Tag: Movies

  • The Power of Patrick Swayze (Unedited)

    So, I was all gearing and ready to go, to sit down and knock out a blog for today. My wife had left the tv on as she was finishing her lunch, and being that I was planning on working on the couch, I needed to shut the tv off to concentrate. But what was on tv was the final fifteen minutes of Red Dawn. The real Red Dawn. The 1984 John Milius directed Red Dawn that started among many, Patrick Swayze. It had been a couple of years since I had seen it, and the ending is pretty good, with the brothers on the bench Ikiru style.

    And then Road House came on, (I guess it was a Patrick Swayze marathon) and I totally got sucked into that movie. Make no mistake, and I have written about both Road House movies before, the original Road House is a bad movie. But man! It sure is a fun bad movie.

    BUT… I had work to do, so I thought it best to talk about the Power of Patrick Swayze.

    Actually, I wanted to talk about bad movies, and how I find myself needing them more than ever.

    And I love movies. I love seeing them in a theatre. I love watching them late at night. I love reading about movies, and how they were made. And I agree with the notion that good movies, even gut wrenching, tragic, everyone dies dramas, will always leave you feeling better than when you started.

    But right now, with the way the world is, a bad movie that just wants to be entertaining, and that is what Road House is, feels correct for these times. Bad yet entertaining movies know they’re bad, and not good for you. But I know that eating ice cream and cookies for dinner is bad for me, but some nights, it’s what I need to make it to the morning, and try all over again.

  • Barbarian Movies – Bad Movie Bible

    If I had a spirit animal, it would be Rob Hill.

    In case you missed it, I’m a huge fan of bad movies, and also a particular adamant fan of Rob Hill and his Bad Movie Bible YouTube channel. The above Barbarian video is the latest entry in Hill’s “Borrowing Blockbusters” series, which examines a movie that had an enormous, if not game changing, affect on the genre, and the inevitable rip-off movies that followed. I found it surprising that I had seen many of these rip-off Barbarian movies, especially all the films that came from Italy.

  • Ninja! Ninja! Ninja!

    I love the work that Rob hill does putting these videos together. Rob does and excellent job putting these videos together which document the histories and behind the scene stories of these movies. As a guy who loves bad and B-movies, Rob is endless entertaining, and hilarious.

  • We Should All Have a Theme Song, Like Gamera

    This theme gets stuck in my head, and it takes days, even weeks, for it to go away.

  • Showing My Kid “Cool Hand Luke”

    I’m not the best father. I have very good intentions, and I show up, and I am dependable, but outside of that, I’m floundering around here.

    One of my flounder moments of late is trying to show my kid good movies. Like really good movies, the best movies, movies that had a huge impact on storytelling, movie making; you get the deal. I am way too eager to do this, and I have to remind myself that most of the beast movies ever made aren’t appropriate for a nine-year-old.

    So, of late, I have just been showing her the start of movies or very famous scenes. Amazingly, this has worked out very well. After watching Barbie together, I thought showing her the opening “Dawn of Man” section of 2001: A Space Odyssey would be a good idea, as that part is parodied in Barbie. And I was delightfully rewarded showing it to her, because she was able to visually follow the story, understood the importance of the bone/tool, and how tools good be used for good and bad. And she especially understood what Barbie was parodying.

    After having such a rewarding experience with 2001, I decided that I would press my luck and show her one of my favorite movies, Cool Hand Luke, a film I consider a great movie and if nothing else, it’s Paul Newman’s best performance. Unfortunately, the only streaming service I could find that had the movie came with commercials. What this availed to us was two minutes for me to answer questions, which is to be expected, as I do have a very curious and inquisitive child. Mind you, we only got 1/3 of the way through the movie.

    The questions she provided me were; Where are the girls? Why does everyone smoke? Don’t they know that’s bad for them? Is there a prison for women and do they do the same thing? Do they have air conditioning? Are the guards allowed to shoot people? If the guards shoot people, do they get in trouble? Why isn’t “The Box” illegal? Are there bugs and rats in “The Box?” And my favorite – How do you play poker?

    I don’t mind her questions, that’s how you learn; you ask questions, right. What I forgot was how much of a huge jump in her experience it is to see a movie made in 1967 about people living in the South during the early 1950’s. It’s just on the very edge of her understanding. Such as, she sees the cars and the trucks, those are things she can relate to and understand. But no air conditioning? She doesn’t know a world without A/C. And then I had to explain to her what parking meters were – how you had to put change in a machine, and turn a handle, and it counted down until you had to put more change in it. That kind’a blew her mind…

    And we haven’t even got to the egg eating scene yet.