September 2005

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The Monday Movie Quiz #76

So last week's quiz was an easy one-- let's see how easy this is.

That's it for clues. (And because the film in question isn't on DVD yet, I can't even give you a better-looking picture.) Okay, one really esoteric hint: next Monday will be a significant birthday for the man who wrote the script, and anyone who's read this weblog over the years knows that he is one of yours truly's heroes.

So if you know the title of the movie, send me an email by late Sunday night. If you're correct, expect to see your name in next week's winners circle.

Posted by Steve Monaco at September 26, 2005 10:20 PM

 

Last week's Movie Quiz winners

I don't usually select movies for the quiz because of how bad its DVD is, but in the case of the current "deluxe" edition of A Hard Day's Night, I had to make an exception. What's been done to the entire Beatles catalog since the introduction of digital remastering is unforgivable-- the flat, tinny, awful CDs that came out in the nineties can't hold a candle to the sound of even the Capitol vinyl editions, let alone the original UK ones-- but the remixed soundtrack on this travesty is the worst yet. (Be sure to scroll down and read the spotlighted user review, which I think says it all.) Apparently, the one to get, put out by MPI a few years ago, is now discontinued but is easily found used.

Judging from the number of responses, I don't need to tell any of you anything about the film itself, and many of you identified Wilfrid Brambell by name, which pleased me. So without further ado, congratulations in monophonic sound to the following quiz winners: Wayne Palmer, Jen McCabe, David Beckey, Vincent Tuss, Dean Carlson, E. Yarber, Eric Olson, Hank Parmer, Steve Perry, Mark Gisleson, Kent Hofmeister and Lindsey Thomas. I'm not sure if we've ever had more winners for any movie (and to my meager credit, I tried to make it a little difficult). So thanks one and all.

Posted by Steve Monaco at September 26, 2005 8:45 PM

 

Last week's Movie Quiz winners

Filed under: Imported

In Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt, Fritz Lang, playing himself, states that the only thing CinemaScope is good for is filming funerals and snakes. Apparently, the one-eyed prick never saw one of Akira Kurosawa's Toho-Scope pictures, especially his 1958 classic, The Hidden Fortress. Even on the small screen, a place AK probably never imagined-- or wanted-- his films to be seen, the composition of every shot is a thing of beauty, and no one knew how to fill the screen while still advancing the story better than he did.

In the user comments for the film's imdb entry, one review is captioned "The director that [sic] could do no wrong," and other than the grammatical lapse, I agree wholeheartedly with the assessment. When this picture was released (1958), he had previously done The Seven Samurai and Throne of Blood, and was about to go on to Yojimbo and its sequel Sanjuro, as well as High and Low. In other words, it was the creative high point of his career, and it shows in every minute of this amazing film.

Above all else, The Hidden Fortress is cinematic entertainment of the highest order, as fun as a movie can possibly be. Everyone knows the story, since it was the "inspiration" (read: source material/plunder zone) for the first Star Wars, the saga of a warrior returning his princess to her throne with the help of a couple of squabbling lackeys. The similarity ends there, however: far from robotic, the two clowns here (played by Kurosawa favorites Minoru Chinaki and Kamatari Fujiwara) are as funny as any characters the director ever gave us, and Mifune's portrayal of the great samurai Rokurota Makabe is at once humorous and ultra-heroic, and nothing like that wimp Han Solo.

The Criterion DVD of the film is everything a fan could ask . . . almost. As quiz champeen Wayne Palmer correctly points out (and as quiz readers know, he's never wrong), "the English subtitles use modern slang that never would have escaped the lips of 16th century characters." I agree-- whoever decided to translate dialogue into American expressions like "We're screwed" and "That sucks" definitely deserves a pink slip from Criterion. (It reminds me of a Coffin Joe movie released by Something Weird, where a character exclaims in English, "Holy Cow!" and the subtitle beneath reads "Awesome!")

I was very pleased both by the turnout of correct identifications and the warm recollections most winners had for the film itself. So congratulations to the following winners: Wayne Palmer, E. Yarber, Hank Parmer, Kevin O'Bryan, Tim McDonough, and Vincent Tuss.

Posted by Steve Monaco at September 19, 2005 11:44 PM

 

The Monday Movie Quiz #75

Filed under: Imported

We'll post the name of last week's quiz movie and the winners a little later in the day. This week's quiz is a very well-known movie, so I've made it as tough as possible. Match this picture

with this very brief soundclip. If you know the film they come from, a) congratulations, and b) send me an email by late Sunday night with your answer. If you're correct, expect to see your name in next week's unsoft winner's circle.

Posted by Steve Monaco at September 19, 2005 5:12 AM

 

The Monday Movie Quiz #74

Filed under: Imported

It's another picture clue, and here it is:

If you recognize the movie it comes from, send me an email with the title by late Sunday night. If you're correct, expect to see your name in next week's hard-to-find winners circle. Good luck.

Posted by Steve Monaco at September 12, 2005 4:37 AM

 

Last week's Movie Quiz winners

Filed under: Imported

As long-time quiz winner Hank Parmer pointed out in his email last week, Death Wish was perhaps the death knell for Charles Bronson as an actor of any scope-- on the one hand, its incredible popularity cemented Bronson's status as action movie superstar (second only to Clint Eastwood), but on the other, it also typecast him in a way that he hadn't been before. Prior to its release, he had been making very interesting European crime films like Violent City and Rider on the Rain as well as spaghetti westerns like Red Sun, where he costarred with Alain Delon and Toshiro Mifune. And then, of course, there was Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West, which is still in a class by itself.

Death Wish changed all that almost overnight. As Roger Ebert noted at the time (1974), "rarely has a leading role contained fewer words or more violence." While Bronson managed to make a few more quality films during the decade, especially the depression era Hard Times, gradually the Death Wish formula took over his career. There were four direct sequels, each worse than the last (although number 3 has a small cult of its own-- I'm not a member). And when he would make a good picture like Sean Penn's The Indian Runner, it was just a reminder of what a waste of a fine actor those other movies were.

The original Michael Winner-directed Death Wish, however, stands by itself even now as a taut and disturbing exploration of vigilante justice. Both sides of the argument get their due (as they did in the original novel by Brian Garfield), unlike in the sequels, where the message is "Kill them all and let God sort them out." On the one hand, we see too clearly why Bronson's character Paul Kersey does what he does (the rape and murder scene at the movie's beginning is still too intense for some viewers), but we also get to see him become addicted to the very kind of violence that destroyed his life in the first place. The story's subplot featuring police chief Vincent Gardenia provides a wry counterpoint to his metamorphosis: as NY street crime plummets, the cops and the prosecutors argue over whether to arrest Kersey at all.

One of the delights of watching the film today is seeing all of the now-familiar faces that were then almost complete unknowns. Last week's picture clue featured a beany-wearing Jeff Goldblum (in his first film). Also showing up in surprising, one or two line roles are Olympia Dukakis, Paul Dooley and Christopher Guest. But the one that made me pause the disc and check out the cast list on imdb was the grocery store clerk who waits on Goldblum: sure enough, she's Sonia Manzano, who is known to millions of kids and parents as Maria on Sesame Street.

I was surprised by how few correct answers there were on this quiz-- either it was tougher than I thought or, alas, Chuck's star has faded. So congratulations and a sock full of quarters to Wayne Palmer, Mark Gisleson, Joe Rosenberg and Hank Parmer. I'd treat you all to a CD of Herbie Hancock's fantastic soundtrack for the film, but I know you guys already have it.

P.S. Bronson and this film have been a recurring favorite target of The Simpsons-- here's The Critic with a clip of a (much) later sequel, and this is a preview of Chuck filling in for a certain TV sheriff. And here's a whole different kind of death wish.  

Posted by Steve Monaco at September 12, 2005 4:25 AM

 

The Monday Movie Quiz #73

Filed under: Imported

Put this picture

together with this sound clip. What's the movie? If you know, send me an email by late Sunday night-- if you're correct, expect to see your name proudly displayed in next week's morbidly hopeful winners circle.

Posted by Steve Monaco at September 5, 2005 11:46 PM

 

Last week's Movie Quiz winners

Filed under: Imported

Even with the wry little twist at the end of the above blurb, the poster for Albert Brooks' second feature Modern Romance still didn't come close to conveying what a bleak, funny movie it is. And even more than Mother (my own favorite), it still remains his most personal film.

That may be surprising to anyone who's seen it-- his character's obsessive, hot-and-cold approach to his relationship might seem more than a bit unrealistic. But longtime quiz winner E. Yarber told me of an interview he heard once with Albert's former girlfriend Julie Haggerty (his costar in Lost in America), who said that he was exactly like he was in this film.

Poor Julie. But what must have been exhausting in real life (the name of Brooks' first feature, by the way) is hilarious on the screen. It begins with his character Robert Cole (a typical A. Brooks asshole) breaking up with his girlfriend (the beautiful Kathryn Harrold), and follows him for the rest of the picture as he tries to get her back. And loses her again. The film closes with an American Graffiti-like coda: "Robert and Mary were married in Las Vegas, Nevada. They were divorced a year later. They are currently dating with plans to remarry." 

Watching Modern Romance again, for the first time in decades, I was delighted once more by the Quaalude scene, one of the funniest solo performances anyone's ever committed to film, as well as the film industry subplot (Robert is a film editor working on a terrible-looking sci-fi flick starring George Kennedy).  But I'd forgotten other, smaller touches that are also great: the jealous old guy at the pay-phone Robert waits for, whose dialogue is a geriatric version of his own, and the scene in the sporting goods store with Albert's real brother Bob "Super Dave" Einstein. (And yes, if you didn't know, his real name is Albert Einstein.)

Unfortunately, we are still stuck with the 20+-year-old videotape of this (it's his only film not on DVD, for some reason), and it looks pretty bad. Let's hope Columbia changes this situation soon. And while we're at it, let's also hope that someone finally releases a collection of his SNL films, as well as his work on the old PBS series The Great American Dream Machine, which even the imdb doesn't list in his credits.

(As far as a new film from Albert, good news: it's finished and will be out early next year. And you're not going to believe the title.)

So congrats and a couple of 'ludes to the following quiz winners: Wayne Palmer, Mark Gisleson, and E. Yarber. (I'm assuming Mr. Parmer was busy this week-- I can't believe he didn't know it.)

Posted by Steve Monaco at September 5, 2005 11:45 PM

 

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