Tag: Movies

  • ODDS and ENDS: Movie Trailers, They’re Talking About Me, and Christmas

    (Pay teachers more. You know it’s true.)

    Yesterday was a big day for the release of movie teaser trailers. We got one for the new Transformers movie though I wonder who out there is asking for another installment of that series, one for Guardians of the Galaxy, and the one that hit my sweet spot was the new Indiana Jones. Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of my favorite movies of all time, and I still find it exciting to watch after all of these years. It can still take me back to being seven years old and seeing it for the first time. And I can also say that I am old enough now to know that nothing, no matter how good this movie is, will recapture that feeling of being a little boy and having no idea where Raiders was going to take me. But at the same time, I will be first in line to see it when it comes out.

    There is a New York Times article that was written about me! Not me specifically, but my middle aged demographic, which I will take as the story is about me. The article examines why middle aged men are not returning to the workforce after the pandemic. The piece gives several reasons, but it mainly focuses on men who do not have college educations, as they make up a large number of these middle aged men. For me, I don’t necessarily want to return to an office job, but I do want to bring in additional income for my family. And family is the optimal word there. My real job is taking care of my daughter and my family, and I do enjoy it. Yet, living on one income in the most expensive city in the US, does make our lives feel rather fragile. I believe that things will change for us when we get into the new year. I’m not asking for much; just $500 a month would make a big difference.

    Christmas is like, three weeks away…

    (And here is where I ask you to like, comment, share, or follow my blog. It’s a standard thing I do now.)

  • Trucker Movies: A Personal Journey

    Have you ever seen the movie Convoy? I have seen bits and pieces of it over the years, but never watched it all the way through.

    That changed last night, and the first thing I learned was that the Convoy was directed by Sam Peckinpah. I should have put that together, especially after the climax on the bridge, where everyone has a gun and was shooting it. I found the movie entertaining, but it wasn’t good.

    Convoy was one of the many movies, tv shows and songs about truckers and trucking in America. I’m talking about White Line Fever, Smokey and the Bandit, Handle with Care, Breaker! Breaker!, High-Ballin’, B.J. and the Bear, and Any Which Way but Loose to name a few. As cultural trends go, the trucker/CB movement of the late 70’s is so fascinatingly unique. And I do hold that it was a movement, with the movies, tv shows, songs, and clothing. That’s a lot of trucker shit in its very brief life from 1975 to, I would say, about 1980. What I also find odd about the trucker/CB stuff is that it never had a resurgence. Sure, trucker hats were cool a couple of years ago, but Ashton Kutcher never made a trucker movie.

    But why did all this trucker stuff become so popular in the late 70’s?

    Most of these movies revolve around the idea of the free or independent hero who is harassed or chased by law enforcement, ether justified or not. These heroes aren’t free-spirited hippies; they are blue collar workers. They have a job to do, hauling goods across America, which is vital to the economy, but each trucker has their own rig, which makes them their own boss, which makes them free.

    Basically, all these movies are Easy Rider, just trucks instead of bikes. And not as many drugs.

    I saw most of these movies growing up in the late 80’s and early 90’s, thanks to basic cable. And when I think back on all of these movies, I guess they all behave like westerns. Most of them take place in the West or South, away from “cities” and “normal” people. Law enforcement is corrupt and unrestrained. Individualism is respected, expected, and the hero lives outside of society, except for the community of truckers. Almost like late 60’s anti-hero movies.

    Having said that, maybe these movies were of a specific time, and as such, cannot exist outside of that context. Maybe the late 70’s were a time when the idea of the rough individual American was going away, foretelling the coming of the corporate, conforming yuppie 80’s.

    I will add this; it would be nice if they did make more movies with monkeys as sidekicks.

    (Say! If you read something you like, don’t be a stranger. A like, comment or share would go a long way to save your soul.)

  • Personal Review: Raiders of the Lost Ark (Part 2)

    This will be a series, as I showed this movie to my daughter for the first time over the weekend, and I will share her reactions to it.

    Raiders of the Lost Ark is my favorite action movie, in case you missed that from yesterday. This weekend, we decided it was time to watch the movie with my daughter. She is six and a half, which was about the age that I first saw Raiders. I had a few reservations about showing the film to her, and was also curious how she would react to a movie that has no CGI in it.

    Now, we are a nerdy, sci-fi/fantasy media devouring family. We have a video of our daughter at about six months old, totally mesmerized by the opening of Doctor Who, so we started early with this kid. She has watched all the Star Wars movies, all the Marvel Movies, the Batman movies (1989 to 1997,) she saw the new Star Trek, and Star Trek II. I feel that we have done a good job of allowing her to see movies that we feel inspire her imagination, and, with the exception of the Batman movies, show that doing the right thing is the right thing to do.

    About a year ago, at the start of the pandemic, I showed the kid the first ten minutes of Raiders, more or less to gage here temperature on the film. She wasn’t too impressed. I just chalked it up to that not everything I like the kid will like. Then over the weekend, as we were trying to find a movie to watch, the kid brought up that Raiders was my favorite movie, and she wanted to watch it. (I do have a Raiders poster in the office, and I own an Indiana Jones Fedora, but I’m not obsessed or anything.)

    This time around, she got into it pretty quickly, though she did think Indy had a lasso, and not a bullwhip. Some of the reservations I had were about the amount of violence in the movie. Unlike all the other action movies we had shown her where the violence is bloodless, characters in Raiders bleed when shot and punched. I would say that Spielberg’s Nazi rule was in full effect with my kid. As Spielberg said, no one feels bad if a Nazi gets hurt or killed. As for the stuntman/practical effects, she was totally on board; from the snakes, to the plane, to the truck scene, she was all in. I won’t lie, that did make me feel good that my kid hasn’t been warped by CGI.

    And then the melting face part came. As the scene started and the Angel of Death appeared, my kid didn’t make a sound. Nazis get shot by God lightening, she was silent. Faces melt and heads explode – she didn’t even cover her eyes. I thought, oh well, this must look fake to her. When I was a kid, it scared me shitless. My kid sat silent all the way to the end. When the credits started to roll, she looked at me and asked, “They just put it in a box and stored it away?” I seemed to remember asking my brothers the same question. Before I could answer that question, she added, “I don’t want to go to bed. The melting faces scared me.”

    Score one for the old special effects.

  • Tales from the Video Store: Rocktober Blood (1984)

    I once worked in a video store in the 90’s. Let’s be clear, it was a bad job; low pay, awful hours, unscrupulous owners… but if you were a movie fan, nothing could be better. The video store gave me the opportunity to watch great movies, and it also gave me to chance to watch some of the worst. And I love watching schlocky bad movies. At the bottom shelf in the “Horror” section, I came to discover the slasher music extravaganza that is Rocktober Blood.

    (I’m just going to call SPOILERS right now. Not that any of us care, just outta respect)

    Lucky for all of us, I was able to find the movie on YouTube. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIvojCCVvSY) The print might not be the best, but to be honest, the movie is awful, so the bad quality might help add to the kitsch.

    The movie was released in 1984, and lordy, do we get a documentation of the Los Angles metal scene of that time. It was awesome seeing the hi-top sneakers, sleeveless shirts, teased out hair, and the style I liked most was all the rising sun Japanese stuff, which I had forgotten about.

    So… Plot… We actually start in 1982 as Billy is in the recording studio cutting his latest track “I’m Back” We get to meet Lynn, Billy’s backup singer, and I guess girlfriend, or was… It’s not real clear. Billy and the rest of the band head out of the studio, leaving Lynn, Kevin the engineer, and Mary who is Kevin’s assistant to finish work on the record. Lynn and Kevin try to record some backing vocals for the song “Rainbow Eyes.” It doesn’t go well, and Lynn decides to go to the jacuzzi upstairs because the target demographic for this movie was teenage boys.

    But wait, Billy returns and slits Kevin’s throat, and then kills Mary by impaling her on a mounted wall peg. Then Lynn comes downstairs, having not heard a thing because jacuzzi’s used to be really loud, and she finds Billy smoking “drugs” at the console while listening to “I’m Back” backwards. Now, like I said, this was 1984, and we were all not supposed to do drugs, thanks Nancy Regan, and not listen to our music backwards, because that’s where all of Satan’s messages were. Billy attacks Lynn, and while holding her at knife point, a security guard walks in. How does the guard save Lynn? Well, like all good heroes, he RUNS. THE FUCK. AWAY. To which Billy chases after him, thus saving Lynn. And… that’s it…

    We immediately jump cut to two years later, at a party where it’s announced that Billy’s old band is getting back together, with Lynn as the lead singer, and they are about to go on tour playing Billy’s songs, and by the way, Billy was found guilty of murder, executed, though he claimed he was innocent. Who knew the justice system worked so fast in 1984?

    There is some amazing stuff happening in this party scene. For me, the most impressive is that at the party there is a dude in a monster mask who is dancing, then starts doing some mime work, and ends with breakdancing. I had forgotten, as I am sure you had too, that breakdancing mimes were all the rage in the 80’s. It was Morning in America for spinning on your back.

    All is not well at the party, because when Lynn goes looking for her manager, Chris, she ends up in a very dimly lit attic where she is surprised by no other than Billy! Lynn gets away, and Chris, being the responsible type, sends her and her friends to a mountain cabin to relax before the big show.

    As I am sure you guessed, Billy follows them to the cabin, kills one friend in the jacuzzi, and then terrorizes Lynn as she gets out of the bath. Again, this was made of teenage boys.

    Enough of that, Chris sends everyone back to LA to get ready for the concert. Lynn can’t let go about Billy for some strange reason, and proceeds to dig up Billy’s grave to only find a very last minute cartoonish prop of a skeleton in the coffin. I’m sorry, I mean Billy’s body. Problem solved, right? Billy is dead and Lynn’s crazy! Let go play that concert of Billy’s songs!

    Not so fast! Billy is ready for Lynn, because what else does he have to do that week. Billy kidnaps Lynn before the show, and he launches into a monologue where we find out that Billy is actually Johnny; Billy’s homicidal twin brother!

    This sets up one very bizarre climax. Billy/Johnny goes on stage in a mask and sings his old songs, which the band all seems fine with. Especially when Billy/Johnny starts killing the Go-Go dancers on stage. Billy/Johnny pulls out Lynn to sing “Rainbow Eyes,” and at the conclusion of the song, Billy/Johnny is unmasked to everyone’s shock and horror. Except for the drummer, who is like, “Fuck it, play the next song.” And everyone complies.

    I don’t want to ruin the true ending of the movie, but it does leave you with the question of; Does Billy/Johnny die, or does he survive? (May the debate begin…)

    As horror movies go, this one is pretty poor. Acting isn’t great, plot has a bunch of holes, and there are lots of lens flares. More than Star Trek. Now, I do recommend this movie because the songs in it are actually fun. I didn’t say good, I said fun. You’ll be asking yourself, “Do I have rainbow eyes?” and “Is there a killer on the loose?” The songs were written by the band Sorcery, whose members play the band in the movie. So, there actually a slight bit of LA music scene connection to this flick.

    Over all, Rocktober Blood touches on all the right beats of slasher movies from the early 80’s and for my money, is 100% video store gold. It would be best enjoyed with a two liter of Pepsi and some stovetop popcorn while sitting on the couch with the living room’s lights off.

    Enjoy!