December 6, 2018 Podcast

Welcome to this week’s podcast!

New in Theaters

Reviews

It’s all about Christmas movies this month. In the podcast, I give a review of the musical Scrooge (1970), one of my favorite film retellings of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. The film is available on Amazon.

Classic Cinema

Podcast is below. Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, too. Thanks for listening!

More Films Announced for the 10th TCM Classic Film Festival

We’ve snagged our pass, made our hotel reservations, and already can’t wait for the 10th annual Turner Classic Movies (TCM) Classic Film Festival happening April 11-14 in Hollywood, California. Now comes the fun part—waiting to see what films are going to be screened during the festival.

Nine films were previously announced for the festival. Now today, TCM has announced five more films, including the opening night film, When Harry Met Sally with director Rob Reiner and actors Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan in attendance.

Image ©️ TCM

With the theme of “Follow Your Heart: Love at the Movies,” the festival lineup is starting to take shape. The other four films announced today fall right into the festival’s theme:

  • The Clock (1945), romantic drama starring Judy Garland and Robert Walker; directed by Vincente Minnelli
  • Indiscreet (1958), romantic comedy starring Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman; directed by Stanley Donen
  • Love in the Afternoon (1957), romantic comedy starring Gary Cooper and Audrey Hepburn; written and directed by Billy Wilder
  • Mad Love (1935), the horror/obsession film starring Peter Lorre and Frances Drake; directed by Karl Freund

Also, the TCM network will celebrate its 25th anniversary on closing night of the festival. It’s all exciting stuff for classic film lovers! We hope to see you in Hollywood in April!

November 29, 2018 Podcast

The November 29, 2018 podcast is now live!

New in Theaters

Reviews

Classic Cinema

And the podcast is now on iTunes! Link is here. New episodes every Thursday. Thanks for listening!

“Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” and the Hope of America

Last month’s Turner Classic MoviesBig Screen Classics film was Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). I can’t stop thinking about it, particularly given the current mood in the United States of America. 

Jimmy Stewart and Jean Arthur in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”

As you know, the film is about an idealistic man named Jefferson Smith (played by James Stewart) who is appointed as United States senator by the governor of an unnamed state after one of the state’s senators dies while in office. The state’s governor along with the state’s other U.S. senator, Joseph Harrison “Joe” Paine (played by the great Claude Rains), are actually both rather corrupt and are puppets to business interests in the state, and, with Smith being rather naive, they feel like they can preoccupy his time so he’ll stay out of their way. 

After Smith becomes savvy about what’s really going on, he gets framed and is about to get kicked out of the senate. He decides to return home, but his secretary (played by Jean Arthur), who sees him for the decent and honest man that he is, finds him on the stairs of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., and helps him see a different path (see clip below).

She reminds him that Abraham Lincoln also had his own political foes and vicissitudes. She reminds him about the importance of having faith in “something bigger.” And she reminds him that he has “plain, decent, everyday, common rightness” and that the country “could use some of that.”

I am reminded of the words of Abraham Lincoln on the walls of his memorial: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in…”

I hope I can remember these words of goodness and truth, even in dark and challenging times. The hope of America lives on—in the memorable character of Jefferson Smith, in the words of Abraham Lincoln which we can read and ponder today, and in all of us, if we so choose. 

Images ©️ Columbia Pictures, Turner Classic Movies

November 20, 2018 Podcast

It’s our Thanksgiving 2018 podcast! Five new films are opening this week:

And the 1978 Superman is back in theaters for a special 40th anniversary engagement.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours!

November 15, 2018 Podcast

We’re back with episode two of the official Movies Past and Present podcast.

In this week’s episode, the movies discussed include:

NEW RELEASES–Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindewald (Warner Bros.), Widows (20th Century Fox), Instant Family (Paramount)

REVIEWS–Mid90s (A24), Can You Ever Forgive Me? (Fox Searchlight)

CLASSIC CINEMA CORNER–Castle in the Sky (Studio Ghibli, 1986)

Again, we’re working on making the podcast available on podcast services (Apple Podcasts, etc). In the meantime, thanks for listening!

Review: “Ralph Breaks the Internet”

Video game buddies Wreck-It Ralph and Vanellope Von Schweetz venture into the big city of the internet in Walt Disney Animation Studios‘ new animated comedy adventure Ralph Breaks the Internet.

A sequel to Disney Animation’s 2012 animated feature Wreck-It Ralph, the film picks up six years after the original. Ralph (again voiced by John C. Reilly) and his BFF Vanellope (again voiced by Sarah Silverman), who are both still active players in their respective video games (Fix-It Felix, Jr. for Ralph and Sugar Rush for Vanellope), are in a pretty set routine in Litwak’s Arcade. Every night after the arcade closes, the two of them meet up for a root beer at Tapper’s and then go hang out in some of their other favorite games in the arcade (including a 1980s Tron video game!). While Ralph feels perfectly content with the way life is, Vanellope is wondering about if there might be something more to her existence than racing on the same tracks in her game every day.

When Ralph tries to help Vanellope feel better, he instead causes a major problem with the Sugar Rush game, leading to the breaking of the console’s steering wheel (he is Wreck-It Ralph, after all) and prompting Mr. Litwak to unplug the game. With all the citizens of Sugar Rush now homeless, the other characters of the arcade that we met in the first film, including Fix-It Felix, Jr. (again voiced by Jack McBrayer) and Sgt. Calhoun (again voiced by Jane Lynch), come to the aid of their fellow video game neighbors. Ralph and Vanellope then decide that they will try to get the required part to fix Sugar Rush and to restore things back to how they were in the arcade by traveling to the internet via the arcade’s newly installed internet connection.

Here’s the latest trailer that shows the film’s setup.

What follows is a classic small town kids traveling to the big city sort of story, just amped up a bit by turning many of the familiar websites we know and love (Google, eBay, Amazon, etc.) into places within the giant electric “city” of the internet. Ralph and Vanellope get in way over their heads, Ralph continues to, well, wreck stuff, and the two have a grand adventure of experiencing new things and figuring out what they want out of life. 

New characters introduced in the film include the stylish tastemaker algorithm Yesss (voiced by Taraji P. Henson), tough-as-nails race car driver Shank (voiced by Gal Gadot), know-it-all Knowsmore (voiced by Alan Tudyk), and dark net gangster Double Dan (voiced by Alfred Molina). And in one of the funniest segments of the film, all of the Disney (and Pixar!) princesses are in the same scene at the same time and are voiced by all of the living actresses who voiced them in the original films: Ariel (Jodi Benson) from The Little Mermaid, Belle (Paige O’Hara) from Beauty and the Beast, Jasmine (Linda Larkin) from Aladdin, Pocahontas (Irene Bedard), Mulan (Ming-Na Wen), Tiana (Anika Noni Rose) from The Princess and the Frog, Rapunzel (Mandy Moore) from Tangled, Anna (Kristen Bell) and Elsa (Idina Menzel) from Frozen, and Moana (Auli’i Cravalho) along with the OG Disney princesses Snow White, Cinderella, and Princess Aurora from Sleeping Beauty. Oh, and Merida (Kelly Macdonald) from Pixar’s Brave is there, too. Also making cameo or brief appearances in the film are some popular real-life YouTubers and internet celebrities, including Colleen Ballinger (aka Miranda Sings), Dani Fernandez, GloZell Green, Tiffany Herrera (aka Cupquake), and Flula Borg.

Director Rich Moore is back for the sequel. This time he is joined by co-director Phil Johnston, who also co-wrote the screenplays for this film as well as the original Wreck-It Ralph. The film is loaded with their trademark and witty humor, which I love. I admire so much how they are able to make situations and things funny without being cynical and without just dumping in jokes for the jokes’ sake. Rather, the humor, while extremely topical, always helps to propel the story and character development and it never feels out of place.

This is not only a great sequel, but an endlessly clever and entertaining film. With its compelling story, interesting characters, amazing visuals, and witty interpretations of how the internet might work if it were an actual place, huge kudos are due to all of the artists at Disney for creating something so beautiful to look at and so fun to experience. Taking this journey to the big city with Ralph and Vanellope is a total joy from beginning to end (and make sure to stay through the end credits, too).

Ralph Breaks the Internet is rated PG by the Motion Picture Association of America for “some action and rude humor.” It opens in theaters on November 21.

My score: 4.5 out of 5 stars

As an added bonus, here’s the poster for the exclusive Real D 3D screenings of the film.

And here’s the official one-sheet for the film.

All Images ©️ Disney

“Toy Story 4” Teaser Campaign

I’m loving these posters, teaser trailer, and “teaser trailer reaction” for Pixar Animation Studios’ upcoming sequel Toy Story 4. I have a feeling that more content is on the way, so I’ll keep updating this post with new posters and videos as needed.

Toy Story 4 opens in theaters June 21, 2019.

Woody (voice of Tom Hanks)
Buzz Lightyear (voice of Tim Allen)
Forky (voice of Tony Hale)
Bunny (voice of Jordan Peele) and Ducky (voice of Keegan-Michael Key)
UPDATE: A teaser poster with Bo Peep (voiced again by Annie Potts) was added to the mix on January 28, 2019

All Images ©️ Disney/Pixar

We’re Podcasting!

I’ve just recorded the inaugural Movies Past and Present podcast! In the episode, I discuss the new movies opening this Friday, November 9, 2018 as well as movies recently reviewed on the blog (specifically, The Nutcracker and the Four Realms and Bohemian Rhapsody), and some classic movie info for the week.

I’m hoping to put it on some podcasting services, but in the meantime, here’s this week’s podcast. Thanks for listening!


Review: “Bohemian Rhapsody”

The story of the British rock band Queen and their front man Freddie Mercury gets the Hollywood treatment in the new bio pic Bohemian Rhapsody (20th Century Fox, 2018).

Named after one of Queen’s iconic songs, Bohemian Rhapsody is told mostly from the point of view of Freddie Mercury, expertly played by actor Rami Malek in the film. Born Farrokh Bulsara in 1946, Mercury and his family (who are of Parsi descent) moved from India to England when he was a teenager. The film picks up where Mercury meets soon-to-be Queen band members Brian May, Roger Taylor, and John Deacon for the first time in the London club scene.

The film then primarily focuses on Mercury’s relationships with the band, with the band’s management and record company, and with his girlfriend Mary Austin. Mercury’s well-known sex-drugs-and rock-and-roll and bi-sexual lifestyle is also clearly addressed, but kept within PG-13 boundaries.

Where the film really soars is with the scenes showing the creative process of the band as they make some of their best loved recordings, including “Bohemian Rhapsody” itself (pictured below).

All images ©️ 20th Century Fox

Where the film really didn’t work for me was in its overly-melodramatic retelling of the events of Mercury’s life, with many of the facts and actual timeline of events being altered and moved for dramatic effect.

For example, the film has the band breaking up and then reuniting right before the 1985 Live Aid concert. In reality, the band never broke up. (Rolling Stone magazine has a great fact checking article about the film here.) To also add drama and gravitas to the Live Aid concert, the film portrays Mercury as receiving his AIDS diagnosis before Live Aid and then revealing the sad news to the band at a rehearsal before the show. This also didn’t happen (Mercury most likely received the diagnosis in 1986 or 1987, long after Live Aid; he died from AIDS-related complications in 1991).

I get it that some kind of artistic license has to be taken in order to condense things into feature film length and format, but the decisions made with the script turned the film into more of a standard bio pic that you might see on TV instead of something more artistic and special that’s worthy of Mercury’s talent, persona, and esteem.

Still, the film’s re-creation of the Live Aid concert which bookends the film is positively electric and is worth the price of admission alone. The filmmakers made a very smart decision by putting one of the band’s all-time great performances as the final thing you see in the film, viewing Mercury and the band at their artistic peak and giving Rami Malek and the rest of the actors and creative team a chance to bring to life again one of the great moments in rock history.

Bohemian Rhapsody is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America for “thematic elements, suggestive material, drug content and language.”

My score: 3 out of 5

And as an added bonus, here’s a clip of Queen performing “Radio Ga Ga” at the actual Live Aid concert at Wembley Stadium in London on July 13, 1985.