal as a tough guy cronie, and newcomer blonde bombshell Margot Robbie as DiCaprio’s former model wife.

Terence Winter’s Screenplay, based on Belfort’s book of the same name, is full of sharp dialogue (except when the characters are all coked up then it’s appropriately sloppy), plus obvious but inevitable references to Gordon Gekko, THE GODFATHER, and Thomas Wolfe’s 1987 novel “The Bonfire of the Vanities” (let's just forget the awful movie version) because Belfort, of course, considers himself a “Master of the Universe.”

The amped-up soundtrack is dead on as well with classic blues by the likes of John Lee Hooker, Howlin’ Wolf, and Elmore James rubbing up alongside Devo, Cypress Hill, and Sir Mix-A-lot (Scorsese restrained himself this time and included no Stones tracks), all under the supervision of another longtime Scorsese collaborator, The Band’s Robbie Robertson, who serves as executive music producer.

New to the Scorsese team is cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto (BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, ARGO) who captures in stunning tracking shots the swaggering sweep of its subject’s debauched lifestyle.

A stand-out sequence involving an DiCaprio, f-ed up beyond belief on a massive amount of Quaaludes having to crawl back to his car parked right outside at a country club reaches surreal heights of hilarity due in no small part to Prieto’s keen camera eye.

While I liked how David O’ Russell’s AMERICAN HUSTLE does a great job scamming folks into thinking they’re watching a Scorsese film, it’s so much more intoxicating to see the real thing.

At 71, Scorsese proves that he can still make master class cinema as THE WOLF OF WALL STREET is the director and DiCaprio’s finest film together, one that's much more deserving of a Best Picture Oscar than 2005’s THE DEPARTED, and I say that having really loved that movie.

Sure, WOLF covers similar ground to Scorsese's GOODFELLAS and CASINO in its wild depiction of money being the ultimate aphrodisiac, but its outlandish verve and gutsy-as-all-get-out attitude make it yet another major Marty masterpiece – a feast of a film that I can’t wait to go back to for a second helping.

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David O. Russell's AMERICAN HUSTLE Pulls A Scorsese On ABSCAM

AMERICAN HUSTLE (Dir. David O. Russell, 2013)

  
“Some of this actually happened...” a title tells us up front and then we're off into one of the impressive approximations of the intoxicating style of Martin Scorsese that I've ever seen. And I've seen a lot of them.

David O. Russell's follow-up to his home runs THE FIGHTER and last year's SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK presents a darkly funny take on the ABSCAM sting of the late '70s and early '80s by way of a couple of con artist caricatures, portrayed by Christian Bale and Amy Adams, who are blackmailed into working for Bradley Cooper as an unhinged over-permed FBI agent.

Our intro to Bale as Irving Rosenfeld (loosely based on convicted con man Melvin Weinberg), takes us through how he applies what his girlfriend/partner-in-crime Adams calls “an elaborate comb-over,” gives us all we need to know about this small-time loan scammer.

Of course, Bale and Adams' documentary-style voice-overs aren't the only allusions to GOODFELLAS going on in all the set-ups, as dead-on Carter-era song choices (Steely Dan's “Dirty Work” serves as a perfect opening theme song), and grainy chaotic camerawork relishing all the garish wardrobes and decor of the surroundings, keeps a Scorsese-ian sweep going from start to finish.

There's also a good bit of Paul Thomas Anderson's BOOGIE NIGHTS embedded in the structure, but since that also had massive debts to Scorsese, I digress.

Cooper's Richard “Richie” DiMaso, who's based on FBI Agent Anthony Amoroso, Jr. can come off as much as a speeding spaz as the amped up movie around him at times, but look deeper and you'll see one of the most electric performances of the year.

More colorful caricatures (I call them that because everybody looks like they stepped out of the pages of Mad Magazine movie satires from the era depicted) crop up in the form of Jennifer Lawrence (Cooper's SILVER LININGS co-star) as Bale's bawdy wild card of a wife who may accidentally blow everyone's cover (Lawrence acts her ass off), Jeremy Renner as the idealistic mayor of Camden, New Jersey (with a very Joe Pesci-ish pompadour) who gets up in the scam, and comedian Louis C.K. as Cooper's uptight FBI supervisor.

A running bit about Cooper needling C.K. about both approving more money for the operation and guessing the moral of an aborted ice-fishing anecdote is a successful strand of silliness that kept me laughing alongside all the other in-your-face absurdity here.

Many will say its more rip-off than homage with such lame bon mots as “Scorsese-lite” to “Rhinestone Scorsese,” but I liken it to how people call a song that's in the vein of the Beatles but still has its own groove: “Beatle-esque.”

AMERICAN HUSTLE is definitely Scorsese-esque, but it has its own grooves going in its riffing on '70s cinema vibes. At one point when schooling Cooper on the art of the con, Bale asks “Who's the master: the painter or the forger?”

I'll still go with the painter, especially as we're on the verge of a major Marty release (THE WOLF OF WALL STREET opens on Christmas day) that more than tops this, but when it comes to what Russell and his crack cast are going for here, to quote Christopher Walken in a classic SNL sketch: “It's a Hell of a forgery.”

More later... 

THE FAMILY: Besson's Really Redundant De Niro Mob Comedy

Opening today at a theater near you:

THE FAMILY (Dir. Luc Besson, 2013)

Seeing Luc Besson’s new mob comedy THE FAMILY makes me wonder if Robert De Niro will be remembered by future generations for his roles that poked fun at his image as a scary Mafioso type, more than the classic roles in which he actually portrayed a scary Mafioso type.

Here De Niro plays a former New York mob boss, living in France with his wife (Michelle Pfeifer) and teenage offspring (John D'Leo and Glee’s Dianna Agron) under the witness relocation program.

The set-up obviously recalls the end of GOODFELLAS, in which Ray Liotta’s Henry Hill complains about getting egg noodles with ketchup when he orders spaghetti with marinara sauce after being relocated to the suburbs for snitching on his former buddies.

THE FAMILY’s wiseguy fish-out-of-water premise also recalls the 1990 Herbert Ross-helmed Steve Martin/Rick Moranis comedy MY BLUE HEAVEN (incidentally written by the late great Nora Ephron who was married to GOODFELLAS screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi).

But those reference points are over 20 years old now, so after countless spoofs of modern mafia movies, as well as six seasons of HBO’s dark comic drama The Sopranos, every trope THE FAMILY trots out has been done to death. Adapted by Tonino Benacquista from his 2010 novel “Badfellas” (that’s right), THE FAMILY has a few funny lines and a couple of decent gags, but the overly familiar structure (along with the high volume of convenient convolutions in the storyline) can't help but highlight how redundant it is.

De Niro spends the movie either trying to write his memoirs - an activity frowned on by Tommy Lee Jones as a CIA agent assigned to protect the undercover family – or trying to get somebody to do something about the brown water coming out of his house’s taps. De Niro’s worn-out character trait is that he speaks softly but will do violent damage to any non-relative who says something offensive to him. One scene has him dragging a fertilizer plant CEO behind his car for suggesting he switch to bottled water.

Pfeifer, also no stranger to this territory (see Jonathan Demme’s 1988 mob comedy MARRIED TO THE MOB), along with D’Leo and Agron, handle matters in the same abrasive manner. Pfeifer blows up a grocery store for snide remarks made at her expense by the clerks, D’Leo arranges for a brutal beating of his high school bully, and Agron makes like KICK ASS’s Hit-Girl when she takes a tennis racket to the head of a fellow student who puts the moves on her.

Trouble is that the film is so boringly broad that these scenarios have no ambition over getting cheap laughs from indiscriminate audiences. It also tries to go where it really shouldn’t when De Niro is invited to a local film club for a screening of the 1958 Frank Sinatra/Dean Martin movie SOME COME RUNNING, but there’s a mix-up and GOODFELLAS is shown instead. Besson’s film hasn’t earned that attempt at a meta moment, especially as it only aims for the funny from Jones’ grumpy cat reaction to De Niro yet again being unable to control.

After the effort De Niro put into his Oscar nominated role in SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK, it's disheartening to see him once again walk through a role. The man seriously doesn't seem to care about being the center of another self-referential mafia-themed farce - the ANALYSE THIS/THAT films should've been where he drew the line.

TV spots for the THE FAMILY highlight that Martin Scorsese was involved as one of the executive producers, even blaring an early ‘70s Rolling Stones track on top of clips (no Stones music appears in the movie) to shade the proceedings with his presence. This is an un-wiseguy move as it just calls into attention how much this film misses the mark.

Scorsese hasn’t directed De Niro since 1995’s CASINO, but a future collaboration – THE IRISHMAN based on the Charles Brandt book “I Heard You Paint Houses” - is reportedly in the works. Here’s hoping that will come together soon, because after the mess Besson has made here stumbling blindly around Marty’s territory, a clean-up crew is sorely needed.

More later...

Reconsidering CASINO

“‘Casino’? Ca-seen it. The first time, when it was called ‘Goodfellas.’” - David Spade (SNL 1995)

Not long ago I came across Martin Scorsese’s CASINO on the Sundance Channel and found myself re-watching it. It has the distinction of being the only Scorsese movie that I don’t own a copy of. I’ve blown it off over the years for being too much of a retread of GOODFELLAS, but it’s been a bit since I’ve seen it so why not reconsider it? 

To be fair, I have heard that there are people that prefer CASINO, because they like gambling and are fans of casino culture. It does seem like an ideal movie to put on if you’re playing the occasional slots game on an online casino at home come to think of it.

Still, right off the bat, the comparisons to GOODFELLAS can’t help but being made. With its cool-as-ice voice-overs, stylish editing, flashy cinematography with sweeping pans, and its dead-on depictions of the highs of a life of crime, we’re definitely in the same world that Scorsese and screenwriter/true crime novelist Nicholas Pileggi put on such vivid display in their 1990 masterpiece GOODFELLAS.

It’s the closest Scorsese has come to making a sequel, and one thing sequels do is try to double-size the original. So CASINO is bigger - there’s a much bigger explosion in the first five minutes, there’s twice as many people getting whacked, there’s a bigger cast, the f-bomb is dropped a 100 more times (literally), there’s two blow-jobs instead of the measly one, I mean, even the soundtrack is a double disc collection.

Robert De Niro, in his last of eight roles in Scorsese’s films, has a much more prominent role than GOODFELLAS as the film’s protagonist, Sam “Ace” Rothstein, who is based on real-life Las Vegas casino mogul and mafia associate Frank Rosenthal. 

Rothstein's story is one of power and indulgence, perfect for Scorsese’s scope, but although there are a number of top notch sequences, the film never matches GOODFELLA’S go-for-broke spirit which was fueled by improvised dialogue and the sense of first learning about the inner-workings of a shadowy underworld.

As visually stimulating as much of CASINO is, and with cinematographer Robert Richardson’s impeccable eye on the job it can be very visually stimulating, we never feel like we’re learning anything new that we haven’t seen in tons of other movies and TV shows that have thugs skimming money, gamblers getting roughed up, and sleazy hustlers running out of luck (James Woods does nail that last one here though). Seems like the only thing I really learned was that if you're going to murder someone in the desert, make sure you dig a hole for the body in advance.

The way the system works, which should be obvious to anybody who's even just thought about this stuff before, is summed by De Niro via voice-over: “In Vegas, everybody’s gotta watch everybody else. Since the players are looking to beat the casino, the dealers are watching the players. The box men are watching the dealers. The floor men are watching the box men. The pit bosses are watching the floor men. The shift bosses are watching the pit bosses. The casino manager is watching the shift bosses. I'm watching the casino manager. And the eye-in-the-sky is watching us all.”

In its best moments, Scorsese’s eye in-the-sky makes us feel like we’re on the floor with De Niro, Mob enforcer Joe Pesci (again a very similar character to his thick headed violent persona in GOODFELLAS), casino manager Don Rickles, and shift bosses such as Joe Bob Briggs (film critic gets once-in-a-lifetime part in a Scorsese movie! Good for him), as the tension mounts over the game in play.

One element that CASINO sadly doesn’t double down on is humor. A large part of what made GOODFELLAS so great is the comic edge to it all. It had more laughs than most comedies, along with tons of quotable lines. I just watched CASINO, but I can’t remember a single of Pesci’s lines; there’s nothing like “What, do you got me on a fuckin' pay-no-mind list kid?” to speak of.

CASINO doesn’t just echo Scorsese’s GOODFELLAS, it also recalls his 1980 classic RAGING BULL in the dysfunctional relationship De Niro has with Sharon Stone as a floozy turned gangster prostitute (fun fact: Sharon Stone auditioned for the part of Vickie La Motta in RAGING BULL). Stone did do some of her most engaging work in CASINO, and earned the film's only Oscar nomination (she lost to Susan Sarandon in DEAD MAN WALKING).

At times CASINO works because of its connection to the invigorating flow of GOODFELLAS, but too often it feels like an artificial extension of the style. It has to be said that David Chase's HBO series The Sopranos was a much better extension of the style.

I was talking to my friend, Kevin Brewer on his postmodcast the other day and caught myself saying some like that if GOODFELLAS didn’t exist, then maybe CASINO would be the awesome epic it’s supposed to be, but that’s just the kind of thing a film geek like me would meaninglessly speculate.

CASINO is a Scorsese film that’s been glossed over in his filmography - the full-length TCM Career Profile on Scorsese that accompanies THE DEPARTED DVD barely mentioned it - and that’s understandable, but it shouldn’t be completely dismissed. Despite its “been there, done that” shortcomings, it feels like a gamble to double their winnings that Scorsese, De Niro, Pesci, and Pileggi had to make.

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Happy Anniversary A-Z (Well, W)

A few weeks back Patrick Goldstein on his LA Times blog asked “Is there any Hollywood movie that isn’t having an anniversary this month?” He could reasonably have said this year as well because every time I surf the net or pick up a magazine there is a anniversary piece about a classic or cult movie that came out 20 years ago, 25 years ago, 30 years ago and so on.

There are quite a few good articles so I thought I’d compile a far from complete listing of some of the best ones.

Here goes:

AIRPLANE! (Dir. Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, & Jerry Zucker, 1980)



The gag-a-minute disaster film satire just turned 30 (USA release date July 2nd, 1980) and there are a gaggle of tributes including this New York Times piece:

"Surely It's 30 (Don't Call Me Shirley)" - Matt Zoller Seitz

There's also this well worth checking out piece: "Airplane!, one of the best comedies ever made, celebrates its 30th anniversary (with videos)" - Scott Wampler (Examiner.com)

BACK TO THE FUTURE (Dir. Robert Zemeckis, 1985)

This anniversary, the film's 25th, was marked by what's been called a "twitter hoax" involving a photoshoped picture of Doc Brown's Delorean dashboard. You can read about it here: "Debunked: 'Back To The Future' Twitter Hoax" - Jeff Sneider (TheWrap.com)

Pretty funny but Conan O"Brien's tweet was funnier:

“Today's the 25th anniversary of "Back to the Future" - The movie that popularized DeLoreans, Flux Capacitors, & almost nailing your own mom.”

THE BLUES BROTHERS (Dir. John Landis, 1980)

1980 comes up a lot here - it was quite a summer. Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi's musical car chase extravaganza was definitely a highlight as these links attest:

"Remembering 'Blues Brothers' 30 years later" - Christopher Borrelli (Chicago Tribune)

"30 years later and 'Blues Brothers' still on a mission from God" - Steve Spears (Tampabay.com)

"The Blues Brothers Gets Vatican Seal Of Appoval" - Ron Hogan (Popular Fidelity - popfi.com)



CADDYSHACK (Dir. Harold Ramis, 1980)

Score another for 1980 with this much beloved country club golf comedy which pitted the slobs against the snobs. Read on:

"Is it Really the 30th Anniversary of 'Caddyshack'?!" - Jane Boursaw (filmgecko.net.)

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (Dir. Irvin Kershner, 1980)



The second (or the 5th if you want to split hairs) film of the ginormously popular STAR WARS series is widely thought by many, including me, to be the best stand alone installment. Here's some links to those who think likewise:

"Report from the 30th Anniversary Empire Screening" - Pablo Hidalgo (starwars.com)

"The Empire Strikes Back Turns 30, As Do Fans Pyschic Scars" - Mike Ryan (Vanity Fair)

"Empire Strikes 30: Ars looks back at a amzing film" - Ben Kuchera (artstechnica.com)

FLETCH (Dir. Michael Ritchie, 1985)

Chevy Chase's newspaper reporter wisecracks through one of his best comedies, if not the best. This is by far the best column I've found yet on the film's birthday:

"White losers rejoice: Fletch celebrates 25 years" - Peter Hyman (thephoenix.com)

GOODFELLAS (Dir. Martin Scorsese, 1990)

It's too early for tributes just yet - the film was released on September 19th, 1990. Until then here's the news of Spike TV's anniversary tribute: "Spike TV celebrating 'Goodfellas' 20th at Guy's Choice Awards" (merinews.com) Stay tuned to this space for more on GOODFELLAS 20th...

JAWS (Dir. Steven Spielberg, 1975)



Too many to list here but here's some of the cream of the crop of 35th anniversary wishes to what many claim was the first summer blockbuster:

"'Jaws' 35th anniversary: Remembering the first summer blockbuster" - Andrea Reiher (zap2it.com)

"Jaws' 35th anniversary: How Jaws changed summer movie blockbusters" - Michael Avila (csmonitor.com)

"35th Anniversary of Jaws Begins in a Junkyard" - Robert Falconer (cinemaspy.com)

MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL (Dirs. Terry Gilliam & Terry Jones, 1975)


Last year it was reported that there would be a 35th anniversary celebration at Doune castle in England (where much of the movie was shot): "Monty Python reunion planned for Doune castle" (pythononline.com)

PEE WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE (Dir. Tim Burton, 1985):

"Los Angeles Film Festival: Paul Reubens to mark 25th anniversary of 'Pee Wee's Big Adventure'" - Susan King (latimes.com)


PSYCHO (Dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

"Hitchcock's Psycho at 50, The sounds of violence" - Jack Sullivan (WSJ.com)

RAGING BULL (Dir. Martin Scorsese, 1980):

"Brutal Attraction: The Making of Raging Bull"
- Richard Schickel (vanityfair.com)

THE SHINING (Dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1980):

"The Shining - 30th Anniversary - May 23, 1980"

WILD AT HEART (Dir. David Lynch, 1990)



Actually other than some notices about 20th anniversary screenings I haven't found a good anniversary appraisal for this one. I just rewatched it and really loved see it again so maybe I should consider doing one. Hmmm.


I know there are a lot of significant anniversaries I've missed - REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE (1955), THE APARTMENT (1960), MASH (1970), NASHVILLE (1975), and many many more so please let me know what else we should be celebrating in the comments below. Looks like a followup is in the cards.


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GOMORRAH: The Film Babble Blog Review

GOMORRAH (Dir. Matteo Garrone, 2008) Talk about hype! The trailer for this Italian film is filled with raving quotes such as: "Stunning...A reinvention of the mafioso movie" and "the greatest mafia movie ever made...strips every last pretense of romanticism from 'The Godfather' saga." Quite daunting statements especially when considering THE GODFATHER itself was credited for stripping away previous romantic pretensions from the old Hollywood James Cagney-era gangster films. But that's just the thing, THE GODFATHER as such created a new romanticism involving family and tradition that has thrived through later day mob classics including Scorsese's * GOODFELLAS and had a healthy run on HBO'S The Sopranos. That the ambitious GOMORRAH is being sold as a shattering of these modern mob movie myths isn't exactly false advertising but it's certainly an injustice to this fine yet somewhat inaccessible film. In a strained structure that makes the complex workings of SYRIANA look like a walk in the park, there are several knotted threads to follow involving a group of characters in Naples connected to the Camorra - the real life criminal organization older than any other in Italy. In one major thread, Gianfelice Imparato plays Don Ciro, a mid-level money carrier who defects from his clan amid a hairy dispute. Another thread involves Marco (Marco Macor) and Ciro (Ciro Petrone) as street toughs who steal guns from Camorra members and amuse themselves by firing off rounds at the riverbank in only their underwear making for a striking image that has been rightly exploited in the film's ads. Other threads involve the 13 year old Totò (Nicolo Manta), who falls in with gang members, and Carmine Paternoser rebelling against his boss illegally dumping toxic waste. How all these tangents come together I'm still trying to work out but perhaps absolute clarity is not director Garrone's objective. Based on the bestselling book by Robert Saviano, GOMORRAH is the result of the work of no less than 6 screenwriters so it's no wonder that it can be a cinematic ball of confusion. Despite this, there is much to recommend here - the washed out docu-drama feel, the killings (or hits) are as piercing as movie simulations can be, and there is realistic grit replacing the glamour of former gangster epics even if the film doesn't surpass their grandeur like the over hyperbolic critics quoted in the trailer claim. However the lack of strong characters coupled with an annoying soundtrack which sounds like cellphone ring-tone flourishes accompanied by a techno beat keep this from a true breakthrough of mafia movie re-imagining. These are my first impressions though for I feel it deserves a deeper look. As it stands now I don't think it would make my mafia movie top ten (were I to make such a list) but depending to how it ages and holds up to repeated viewings, it might just make it in one day. * Martin Scorsese is credited as the Presenter: USA release of GOMORRAH - something the trailer is actually wise to hype up. More later...

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE: The Film Babble Blog Review

Now playing at an indie art house near you:


-->SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE(Dir. Danny Boyle, 2008)

The buzz has been a-blazing big on this film 

Right now it is topping many Critics’ Award lists for 2008, getting multiple Golden Globe nominations, and gaining massive word of mouth as it gets a wider release. What’s more impressive is that this film deserves every accolade and award and then some. It is a “feel good” movie in the least cynical use of that well worn publicity phrase with its inventive story-telling and rich palette of visual splendor, simply amazing considering its squalor-filled settings.

So how can depictions such as poverty, child abuse, and even the sight of somebody drenched in feces be in a film that adds up to an overwhelmingly happy and heart-warming experience? I dunno, but this film pulled it off magnificently - echoing the power and grandeur of  CITY OF GOD crossed with the clever charm of Boyle’s own MILLIONS, and it’s done with wit and grit to spare.

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Our hero is 18 year old Jamal (Dev Patel along with Tanay Cheda and Ayush Mahesh Khedekar as Jamal at younger intervals) who is being interrogated by police, USUAL SUSPECTS-style, about his suspiciously improbable winnings from appearing on the Hindi version of the modern classic quiz game show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

His answers involve engaging and sometimes disturbing flashback sequences that are handled deftly and definitely more fluidly than in many other recent broken narratives.

-->From an early age, Jamal made a couple of connections that would deeply affect his current predicament – his love for Latika (Freida Pinto with Tanvi Ganesh Lonkar, and Rubiana Ali as younger incarnations) and his stormy clashes with fellow slum kid Salim (Madhur Mittal, Ashutosh Lobo Gajiwala, and Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail – whew!) All of these talents, tested (especially Anil Kapoor as the unctuous game show host) and untested are up to the task at hand here.

A end credits dance sequence (that can’t possibly be a Spoiler!, can it?) is the only thing Bollywood about this Indian movie made by Brits but that works as well and as entertainingly as everything else here. Despite a fair amount of subtitled dialogue (which is pretty stylized as it goes for subtitles) 80-90% of it is spoken in English and it’s instantly accessible so it’s sure to pick up even more acclaim and box office in the weeks to come. 

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE is one of the best movies of the year for sure and will endure to be much more than a winner this awards season – I feel that for years to come it’s going to be a favorite of the same folks who can love AMELIE and an edgier work like GOODFELLAS equally. It has plenty of pure stultifying competition (got MILK?) out there in what’s shaping up to be a precedent setting prestige motion picture season, but from what I’ve seen so far this has the “fun factor” on its side in spades.

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10 Movie Posters That Completely Co-opt Others Original Designs

This is a sequel of sorts to a post I did earlier this year (10 Of The Most Misleading and Mis-representing Movie Posters Ever!) with one of the same posters mentioned and the same theme of mis-marketing dominating.

Recently the publicity for the new pop-doc AMERICAN TEEN included a poster that directly recreates the iconic poster image for the classic 80’s teen angst flick THE BREAKFAST CLUB. The similarity was so blatant that it made many folks (including me) think it was a retitled remake:


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You see? To be fair AMERICAN TEEN has another poster design out there that’s more original, but the one above is still too close for comfort. This is a pretty common device that calls for another patented Film Babble Blog list: 


10 Movie Posters That Completely Co-opt Other Poster’s Original Designs
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1. THE BIG ONE appropriates MEN IN BLACK and suffers legal action for it - That’s right the image for Michael Moore’s self indulgent book tour doc was ruled too similar to the design for the Will Smith/Tommy Lee Jones sci-fi vehicle so a judge ruled that Miramax had to remove the posters from distribution. The taglines: “Protecting the Earth from scum of the universe” from MEN IN BLACK and “Protecting the Earth from the scum of corporate America” from THE BIG ONE would probably be dismissed by most of us as parody not copyright infringement but Columbia Pictures’ lawyers thought differently.

2. FLETCH LIVES for some reason regurgitates GONE WITH THE WIND - This lackluster sequel did itself no favors by placing Chevy Chase’s Irwin M. Fletcher character into the framework of one of the most famous films of all time. Not sure the thinking here, did they really think it was a good idea to equate the camera-mugging wise-ass with a suave Rhett Butler in the thralls of a tragic romance while Atlanta burns? I suppose the GONE WITH THE WIND design is just a device for selling the

--> -->‘Fletch inherits a Southern Plantation’ premise and I should cut them some slack for trying to wrap a failed follow-up in something resembling a classy package.

3. WHERE IN THE WORLD IS OSAMA BIN LADEN? macks on the art for RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK - Meticulously copying the entire design right down to the typefaces and every detail of the amazing Amsel painting done for the 1982 re-release of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, Morgan Spurlock’s much lambasted quasi-poli-doc tries to align itself with the same globe trotting heroic splendor of the Spielberg classic but just ends up looking desperate. I haven’t seen WHERE IN THE WORLD... but not being a fan of SUPER SIZE ME or Spurlock’s television work makes me ambivalent at best to it with this uninspired poster design putting me off even further.

4. THIS IS SPINAL TAP jumps on the back of AIRPLANE! - This one I wrote about before in the Most Mis-leading Movie Posters post mentioned above, noting that director Rob Reiner remarked: “They marketed it with a guitar flying in the air with a twisted neck which looked like the poster for AIRPLANE! It looked like it was trading on another film.” There were many more comedies that were marketed with crazy ‘flying in the air’ imagery - the Zucker Bros. own NAKED GUN movies kept the concept alive for another decade after SPINAL TAP.

5. PROBLEM CHILD crassly copies PARENTHOOD - A mere months after Ron Howard’s family comedy was a hit came this tasteless anti-family comedy with a poster design that mocks the former’s switching the roles and supposedely doubling the laughs. Not a bad advertising approach mind you, I'm sure many rented one after glancing at the video box thinking it was the other.

6. DEAD HEAT duplicates GOODFELLAS - This one is really annoying. Same dark design with 3 protagonists posing above a street scene and the same typeface shows a complete creative bankruptcy on the side of the promotional department.

The utterly forgettable Keifer Sutherland crime thriller that somebody on the IMDb message board called “SEABISCUIT meets GOODFELLAS” could not come close to competing with Scorsese’s masterpiece so seeing them try is painful.

7. ROCK ‘N’ ROLL HIGH SCHOOL re-amps NATIONAL LAMPOON’S ANIMAL HOUSE - Lots of crude sloppy comedies have likewise Mad Magazine derived designs but the folks behind marketing the Ramones’ film debut didn’t look very far for an angle here - they just went with what worked for the previous years teen gross-out blockbuster. Squint and you’d think you’re seeing the same picture (especially with the tiny examples I’ve provided here).

8. WHEN HARRY MET SALLY redoes ANNIE HALL (as does the movie) and begat a flood of rom com movie marketing - A couple in a hesitant yet sexually tense moment always makes for a good poster picture for a romantic comedy,

right? Well just add a city skyline (most often New York, duh!) underneath and now you’re talking. Dozens upon dozens of recent rom coms have used this type imagery including SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE, TWO WEEKS NOTICE, MAID IN MANHATTAN, ALEX & EMMA (also Rob Reiner), etc. Oh yeah, the Dudley Moore / Mary Steenburgen movie actually named ROMANTIC COMEDY had a similar image too.

9. CLOVERFIELD marks on THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW’s territory - The Statue Of Liberty gets a lot of abuse in the world of movie posters. In CLOVERFIELD its head gets blown off (same thing is shown

on ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK’s poster incidentely) and a long shot view shows us a stormy New York in turmoil. Looks a lot like the same painting style and tone used in THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW’s the Statue Of Liberty under ice image. The poster for the upcoming sludge through bad pop culture spoofs DISASTER MOVIE features our long suffering statue getting drowned in a tidal wave. Hard job it is being a giant symbol of freedom I guess.

10. TRANSFORMERS apes PLANET OF THE APES - Why would anybody want to recall the roundly rejected Tim Burton remake of the Charleton Heston “damn dirty ape” classic with a poster image that looks nearly identical? It seemed like TRANSFORMERS would’ve had its own shiny take on the aesthetics and wouldn’t have to stoop to this so was it unfortunately unintentional? Did somebody think the look and angle of the Ape design was cool and thought it was either forgotten or needed to be re-done and re-purposed? Whatever the deal, I can still barely tell them apart.

Okay! Now, I know there are lots of movie posters that have co-opted the designs of others that I missed so feel free to comment away.

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