Categories
Back Seat Box Office Shows

Back Seat Box Office #78

Picks:

Andrew

  1. 21 Jump Street (Red Band)
  2. The Lorax
  3. John Carter [of Mars]
  4. Project X
  5. Act of Valor

Jonathan

  1. 21 Jump Street
  2. The Lorax
  3. John Carter [of Mars]
  4. Project X
  5. Silent House

Tony

  1. 21 Jump Street
  2. The Lorax
  3. John Carter [of Mars]
  4. Project X
  5. Act of Valor

Lena

  1. 21 Jump Street
  2. The Lorax
  3. John Carter [of Mars]
  4. Project X
  5. Act of Valor

Tim

  1. 21 Jump Street
  2. The Lorax
  3. John Carter [of Mars]
  4. Project X
  5. Act of Valor

There are no other new releases.

Don’t forget, if you get the chance, wish Julie @Juliemast  a happy birthday, tomorrow, March 17!

Categories
Back Seat Box Office BSBO Results Shows

Back Seat Box Office #77 Results and Voice Mail

A big welcome back to Tim and Rich.

Congrats to Tim, Andrew and Uriah for hitting 25 this week.

Thanks to Tad and Art for their voicemail contributions

Categories
Back Seat Quickies Shows

Back Seat Quickies #37: Good For Nothing

GOOD FOR NOTHING is an adventurous romp set in the sweeping Old West from Mike Wallis in his directorial debut. Inspired by the Spaghetti Westerns and celebrating the Western genre with an interesting twist, the film follows an odd romance and the resulting emotional confusion of an outlaw who reluctantly develops strong feelings for a woman he has kidnapped. Yet when the outlaw (Cohen Holloway) tries to force himself on the young and beautiful Isabella Montgomery (Inge Rademeyer), he finds himself unable to ‘get it up’ due to a surprising bout of performance anxiety.

Unable to understand the reason for his erectile dysfunction, the outlaw goes on a quest to find a solution for his problem with the kidnapped Isabella in tow. He tries various means to cure his ailment – including tracking down fancy doctors and sage medicine men – all in an attempt to fix his problem and finally having his way with Isabella. But the pair are pursued by an unpredictable posse who are set on killing both the outlaw and Isabella, who they have mistaken for a whore and accomplice to the outlaw.

 

For more information about the film, check out:

http://www.goodfornothingmovie.com/

In the seat on the back of a horse:

  • Tony

This episode was recorded 3/12/2012.

Categories
Back Seat Producers Season 07 Shows

BSP Episode 220: Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid

5th in this series of four Modern Black & White movies (Yep, 5th!)

Release date:               5/21/82

Universal Pictures

 

Directed by

Carl Reiner

Written by

Carl Reiner

George Gipe

Steve Martin

Produced by

Carl Reiner

Richard McWhorter

David V. Picker

 

Cast

Steve Martin               Rigby Reardon

Rachel Ward               Juliet Forrest

 

This movie was chosen specifically because it’s a comedy, a parody, a satire, and it uses the movies from the 1940s and 1950s interspersed with the modern actors and dialogue.

Initial comments by the hosts:

Tony thought that this movie was the perfect capper to the last month of movies that they’d been watching.  Tony, who isn’t a fan of voiceovers, thought that they were hysterical in this movie.  Darrell agreed in that it was a “relief” after the four more downer-themed movies and it spotlighted and made fun of the tropes that they’d been looking at in the last four movies.  He also compared watching it now to when he saw it when it came out in 1982.  He didn’t have a lot of knowledge about film noir then, so it was simply a comedy film at that time, and not necessarily a successful comedy. Now, having a stronger base comprehension of noir, he could much more appreciate how funny the movie was.  Sam questioned how did that film, relying so heavily on the audience having a noir background, not make it an automatically successful movie?

This brought the discussion back to who this movie is for?  It was a movie that poked fun of movies made 30-40 years earlier, so the audience would need to have a touch point to those older films.  This would be the equivalent to making a movie today that makes fun of movies from the 80s.  Sam brought up Hot Tub Time Machine as such a movie in that filmgoers would need to have some kind of a memory of movies and culture from the 1980s to understand Hot Tub Time Machine.

At this point the discussion turned to the idea that one needs to have particular cultural references to enjoy certain films. Sam stated that American Pie is not going to make sense in 20 years.  Tony disagreed, but Sam thought that technology would advance enough and social interaction will have changed enough that the perils of American Pie simply will not be relevant.  Please feel free to insert your own personal “pie” thoughts and jokes here.  Tony used Animal House as his comparison, and Lena (from the chat room) argued that if Sam’s American Pie argument held up, no one would ever watch Porky’s again.

Sam brought up the fact that everyone probably has a movie or two that, as you watch it again and again over the years, delivers something new each time.  His examples were Blade Runner and Ghostbusters.  Lena also brought up Tootsie and Airplane as her examples of movies that changed/evolved as she’s seen them again over the years.

Other movies that rely on cultural references?  Darrell brought up It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and Sam brought up South Pacific and Rent.  Tony mentions North by Northwest as a movie that can’t be remade for modern audiences due to technological or social advancements, stating that a simple phone call clears up the whole problem, but things are too far gone by the time they get to that point.

Some of the hosts’ favorite quotes from Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid:

Jimmie Sue’s father: Don’t go near my daughter again. Don’t try to see her. Don’t write her and don’t phone her.
Rigby Reardon: Can I use her underwear to make soup?

 

Juliet Forrest: But what does “FOC” mean?
Rigby Reardon: It’s a slang word. It’s when a man and a woman are in love, the man puts his…
Juliet Forrest: No, no. It’s written here: “F. O. C.”

 

Rigby Reardon: My plan was to kiss her with every lip on my face.

 

Rigby Reardon: I hadn’t seen a body put together like that since I’d solved the case of the Murdered Girl with the Big Tits

 

Cary Grant: You don’t smoke, do you?
Rigby Reardon: No, I have tuberculosis.
Cary Grant: Oh, thank heaven for that.

 

Performers who appear in this film in footage from earlier classic movies include: Edward Arnold, Ingrid Bergman, Humphrey Bogart, Wally Brown, James Cagney, William Conrad, Jeff Corey, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Brian Donlevy, Kirk Douglas, Ava Gardner, Cary Grant, Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake, Charles Laughton, Fred MacMurray, Charles McGraw, Ray Milland, Edmond O’Brien, Vincent Price, Barbara Stanwyck and Lana Turner.

Steve Martin suggested using footage of William Hartnell, Red Skelton, Jerry Lewis, Jack Benny, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.  But Carl Reiner refused, believing it would be funnier if they used footage of actors who spent their careers away from comedies.

Your Producers for this episode were:

  • Tony
  • Darrell
  • Sam

This episode was recorded: 2/29/2012

Categories
Announcement

Theatrical Review: John Carter

Edgar Rice Burroughs’ most famous creation is undoubtedly the lord of the jungle, Tarzan.  Mr. Burroughs has also taken us to lands where dinosaurs still run free, the Earth’s core and to planets near to us, both Venus and Mars.  Burroughs’ trips to Mars were always my very favorite, and his heroic creation, John Carter, was, to me anyway, one of the greatest creations in literature.  I grew up reading first the comic book adventures of John Carter in the pages of DC Comics’ Weird Worlds where writer Marv Wolfman and artists Murphy Anderson and later Sal Amendola chronicled the adventures of the good captain, loosely based around Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars.  Of course the actual book came next and I was in love with the character and the fantastic world of Barsoom (that’s what the Mars inhabitants call their world) all over again.

So yeah, I guess you can say I’m a big fan and so I was very much looking forward to it when Disney announced a big-budget live-action film version which was going to be more spearheaded by some of the Pixar kids more than on the Disney side.  Pixar’s own Andrew Stanton is the director of John Carter making his live action directorial debut after directing such films as Wall•E and Finding Nemo and he’s obviously a big fan as well, he definitely gets it and has made a film that I thought was quite an enjoyable experience.  Sometimes you wonder though if Disney marketing would’ve let him take it as far he did.

See, originally, this was announced under the title of John Carter of Mars and then it was simply titled John Carter as, from what I understand, a result of focus group testing in which a full 50% of the people tested said that they would not go to see the movie if the “of Mars” was in the title.  Oh yeah, there’s scantily clad people running around in battles with swords, there’s airships flying about, there’s a guy who can leap great distances, and let’s not forget the 10-foot tall four-armed green men and women as well… and the “of Mars” would keep them out of the theatres…. You hear about things like this and you sometimes just have to wonder why they even bother.

But no matter… as I said, I thought John Carter was a pretty enjoyable ride.  The basic premise is this: Carter, a former confederate cavalry captain is in America’s west after the end of the Civil War.  He’s about to be conscripted in with the United States cavalry (against his will) and goes on the run.  As he’s on the run, Carter goes into a mysterious cave which he soon finds to be a doorway to the planet Mars.  Once on Mars, or as their inhabitants call it Barsoom, Carter finds that his strength is much greater on the planet, he meets up with the race of 10-foot tall four-armed green people known as Tharks (their leader, Tars Tarkas takes great personal interest in Carter) and soon gets caught up in the struggle between warring City-States of Zodanga and Helium.  Helium’s princess, the ravishing Dejah Thoris, persuades Carter to help her in Helium’s battle with their enemy all the while a greater threat looms.

Now that’s the basic premise, though there’s much more to it than that, but generally speaking, this is extremely pulpy material and there’s nothing wrong with that at all.  During the credits, it will say “Based on ‘A Princess of Mars” where it should actually say “loosely”– again, nothing wrong with that as long as the basic spirit of the piece is preserved, but I just bring that up in case anyone decides that they want to read the book later- well, parts of it will be in the movie.  Fortunately, the spirit is well preserved here and there’s quite a bit that Stanton and company get dead solid perfect in this, but also a few stumbling blocks as well.

The biggest stumbling block is that I think they try to do too much in just this one film and overcomplicate things a bit.  I mentioned above about a greater threat looming- well that threat is certainly true to the books, but doesn’t come along until a little bit later in the series.  What they’ve done here is basically push this into being more of an epic than it has to be, whereas there’s enough basic material in A Princess of Mars to more than make for a good rousing adventure and have the chance to breath a bit when it needs to.

The other thing that bothers me a bit, though I don’t think this will really deter from anyone’s enjoyment of the film, is the relationship set-up between Dejah Thoris and John Carter.  It starts as adversarial when there’s really no need to do so.  Yes, they want to make Dejah Thoris more than just this object of desire, and that’s certainly fine, but I don’t necessarily think you have to go at it with both characters sorta sniping at each other from the start.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s not unbearable and it’s not all pervasive, it’s just a little different from what I’m used to seeing with these characters and thus I question whether it should even be in there.  It’s a moot observation.

When they get stuff right here though, they really get it right.  Carter’s first experiences on Mars, adjusting to the Martian gravity and then coming into contact with the Tharks was just so pleasing to see.  The entire art direction and design should please anyone who’s seen any other visual version of Carter and company in the past.  Carter’s epic battle with one of the White Apes of Mars, is genuinely thrilling and casting through the whole film is right on the money.

Taylor Kitsch plays John Carter and Lynn Collins plays Dejah Thoris.  Both have worked together before on the first Wolverine movie and their casting for this film was announced shortly after that movie came out.  Kitsch wouldn’t have been my first choice for this part (I would’ve cast Lost’s Josh Holloway as the good captain), as he seems a little too on the younger side, but once things get going, you can tell that Kitsch is having a ball with the whole thing.  He may not be my own personal first choice, but still he was a good choice to play the part.  Lynn Collins has moments where she’s just the purest of visions to what I expect Dejah Thoris to look like in live action  To me, that just might be the toughest thing about casting that part- getting an actress who has those looks, can pull off the regality and isn’t a big enough name where her name overshadows everything else, Collins does the job.

Nice support all around, Willem Dafoe is going through the whole motion capture route to play Tars Tarkas of the Tharks, and there are some great moments between him and Carter at various times through the movie. If you know the series, then you know that the relationship that happens between these two is right up there to something like Riggs and Murtaugh from the Lethal Weapon series.  There are glimpses of it here (and there could’ve been more had this stuck more to the source) and it’s always cool when it happens. Ciarán Hinds plays Tardos Mors, the leader of Helium, Dominic West plays the villainous Sab Than of Zodanga, and Mark Strong plays Matai Shang (part of the looming threat I allude to above).  Joining Dafoe in the motion capture end you’ve got Samantha Morton as Sola (Tars’ daughter), Thomas Haden Church as Tal Hajus, a challenger to Tarkas’ leadership and Polly Walker as Sarkoja, a female Thark who absolutely delights in ratting out Sola whenever she can.  And adding even further, you’ve got the great Bryan Cranston in at the start as Colonel Powell, the cavalryman who’s trying to get Carter to join with him.  It’s a terrific supporting cast and my one lone complaint is just not enough Tars Tarkas…

Did I have a good time John Carter? Hell, yes… Was it at the same level as some other big action films like a Mission: Impossible- Ghost Protocol? (and I only use that as an example because it’s another action film from a director who’s best known for his work in animation)  Not quite… I guess I might be a little too close to the source material, but still, I do think it’s very much worth seeing and they certainly do get a lot right here, it’s just that the mix may be a little too filled with some unnecessary (for now) stuff for an introductory movie.  It is a great time and it sure as hell beats the Asylum/SyFy Channel version that stars Antonio Sobato Jr. as John Carter and Traci Lords as Dejah Thoris (though that is good for a laugh, but still, it’s so low budget that they couldn’t afford the four extra feet in height and two additional arms for their Tharks).

Categories
Back Seat Box Office Shows

Back Seat Box Office #77

Tony

  1. The Lorax
  2. John Carter [of Mars]
  3. Silent House
  4. Project X
  5. Act of Valor featuring real NAVY SEALS

Andrew

  1. The Lorax
  2. John Carter
  3. Project X
  4. Act of Valor
  5. Silent House

Jonathan

  1. The Lorax
  2. John Carter [of Mars]
  3. Project X
  4. Silent House
  5. Act of Valor

Lena

  1. The Lorax
  2. John Carter [of Mars]
  3. Silent House
  4. Project X
  5. Act of Valor

Also releasing this week is A Thousand Words.

Categories
Back Seat Box Office BSBO Results Shows

Back Seat Box Office #76 Results and Voice Mail

Thanks to Tad and Art for the voicemail this week.

 

Congrats to Tony and Lena for their 25s this week.

Categories
Back Seat Producers Season 07 Shows

BSP Episode 219: Good Night, and Good Luck

4th  in this series of four Modern Black & White movies

Release date:

10/7/05

Warner Independent Pictures

 

Directed by

George Clooney

Written by

George Clooney

Grant Heslov

Produced by

Grant Heslov

 

Cast:

David Strathairn

Edward R. Murrow

 

Initial comments by the hosts:

For an independent film, the hosts agreed that it didn’t have the look or the feel of an independent film.  Darrell liked the movie and thought it had a nice feel to it.  Even though it’s a serious subject, he thought that you could really sit back and enjoy the film.  Jill agreed and thought it was tight and finely crafted and had excellent acting and an interesting subject matter.  She liked that the story was confined and George Clooney didn’t try to make it a complete biography on Edward R. Murrow.  Tony agreed and thought they made some interesting choices on the stories that were about the people in the newsroom as side stories, but they weren’t necessarily directly tied to McCarthy or Murrow.  He thought it was a subtle way of bringing out those extra stories.

One of the underlying themes of the movie was how much CBS Corp. was so deeply in bed with all of its advertisers and in fear of trying to keep their advertisers to keep their programs on the air.  Darrell found it interesting how relevant the story still is.  How you can remove the word “communism” and replace it with “terrorists” and still have the same story today.  Also, the point still stands that news is driven by entertainment value and advertising dollars.  Jill liked the speech “bookends” of how the story was set up, how it kept your focus.  The hosts also liked the jazz singer, Jill likened her to the Greek chorus who explains the story but this also gave the viewer time to process the information you’d been given between the scenes.

In discussing acting, they all loved David Strathairn’s portrayal of Edward R. Murrow.  Darrell thought he had Murrow’s voice and mannerisms down cold.  They liked that every clip of Joseph McCarthy was the actual footage of McCarthy from that time.  Also, some of the video used in the monitors was actually Murrow, as well.  Darrell found Murrow to be a cold, unsympathetic man, but Jill disagreed and found that to be passion about doing the right thing and telling the truth.  She liked the use of facial expressions, silence, fading to black (to the point of making it uncomfortable for the viewers), to convey his conflicted emotions and his struggles.  Tony thought that as much as Murrow seemed aloof, he also seemed disconnected.  He didn’t seem to know a lot about the things happening directly around him because he was so focused on what he was doing.  The hosts also singled out the performances of Robert Downey, Jr. as Joe Wershba and Frank Langella as William Paley.

Jill believed they did a nice job at incorporating archival film footage into the movie and made it look seamless.  Tony learned, through this movie, some of the underhanded tactics that McCarthy used to get information.  He also gained a respect for journalism during that time.  Journalism today is completely different, the integrity is lost, and no one can (or would) do today what Murrow did then.

In discussing the use of actual McCarthy footage (instead of using an actor to portray him), Clooney said that 20% of the people who saw a test of the movie didn’t know who McCarthy was and wanted to know who was the actor portraying him.  Clooney also thought that no matter which actor played McCarthy, he would be played as a jerk.  Instead, if you’re watching the actual footage of McCarthy, you can see how some people could have understood and took his side.  Clooney wanted this movie to be a conversation starter.  It also shows the “other side” in which McCarthy had a good idea in that there was something to be afraid of with communists infiltrating the government, but he took it to a level of zealotry that became a problem.

As Jill mentioned this speech earlier in the podcast, the text of Edward R. Murrow’s speech bookending the movie was taken word-for-word from the actual keynote address he delivered to the 1958 RTNDA (Radio-Television News Directors Association) convention. The actual conclusion to the speech, after Murrow’s line about television, used strictly for entertainment rather than education, being nothing more than wires and lights in a box, went as follows: “There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference. This weapon of television could be useful. Stonewall Jackson, who knew something about the use of weapons, is reported to have said, ‘When war comes, you must draw the sword and throw away the scabbard.’ The trouble with television is that it is rusting in the scabbard during a battle for survival.”

The film was shot on color film on a grayscale set, then color-corrected in post.

The entire set was built on one floor. The elevator interior was built on a turntable, so it could be rotated to a new “floor” during unbroken shots.

The American Film Institute named Good Night, and Good Luck as one of the Top Ten Movies of 2005.

It was also nominated for six Oscars at the 2006 Academy Awards:  Best Picture, Best Director (George Clooney), Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role (David Strathairn), Best Original Screenplay, Best Art Direction, and Best Cinematography.

Your Producers for this episode were:

  • Tony
  • Darrell
  • Jill

This episode was recorded: 2/15/2012

Categories
Back Seat Box Office Shows

Back Seat Box Office #76

Picks:

Andrew

  1. The Lorax
  2. Project X (Red Band (NSFW))
  3. Act of Valor
  4. Journey 2: The Mysterious Island
  5. Tyler Perry’s Good Deeds

Jonathan

  1. The Lorax
  2. Project X
  3. Act of Valor
  4. Journey 2: The Mysterious Island
  5. Tyler Perry’s Good Deeds

Tony

  1. The Lorax
  2. Project X
  3. Act of Valor
  4. Safe House
  5. Tyler Perry’s Good Deeds

Lena

  1. The Lorax
  2. Project X
  3. Act of Valor
  4. Safe House
  5. Tyler Perry’s Good Deeds

B.D.

  1. The Lorax
  2. Project X
  3. Act of Valor
  4. Tyler Perry’s Good Deeds
  5. Journey 2: The Mysterious Island

William Pall

  1. The Lorax
  2. Project X
  3. Act of Valor
  4. Safe House
  5. Journey 2: The Mysterious Island

There are no other wide releases this week.

 

Rest in Peace, Kal-el Mast, 2000-2012