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"OT Potpourri": Willis, Pacino Slumming; Falk and Cassavetes as Gangsters; The Hunting Party; Navajo Joe

posted 4 years ago by ecarle (14979)
27 replies | jump to latest

I'm a bit disappointed in streaming services.

They seem overloaded with "straight to video" movies starring nobodies or has beens (I don't mean to be mean with that phrase but these movies make them SEEM like has beens, even if they have a name) and I'm surprised by how few major titles circulate. (Since I left cable, I also left HBO which had a huge film library to access.)

This: its been a week or two since we lost Sean Connery and I suppose one reason we honored him so is that he became, remained and left as a "true" star. Meanwhile, here's Bruce Willis on streaming in a parade of "straight to streaming" movies that evidently pay him big bucks to play short parts in movies with bad, derivative scripts. I'm sure this is keeping him in the style to which he is accustomed but -- his "bona fide movie star" credentials are fading fast. Oh well -- he's got Die Hard and Pulp Fiction on his resume . They can't take that away from him.

"Struggling a little better" Al Pacino. I sampled his TV series "Hunters" on Prime. Great opening scene. 1977, an outdoor pool party in a DC suburb among DC bureaucrats. Except the good ol' boy host is recognized as an ex-Nazi by one of the guests. He promptly shoots his guests -- and the American wife who doesn't know his past, and the American kids he sired. (The bad guy is Dylan Baker...a weak faced weasel of a great villain.) He reveals to his fellow ex-Nazis that he always hated that American family he made.

Cut to: a "Magnificent Seven" group of Nazi hunters(led by Old Man Pacino), out to find and kill old Nazis and their young Nazi offspring in America. I sampled a few episodes and then I went straight to the end, which has a coupla lollapalooza "twists."

Here's the problem(NO SPOILER) Near the end, the young "new hunter" has his gun trained on a murderous Nazi and is about to shoot, and an FBI agent arrives, points her gun at him and..cliché city:

FBI woman: Don't do it. If you kill him you can never go back. I know its what you want to do, but let the authorities handle this. If you kill him..you are no better than he is."

Let's see that's one, two, three four five...absolute clichés.

As one critic wrote of Hunters: "It shows that Peak TV may be over." Indeed. That's CBS weekly episode dramatology, paint-by-the-numbers dialogue. We've heard it a million times.

I can't believe Pacino agreed to act in such a poor script. Paying the bills like Bruce, I guess. But Pacino acts well, Dylan Baker is suitably evil and Lena Olin(a 90's crush, still beautiful and my near- age peer) is a sexy evil Lady Nazi, too. Plus Carol Kane(Pacino's Dog Day Afternoon star) and Saul Rubinek(the Unforgiven toady writer) as an old couple of Nazi hunters. Its the same old story: there are more good actors in Hollywood than good writers.

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The better streaming stuff was "well aged." From the 60s and 70s. I missed it then, I've seen it now and...hmmm:

Machine Gun McCain. In 1970, John Cassavetes got his pals Peter Falk and Ben Gazzara to play "Husbands" with him in one of his arty improv movies. In 1976, Falk and Cassavetes were "Mickey and Nicky" in an Elaine May movie.

But here they are -- Peter and John -- paired up in a "spaghetti Gangster movie" called "Machine Gun McCain." Its listed as a 1969 release but it came out in 1970 in the US. And that's of big interest: here is Peter Falk, mean and tough and merciliess as a modern gangster JUST ONE YEAR away from becoming the endearing Columbo. (He'd done a couple of TV movies as Columbo, but the series hadn't' happened yet.)

"Machine Gun McCain" impresses with location work bouncing from SF to LA to Vegas to New York. Its the "Topaz" of gangster movies("Topaz" was always jumping from city to city, nation to nation.) Cassavetes and Falk are joined by the very sexy Britt Ekland(a bit before her REALLY sexy turn in Get Carter); and Cassavetes always lovely wife Gena Rowlands, and that handsome older Italian actor who was Bond's Mafia papa-in-law in On Her Majesty's Secret Service and the rich railroad baron in Once Upon a Time in the West. Its a good cast, and the caper within is like a very low tech version of the Clooney Ocean's Eleven. Cassavetes plays yet another variation on the same theme: he's released from prison after 12 years -- and immediately plots his next caper.

"Machine Gun McCain" as a spaghetti gangster movie has the same weaknesses as spaghetti Westerns, in my book: dubbed voices, sentences that are too short to properly convey plot information, and a tendency to fall apart just when big action is needed(low budget equals non existent action). Still, its Cassavetes and Falk and Ekland and Rowlands "back in the day." Me..I never hoid of it.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

The Hunting Party. Poor Gene Hackman. In 1971, the year he made The French Connection and won Best Actor and became a big star...he also made The Hunting Party...which opens with Hackman's rich sadistic husband suffering impotence with his wife Candice Bergen and physically beating her as he tries to "make it." Its a British attempt at a Spaghetti Western with several American actors and yes...Gene Hackman is "Bob Rusk on the range." Later in the film , Gene takes an Asian hooker into his private railroad car and...goes to work with candle flames on her body.

I've always pegged 1971-1972 as a warped period in movies. All those rapes. All those beatings. And in big studio releases from major directors. Well, to Straw Dogs, A Clockwork Orange, Dirty Harry, Frenzy, and Deliverance I must now add: The Hunting Party.

Poor Candice Bergen. I understand that to start her career she had to play a few "sex roles"(in Harold Robbins movies and the like) but here, the message is: a pretty woman in the Old West was a rape target, 24/7. Candy's husband Hackman rapes her "bad"(sadistic.) Outlaw Oliver Reed rapes her "good"(loving -- see Straw Dogs.) Candy falls in love with Oliver, but others of his gang keep trying to rape her whenever Oliver's back is turned (see also: The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing.) I sympathize with Barbra Streisand's request for a screening of Deliverance in her home: "Very good -- finally, I want to see a movie where a man is raped."

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

But rape isn't the "main event" in The Hunting Party. Since Reed and his gang accidentally kidnapped the rich Hackman's wife(they thought she was just a teacher), Hackman converts his hunting party out to kill buffalo into a hunting party out to kill all of Oliver Reed's gang. And Oliver. And maybe, Candice Bergen. Bloody sniper killings ensue("No rifle can shoot that far," whines one outlaw. Wanna bet?) Of interest, among the "hunting party" on Hackman's side is none other than the Psycho Psychiatrist himself, Simon Oakland, with his gigantic tan face and his bombastic nature. Its 11 years after Psycho and Oakland is still working, even in THIS. Good for him. (TV series work laid ahead -- Baa Baa Black Sheep, I think, and The Night Stalker.)

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I found Burt Reynolds "seminal spaghetti Western" - Navajo Joe. Burt used to make fun of it, but now QT reveres it. And boy is it "homaged" in modern films. Music from the movie is in "Kill Bill" and "Election." The poster from it is used -- with Leo DiCaprio's face -- in "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood." Aw, hell, I posted on all of this at the Navajo Joe Board. Like a good boy.

I dunno...I still think that "major movies" have to be found somewhere else than streaming, but I doubt I would have seen Machine Gun McCain, The Hunting Party and Navajo Joe in any other accessible venue.

As for Bruce Willis: I hope he likes the money, because he isn't a star anymore.

As for Al Pacino: . His series is awful but you still got it, Big Al. A pleasure to watch him, at least.

[–] christomacin (4655) 4 years ago

The Last House on the Left also from 1972. You can't get much rapey-er than that. One of the killers even references A Clockwork Orange by vocalizing "Singing in the Rain"

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

The Last House on the Left also from 1972. You can't get much rapey-er than that. One of the killers even references A Clockwork Orange by vocalizing "Singing in the Rain"

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I read somewhere that Malcolm McDowall (star of ACO) ran into Gene Kelly at Hollywood party ...and Kelly just stomped away. Understandable -- also the story is perhaps "too good to be true." It truly IS rather a desecration of perhaps the happiest movie song in history.

But that's what 1971-72 was about "at the movies."

I've read about -- but not seen -- Last House on the Left. I doubt that I ever will. Certainly there were a lot of "sub B" movies that went all in on sex and violence once the R and X came in (late 1968/1969.)

I suppose what's uh, "interesting" about that 1971-72 crop was how many "distinguished auteur directors" went in for it: Kubrick, Old Man Hitchcock, Peckinpah, John Boorman. Its like each one of them not only felt that the HAD to use the R/X ratings, but felt that he could make some sort of artistic statement. The critics of the time -- a sleazy lot, ha -- certainly welcomed ACO, Frenzy, Deliverance and Straw Dogs, even given some dissents.

I also figure that, as the 70's marched on towards the 80's and movies like Jaws, Star Wars and Superman hit really big -- studio "taste" for rapey films diminished. These movies were hits, and got ink...but they weren't blockbusters, kids weren't allowed, and women (I think) started rebelling against seeing them.

Also interesting(to me): versus the more blatant and graphic scenes in movies like ACO, Hitchcock in Frenzy used his technique to "compartmentalize" the rape in Frenzy, in his usual montage style -- much of it is a camera on the woman's face, saying a prayer, in a scene of, dare I say it -- taste? And then the strangling went on longer than in the Hays Code days, but still with Psycho-style montage. This stylization added a heartbreaking quality to Hitchcock's scene...it is not prurient.

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

and a tendency to fall apart just when big action is needed(low budget equals non existent action).

This is how things seem to work with a lot of Netflix-branded, vaguely sci-fi films, to the point where I've basically given up watching them. Often there's a big opening scene of alien invasion/zombie apocalypse/epic disaster with lots of sfx then the whole rest of the film is stuck in an apartment/bunker/cabin in the woods/featureless wasteland. On a slightly higher budget level are things like the OK-ish The Old Guard starring Charlize Theron where superwarrior immortals hop like Bond/Bourne/the MI-team from one location to another but always in this case to "just outside Paris" or "somewhere on Long Island".

Even more shocking, just how total the shutdown of movies worldwide has been. Until the US and Europe get their virus situations under control, Hollywood is cancelling blockbusters worldwide (cinemas are open near me and there's 'nothing to see'). People have been referring to Wonder Woman 1984 as 'the last blockbuster standing' since it's the only one left to have kept its Xmas/December release date, but surely that can't last given the current US and European covid trajectories. So that's it: 2020 commercial film cancelled.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

and a tendency to fall apart just when big action is needed(low budget equals non existent action).

This is how things seem to work with a lot of Netflix-branded, vaguely sci-fi films, to the point where I've basically given up watching them.

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I'm a couple of years into my streaming services -- "in the beginning" I was impressed by the films like the Coens "Buster Scraggs" and Scorsese's The Irishman there (both are my favorites of 2018 and 2019 -- Marty had to tie with QT, though.)

But for all those "big deal" Netflix films...so much of what appears on the scrolling screen is...well...junk. Poor Nick Cage and poor Bruce Willis are in a lot of it but -- I guess they are getting fabulously rich off of Netflix pay. (As is Al Pacino from Amazon for his grade-D Hunters series.)

Indeed, I've realized that what these streaming services REALLY are is -- super payday home for any number of stars who just can't be bothered with making "real" movies anymore, evidently. Adam Sandler started it. Then Will Smith. Then Sandra Bullock did one. And Julia Roberts took a series.

But those are the streaming movies with STARS. There are a lot of "movies" that star nobody at all. The "mystique" that came with "going out to the movies" is gone as well as the gusto and richness OF a movie.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Often there's a big opening scene of alien invasion/zombie apocalypse/epic disaster with lots of sfx then the whole rest of the film is stuck in an apartment/bunker/cabin in the woods/featureless wasteland. On a slightly higher budget level are things like the OK-ish The Old Guard starring Charlize Theron where superwarrior immortals hop like Bond/Bourne/the MI-team from one location to another but always in this case to "just outside Paris" or "somewhere on Long Island".

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Ha. I'm aware of the Theron film but I just haven't taken a look at it. With friends, I tried one with Ryan Reynolds(a good looking guy who seems a legit star to me now), and it had an opening car chase that was CGI city -- did Michael Bay do it? Still, just not my kind of movie and it didn't feel like a movie. A film "rigged" to open with big action and then shift to low budget tight spaces is..suspicious.

"Old guy blues": I recently popped "The Professionals" (1966) into the DVD player and wondered: could THIS be made today? It had some big stars(Burt Lancaster and Lee Marvin in the leads) and that helped, but it also had a great sense of LOCATION -- huge rocky butte vistas, deep canyons and wide deserts that were clearly filmed "on location" and looked it. It felt like a "real movie" and I fear its time is gone -- not so much the Western men on a mission plot, but just the, uh...professionalism of the whole project. "Buster Scraggs" captured some of this, but that's very very rare on Netflix.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Even more shocking, just how total the shutdown of movies worldwide has been.

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Of all the "pandemic stories" of the year...this looks to be the most historic business story. Certainly all stories have to lead with the threat of the disease itself, but it as if this is a mechanism by which our entire popular culture is being erased..for a year?

I have a young man in my circle who is watching US football games and yelling and clapping and doing all the things a sports fan does...but he can watch these games(however truncated in season, number of games and crowd-free presentation) on TV and "feel the same feeling" that he always has as a TV sports fan.

But movies? Very little "new" made it to TV (cable or streaming) this year, and movie theaters range from limited opening to totally closed. (In California the Governor has closed movie theaters in Los Angeles and San Francisco -- ground zero for mass release -- probably through the rest of 2020. He has also closed Disneyland through the end of the year.)

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Until the US and Europe get their virus situations under control, Hollywood is cancelling blockbusters worldwide (cinemas are open near me and there's 'nothing to see').

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Its a coin with two sides -- where theaters ARE open...nothing major in release(blockbuster OR Oscar bait.)

Actually, its a coin with THREE sides. Movies are starting to be MADE(like a new Jurassic World and a new Cruise MI) but...with no real hopes for when/how they will be shown.

I've noted that Clint Eastwood at 90 says he wants to make at least one more movie as an actor where he is the star. And he has the project. He should DO that -- it will make movie star history -- but I also say: make the damn movie NOW(while Clint's "young") and then put it in a vault until theaters are open to show it.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

People have been referring to Wonder Woman 1984 as 'the last blockbuster standing' since it's the only one left to have kept its Xmas/December release date, but surely that can't last given the current US and European covid trajectories.

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I think maybe Warner Bros/DC decided to promote Wonder Woman 1984 for as long as it could...ordinarily in 2020, this would have been ONE of the awaited blockbusters of the year(with its feminist roots and the quality of the first one)...but slowly the sexy lady became the ONLY blockbuster possibly to see.

The last I read(a week ago?) Warners is looking to put WW 84 in "some theaters for a short time" and then release it to HBO Max. That smells of defeat to me.

Meanwhile, other blockbusters are just being "held" -- Top Gun II and the new Bond(which is slowly becoming "the old Bond" that we keep hearing about) and Black Widow. Intriguing: Spielberg clearly seems to want his new West Side Story(potential Oscar bait in any year) "disappeared from discussion" until the movies come back for good. Steve has the clout to SHUT DOWN promotion of a film!

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So that's it: 2020 commercial film cancelled.

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An asterisk in film history. I am believing that if the Academy moves forward with an Oscar show(just to make the money off of it) they better skip 2020 as an "awardable year" and put on some other sort of show -- Oscar history clips, anyone, hosted by movie stars new and classic(Nicholson, Streep)?

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

And this: Hollywood has made many "apocalyptic" movies and TV series over the years -- from The Birds to Night of the Living Dead to The Omega Man to Soylent Green and on to The Walking Dead and I Am Legend, not to mention the on-point "Contagion" and "Outbreak." And Independence Day, Mars Attacks, Deep Impact, and Spielberg's War of The Worlds.

Well...that's kind of here now. But on a very manageable, workable, "liveable" basis. It ain't like the movies at all. And yet the one industry that IS under apocalyptic conditions, because of the nature of movie theaters themselves is..."the movies."

Ironic.

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

The last I read(a week ago?) Warners is looking to put WW 84 in "some theaters for a short time" and then release it to HBO Max. That smells of defeat to me.

Here's the deal:
https://variety.com/2020/film/news/wonder-woman-1984-hbo-max-release-1234804411/
In sum, in cinemas and HBO Max streaming (at no extra charge to subscribers - so not the Mu-Lan model Disney used) on Xmas day in the US, and opening on cinema screens where applicable internationally from Dec 16 (in Australia & NZ it's opening Dec 26).

[–] christomacin (4655) 4 years ago

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

"An asterisk in film history. I am believing that if the Academy moves forward with an Oscar show(just to make the money off of it) they better skip 2020 as an "awardable year" and put on some other sort of show -- Oscar history clips, anyone, hosted by movie stars new and classic(Nicholson, Streep)?"

They can have a "do over" "Deep Fake Oscars" show where Alfred Hitchcock (for Psycho), Stanley Kubrick, Peter O'Toole and Peter Sellers actually win the awards they should have gotten, and Al Pacino and Martin Scorsese win Oscars for the roles/films they SHOULD have gotten it for, not the ones they actually did.

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I'd watch THAT. A writer named Danny Peary put out a book years ago called "The Alternative Oscars" in which he named a Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Actress for each year. Sometimes Peary's choices "matched" the real choices -- he went for The Godfather and Marlon Brando as Don Corleone, just like in real life.

But more often than not, Peary went with what FELT right rather than what the Academy did. For 1960, he picked Psycho for Best Picture("What happens in The Apartment is compelling, but not nearly as compelling as what happens in Cabin One of the Bates Motel") and Anthony Perkins as Best Actor("Burt Lancaster's performance as Elmer Gantry was great, but there was one greater male performance in 1960")

As I recall, Peary chose Robert Walker as Best Actor of 1951 for Strangers on a Train.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Playing the "Oscar game" to get Hitchcock some justice is always a problem -- you run into reality(The Academy back then simply didn't respect thrillers) and competition(Psycho never would have won against Ben-Hur or West Side Story.)

But in 1960, Psycho was big enough, successful enough, and meaningful enough -- versus "beatable" competition(The smallish b/w The Apartment in the main) that it both could have and should have been nominated for far more Oscars than it was (four: Director, Supporting Actress, and the "easy" categories of black and white cinematography and black and white Art Direction.)

I think that Psycho should have won in these categories for 1960;

Best Picture
Best Actor(Perkins)
Best Actress(Leigh, moved up from Supporting)
Best Score(Bernard Herrmann)!!!!!
Best Film Editing(George Tomasini) (The SHOWER SCENE)
Best Black and White Art Direction (The HOUSE, inside and out.)
Best Adapted Screenplay(Joseph Stefano)

and these additional nominations:

Best Supporting Actor(Martin Balsam...though I could see the real winner, Peter Ustinov in Spartacus still beating him)
B/W Best Cinematography(maybe its a bit better and more gleaming in The Apartment.)

The other Hitchcock movie that I think could have and should have taken key Oscars is Rear Window

Best Picture
Best Director

over Elia Kazan for On the Waterfront, which is its own kind of "gritty actors classic" but nowhere near the craft and sophistication of Rear Window.

That's about it. Notorious was great, but wasn't going to win much in the year of Best Years of Our Lives and Its a Wonderful Life.

I agree with Francois Truffaut that North by Northwest was the best movie of 1959...but no way it could have beaten Ben-Hur...and it wasn't nominated for much of anything major.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I would like to add here that I read somewhere where the Academy is allowing for movies to qualify for the 2020 Oscars well into 2021 -- in a desperate attempt to "wait for enough nominees to have a show."

But what a mistake that would be. It would just taint the winners that much more for not being "real contenders."

Evidently, its all about money -- the Academy NEEDS TV income from the broadcast.

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

I'm a bit disappointed in streaming services.

[–] christomacin (4655) 4 years ago

Werner Herzog, Carl Weathers, and Nick Nolte were all good pieces of casting.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I'm a bit disappointed in streaming services.
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One streaming series that's got some buzz right now that has been mostly delightful so far is Disney's latest attempt to do right by Star Wars, The Mandalorian.

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Well, I have some decisions to make. I pretty much went with what my new TV was connected to -- and on advice of younger people in my "family circle" who set it all up.

I have Netflix(with the "you're late!" lunch scene in The Irishman cued up at all times); Hulu (where I find Frasier reruns very comforting right now for some reason); and Amazon Prime. Amazon Prime has proven the best for "floating in" some movies from the 60s and 70's that I like(if not love) -- mainly for the memories(Oklahoma Crude, Rancho Deluxe, How to Succeed in Business.)

There's also the issue of how these services "take things away" at whim. I was watching the DePalma documentary again last night because on the screen it said: "Last time available November 20" and it was November 20. Bye bye Brian! (What a director to follow -- he's made some of my favorite movies of all time, and some of my favorite movies to hate.)

There are financial decisions ahead on to whether or not I want to add HBO Max(I should, my beloved Sopranos is there along with a lot of movies) and Disney. Also NBC's Peacock channel is evidently grabbing NBC shows away from Netflix and Hulu -- so I have to pay for THAT, too? (Inexplicably, the NBC show Fraiser now comes with "CBS" stamped on the image. Huh?)

Somehow I feel that streaming is another "addiction" scam. Lucky for me I have all my favorite movies of all time on DVD -- until they fall apart. If I can't replace them-- I have my memories.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

One streaming series that's got some buzz right now that has been mostly delightful so far is Disney's latest attempt to do right by Star Wars, The Mandalorian. It's returned Star Wars to its space western roots and dug in deep with the main title character who's a lone gun-slinger, bounty-hunter, man-with-no-name.

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I do believe that you and I "split"(amiably) on my not being that much of a "SciFi fan." (Part of the problem is people like the late and always irritable writer Harlan Ellison, who despised people who CALLED it "SciFi." It was like I wasn't welcome in that world.)

My other problem traces back to 1966: Whereas I felt that The Men From UNCLE and the guys on The Wild Wild West "dressed cool" in their suits and ties and outfits, those guys on Star Trek all seemed to be wearing "Little boy V-neck pajama tops" of a type I couldn't STAND. (Not even as a little boy.) If SciFi dictated such silly wardrobes...out.

But if there is one fond memory I have of the original Star Wars -- the first movie in the first trilogy -- it was Harrison Ford as Han Solo, "the John Wayne of the stars" (whatever modern day pariah John Wayne may be in political circles he is an inviolate great star and template for others to follow ON SCREEN.)

I could RELATE to Ford's character, shooting that guy in the booth(who shot first?) and generally making fun of all the serious royalty/war games stuff around him.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

The main show-runner is Jon Favreau

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Who once joined me in print in saying "all these comic book movies are like all those Westerns back in the day" -- but we have debated that , here.

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and the show's quality control so far has been little short of amazing: looks great, casting throughout has been inspired, great writing and directing (including 2 stellar eps directed by Bryce Dallas Howard - connections may have helped get her these jobs but she's got some serious skills and may be bound for great things on this evidence). Consensus among fans is that it's easily the best live action Star Wars stuff since the Original Trilogy (only Rogue One is competition), and I agree with that assessment.

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Well, that's some high praise and..should I end up with Disney ..I'll give it a go.

Am I correct about this? --- If you don't watch these series on streaming, there's no other way to get them? You can't "wait for the DVD?" -- because they are never MADE into DVDS? (I'm assuming this is why I can currently only watch The Irishman and Buster Scruggs on Netlfix itself.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Werner Herzog, Carl Weathers, and Nick Nolte were all good pieces of casting.

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On the Mandolorian?

Me and Nick Nolte go way back. As I've mentioned before, I think Nolte (in 1976's Rich Man, Poor Man) and Harrison Ford(in Star Wars) got star careers their co-stars did NOT get because each of them played "tough guys" -- and that's who we want to watch at the movies. "North Dallas Forty" remains Nolte's best film, IMHO, and here he is all these decades later -- bearish and blotchy but still there.

Carl Weathers is a great link to another time, too.

I've read of Herzog as a director but..he acts , too? Was he the bad guy in "Jack Reacher"? The one who demanded that a lesser baddie chew off his own fingers or get shot? (The guy picked getting shot.)

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

On the Nolte on Mandalorian: he's just the voice of a (not-cgi, guy-in-makeup & costume) creature, but he's good and his story arc is good too.

Yes, Herzog is the bad guy in Jack Reacher... he more or less reprises that character on Mandalorian.

Weathers directed the latest ep. too....and it was just OK (He's no Bryce Dallas Howard or Favreau or Deborah Chow or Taika Waititi, who've been the standout directors so far). His acting's been great tho' and he vibes well with our memories of Lando from the original movies. Unfortunately, the ep. he directed was plotty in a bad way as far as I'm concerned. It started to draw lot of connections to the wider Star Wars universe and its 'Rise & Fall of Empire' storylines. I'm very sick of all that stuff, and have found The Mandalorian's focus on small stakes affairs on western-inspired 'outer rim worlds' (much like the original movie's Tatooine) over the first dozen eps to have been very refreshing by comparison. I fear now that the stuff I really like is starting to come to an end.

As for watching The Mandalorian without Disney.... illicit copies of eps are, ahem, pretty widely available. online. I agree that the multiplicity of subscription services and their charges is getting out of hand. I suspect that almost nobody pays for all the services they want - there's a lot of password-sharing going on (e.g., you get Netflix, your buddy gets Amazon Prime and then you trade passwords), and a lot of free-trial-period stuff (I got the fairly useless Apple TV+ for free for a year after buying a new iPad; but it at least had Tom Hanks's fun WW2 submarine warfare movie Greyhound on it!) and a lot of illicit file-downloading fills gaps for people.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

(including 2 stellar eps directed by Bryce Dallas Howard - connections may have helped get her these jobs but she's got some serious skills and may be bound for great things on this evidence).

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I've never much minded Hollywood nepotism. First of all because nepotism is everywhere(and sometimes a way for folks to get a fair shake), and second because Hollywood remains such a tough place to get and keep work that a lot of Hollywood children and siblings DON'T make it for the few who DO make it.

Anybody remember Sean Connery's real-life brother in "Operation Kid Brother?" Or Raquel Welch's daughter and Tyrone Power's son together in "Cocoon"?

And it can be tough for siblings. Of Lloyd Bridges two sons, Beau Bridges got a star career first("The Landlord") and a few more years of it, but then Jeff came along and eclipsed both his father and his brother. As a star, just the way it is in terms of a audience taste and career luck. (Beau currently specializes in soft-voiced villains in streaming shows like that one about Sissy Spacek's family in Florida and that Billy Bob Thornton lawyer show. I watched both.)

Bryce Dallas Howard turned the pleasant looks of her two red-haired parents into something a bit more gorgeous and distinctive, and got herself a franchise(Jurassic World) -- and now turns out to have dad's directorial chops(maybe BETTER than dad's directorial chops?)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Meanwhile, Ron Howard seems to have the most blessed career in Hollywood. Child star(Opie and The Music Man.) Then a teenage lull(I had a friend in LA who went to high school with Howard and said he played basketball and got taunted "Hey, Opie!" all through the game). Then the break of American Graffiti and THEN the break of Happy Days(Howard had made this pilot BEFORE American Graffiti and it got picked up once Graffiti hit big.) I'll add in what I believe was his final film performance of any consequence -- as John Wayne's young charge in "The Shootist."

Ron Howard is mildly irritating in The Shootist...he had just about worn out his too-wholesome welcome, and his attempts to "toughen up" in this Western were unconvincing. Plus he was getting bald and not in a good way (shape of head can be an issue for an actor).

So Ron made the movie to directing -- and pulled it off. A comedy called Night Shift starring his Happy Days pal Henry Winkler...getting the movie stolen by new guy Michael Keaton. And then Splash -- which helped launch Tom Hanks(who would work for Howard again in Apollo 13.)

I don't have Ron Howard's filmography here, but I do recall noticing that he kept getting bigger budgets and bigger stars and then became something very weird: a big budget "major director" with no real auteuristic qualities. This "lifelong Hollywood kid" had become a mainstream Hollywood director of no discernible specialness...just a good assembly line director.

And producer. And mini-studio owner.

Which is where Psycho comes in. The 1998 Van Sant one. That ONLY got made because Ron Howard and his partner Brian Grazer(via their company, "Imagine Films") wanted to work with Van Sant after Good Will Hunting(and Van Sant's Oscar nom) and Van Sant requested the Psycho remake as a gesture of good faith. "Imagine Films" was big on the Universal lot -- so they got it done. Ron Howard's father, Lance, plays Mr. Lowery. Ron Howard's friend, Rita Wilson(wife of Tom Hanks) plays Caroline.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Hollywood mogul Peter Bart had an amusing comment about the "power team" of Ron Howard and Brian Grazier -- that for all their power, they were two polite and boring young men with "the personalities of Walmart managers."

And yet, they thrived in dog-eat-dog Hollywood.

And thus...Bryce Dallas Howard (that middle name is the city of her conception, daddy was a bit naughty in naming her.) The next generation with a good bet to follow her father's uncanny luck...with talent?

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

As for watching The Mandalorian without Disney.... illicit copies of eps are, ahem, pretty widely available. online.

--

Hmmm...well I know that music went that way. I'm a fairly low tech, circumspect fellow but -- I'm just not sure I want to financially commit to ALL of these streaming services.

When you think about it, the procurement of filmed entertainment has become more pricey over the decades. It used to be you went and saw a movie for a few dollars and you watched broadcast TV shows for free. Then came VHS rentals and HBO. Then came the broadening of cable. Now ALL these streaming choices, and if you don't subscribe, you can't see certain shows.

I'm standing by Netflix because that's how I got to "keep" The Irishman after seeing it once at the theater, and that's how I got "Buster Scruggs" without seeing it in a theater. Right now, Sorkin's Chicago 7 movie on Netflix is the one that feels like a major film -- and wonderfully funny and entertaining (which rather betrays the trial itself, but hey...hindsight of tragedy is comedy.)

Amazon Prime is competive with "old" movies.

Hulu...I dunno. A few movies. A few sitcoms. SNLs going back through time(one can see that the first five years had a lot of dud sketches, but it was all new and young and different and those first cast members were real stars, some of them.)

Evidently, if and when Martin Scorsese makes that "Native American murders" movie with Leo and DeNiro, I'll subscribe to Apple TV to see it(Scorsese took that deal because the movie's gonna cost 200 million to make.) And I guess that's the only place I can see that Tom Hanks Navy movie now (evidently nowhere else -- I tell you, streaming is training me to just FORGET about a lot of movies I otherwise would have seen.)

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

It used to be you went and saw a movie for a few dollars and you watched broadcast TV shows for free. Then came VHS rentals and HBO. Then came the broadening of cable. Now ALL these streaming choices, and if you don't subscribe, you can't see certain shows.

Right, it's starting to feel *hard* and expensive to see or even *hear about* all the films and tv stuff you might naturally be attracted to. The arrangement up to about 2010 was that you'd have one shot to see a lot of what you'd like at both mainstream and arthouse cinemas and then within a year or so you'd get a second shot at reasonable prices from your local video store - box sets of popular or important TV series were widely available for rent and and often for cheap sale. Now that's all gone, and it's like we're all having to pay up front to have our own private video stores which (as you'd expect) is costing too much and is also labor intensive to set-up and maintain. Grrr. It's bizarre in a way just how much mental space and finally money it takes to to keep track of and actually see the latest stuff from a bunch of favorites, say Fincher, Scorsese, Hanks, etc.. In my case there's a 14 hour doc. series by Mark Cousins called 'Women Make Film' that I'd like to see. I think it's on TCM in the US and something called Rialto down under. So that's yet another subscription cost? I'd really like a local vid. store to keep track of all this for me and allow me to rent it sometime soon at reasonable cost...

And as I've mentioned before some of the 'nice and free' things that have been the spoonfuls of sugar or shining baubles of the new streaming medium ecosystem - Youtube, Spotify, etc. - are getting more and more unpleasantly ad-encrusted.