Bill Paxton: It’s Hard To Forget The Guy You Saw In Everything

Posted on February 26, 2017 by geelw

So, we’ve lost Bill Paxton too. Foo. Rather than run clips or comments of and about the well-known sci-fi/fantasy flicks he was a part of, I’ll just leave two viewing suggestions you may not have seen or maybe have seen but not in a while. Up top is One False Move, director Carl Franklin’s great, kind of 90’s noir about a trio of criminals who commit a series of murders in Los Angeles and escape to the tiny town of Star City, Arkansas. Paxton played the bored and too eager for action sheriff Dale “Hurricane” Dixon who gets more than he bargains for after LAPD detectives roll into town. The film also features Billy Bob Thornton (who co-wrote the story with Tom Epperson) in a key role as one of the killers. I won’t spoil more other than to say it’s a brilliant thriller with a few curve balls up its sleeve.

The second film is in my opinion, Sam Raimi’s most perfect movie, 1998’s A Simple Plan. Author Scott Smith adapted his great 1993 novel into the screenplay and we get Paxton and Thornton working together again as Hank and Jacob Mitchell, two brothers who along with a friend of Jacob’s (Brent Briscoe), discover a crashed plane with a dead pilot and over 4 million dollars in cash inside. Yes, the take the money. Hank being the smartest of the bunch keeps it safe, but things go deep south as greed, anger and a bit of murder follow the man and their ill-gotten sack of loot. Both films would make a nice double feature, but feel free to add the excellent, disturbing Paxton-directed thriller Frailty to that short stack (or tall stack if it’s a marathon):

Yeah, I said two films, I know. But I think Bill would have probably appreciated the gesture, this going off script stuff. So long, pal – you made the movies you were in a lot better for a good while and will continue to do so each time fans go back and discover or rediscover everything you were part of.

-GW

Debbie Reynolds: Dancing On That Smile Stage One Final Time

Posted on December 28, 2016 by geelw

(thanks ozabbazo77!)

Ugh. No mas, 2016. This one’s both barrels, folks. If you’ve never seen Singin’ In The Rain, please do so ASAP as it’s not only a great introduction the classic movie musical, it’s probably going to lighten even the grimmest mood when all is said and done.

Back in a bit.

-GW

Carrie Fisher: Our Princess Is In Another Castle*

Posted on December 27, 2016 by geelw

“Hey Mark, It’s Carrie. Where are you? We’re waiting for you… hurry up!”

So, back in 1983 (I believe it was during midsummer), Carrie Fisher mis-dialed a phone number and called the place I was staying at on West 95th Street to leave that message. Everyone I played it back to recognized the voice and through a bit of deductive reasoning it was figured out she may have been ringing up Mark Hamill. At the time it was believed he also lived somewhere on the West Side (I recall he was a frequent West Side Comics customer), so it was entirely possible his phone number started with that popular 864 exchange and Carrie got one or more of the last four numbers scrambled. There were no cellphones back then and I don’t think you could have an operator redial from an answering machine, so this was just another NYC thing to us. Celebrity sightings were commonplace back then with a walk up or down the West Side in any weather often yielding some pleasant surprises (yes, I have stories. No, not now, please).

Anyway, that tape was a hot thing for a while among friends until interest faded and we moved on to whatever life slipped our ways. But every so often I’d want to pop up at one of her book signings and ask my one question or I thought about just writing a quick note (or much later, email) to find out if she recalled mistakenly calling me. Of course I never got around to it, supremely trivial matter that it was in the grand scheme of things. Today’s yet another not good one, particularly as I’d been very much avoiding the internet for its rolling out of crappy real news, really fake news and a Pandora’s Box of all-too predictable downhill results of a rather unbalanced political season.

Here’s a funny – I’m also in the middle of replacing or updating important to lesser bits of my movie collection, so I only have Star Wars episodes 4-6 on VCD. As in Fox’s official overseas box set from VideoVan circa 2000. Ha and ha-ha. Well, I think I can run them on the laptop. Either that or go through a few bins looking for my Magnavox CD-i system. Or, hell… maybe I’ll just watch The Blues Brothers for the what, 30th or so time? Yeah, sure… that’ll do.

(thanks, rumblingthunder!)

*Or, that damn Empire. It loses all the time… but always wins over the long run, doesn’t it? Boo.
-GW

So Long, Gene (I Need My Blue Blanket Today)…

Posted on August 29, 2016 by geelw

(THANKS, Jimmy Kavanaugh!)

Oh, it’s a Monday all right. Back later.

Something About Three Kings Lost Makes This #TBT A Lot More Wistful

Posted on April 21, 2016 by geelw

“Sometimes it snows in April.” Thanks to not sleeping last night (working on a few projects for the site plus tackling a small freelance job) I was quite out of the loop today and only heard the news that Prince died when I walked in the door. While I wasn’t a die-hard super fan like a few friends, the fact that he did just about EVERYTHING on his studio recordings and was so prolific that it made me wonder if the man ever slept. That sort of work ethic has always impressed me, but it’s always sad to see someone so talented leave so soon. Anyway, I’ll just leave this clip here (it’s been circulating the internet like a satellite today). In a way, I feel sorry for the kids today who never got to see any of these legends live or don’t know of how much they all changed the music and entertainment scene. All were human and had human problems, but on stage or on whatever you listened to them on, your brain and body were moving to beats that still resonate and motivate when the need arises.

Back in a bit. My favorite Prince song? Wow. Much of Purple Rain aside, I guess this one because it made me laugh (that dancing in the video is awesome but amusing) and even more so when it was covered by an icon from a previous era whose career got a massive boost afterwards.

Lost in Space: Dos Equis Boots Its Classy Coot to Mars

Posted on March 12, 2016 by geelw

So, yeah… this happened. Dos Equis has decided to ~~get rid of~~ send off its former Most Interesting Man in the World and replace him with a to be announced younger dude who’s guaranteed to be more annoying and a lot less interesting (to me at least) because that’s what happens these days when a company practices ageism just to get more hipster doofus types soused out of their skulls (or: PROFIT!). Anyway, he’s going gracefully and humorously into that cold dark trip to his certain death, but hey – what a way to go, right?

Provided the fuel and liquid sustenance (which are both many kegs of Dos Equis) hold out, wait ’til he gets to “Mars” (hey, I saw Capricorn One TOO many times, folks) and finds Regis Philbin, Bob Barker and a bunch of other formerly popular celebs of a certain age booted off their shows for guzzling Geritol already up there playing golf. Betty White isn’t up there because she’s an alien (what, you didn’t know?) as are a few other oldsters you still see pop up on the tube.

The funny thing here is I had NO idea Mexico had a space program. American companies are sending them our jobs (they’re NOT “taking” them, ladies and gents) and they’re sending our fine American acting talent to other planets. That’s just not right, folks. Ah well, all this confusion and heavy thinking is making me want a beer. Any suggestions?

Odyssey of the Oddity Concludes Somewhat Abruptly

Posted on January 11, 2016 by geelw

I can actually recall the first time I heard Space Oddity on the radio. It was sometime after its 1969 release and if memory serves me correctly, it almost made me miss my school bus. Between the haunting acoustic guitar work and the otherworldly sounds emanating from the clock radio in my room, I was transported into that tin can floating in the void. Instant David Bowie fan from that point on and what and education that was.

Suffragette City made me look up that word (the first one, silly!) and in doing so before the age of the internet, got me checking out the dictionary and then a few encyclopedias as that rabbit hole opened up as I discovered other issues related to that word. Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, union organizing, women’s rights (which I don’t think were listed in much detail as far as 70’s educational tomes were concerned) and other mind-expanding bits and pieces were in the process of being uncovered. One teacher I had noted my research and gave me a few newsletters to peruse from her college days. Of course, at that age (I was about ten or eleven at that point), most of that reading material was way above my brain grade but I absorbed them anyway. Continue reading →

No More Nightmares: Wes Craven (1939 – 2015)

Posted on August 31, 2015 by geelw

The first time I saw it in the mid-1980’s on a borrowed VHS tape that had a few other films crammed onto it, I never made it through Last House on the Left. And neither did the tape it was recorded on. During the agonizing scene where poor Phyllis is rendered gutless, the tape broke, ending my torture but making me insanely curious as to how the rest of the film would lay out. Amusingly enough, while I didn’t plan on finding out in a hurry, time has a way of speeding some things up. Not too long afterwards (okay, about four or five years later) I saw Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring and realized Wes Craven was more than a bit influenced by that classic film.

That made me go locate a beat up VHS tape another friend owned and watch it from start to finish, appreciating it far more by the finale than I did when I first saw it. Amusingly enough, I didn’t seek out Craven’s other films at all. I always seemed to be in the middle of something else when one would turn up on cable or in the case of a few others, I just decided to go to the movies and one of his films happened to be playing nearby. Some of his flicks worked better than others and a few didn’t strike me at all as all that frightening until seen again where I could dissect scenes without a chatty fraidy-cat audience screaming and talking over the better parts of the work. Continue reading →

Goodbye, Mr. Iwata

Posted on July 12, 2015 by geelw

Not how I wanted to start or even end a day, but this sad news popped into my inbox a few hours back and will take time to fully sink in. Nope, I never met Mr. Iwata and neither did millions of people who enjoyed what he worked on and/or his informatively entertaining Nintendo Direct videos and Iwata Asks series of interviews with game creators. But I did play many games he was part of, from Balloon Fight, Alchahest, EarthBound, Animal Crossing and many more.

The man may be gone, but his many works and those who will continue to play them and pass them down to a new generation will last as long as the planet still spins. Hopefully we’ll see some sort of physical presence of his collected works from Nintendo at some point. While a huge convenience, this digital-mostly age has been pretty poor at making sure a pure legacy exists of many games outside the hands of the most dedicated collectors.

Anyway, you’ll be missed by many, sir.

“That Handsome Man” Passes: So Long, Mr. Sharif

Posted on July 10, 2015 by geelw

I’m smiling a bit through this latest gloomy news because I can recall many years back sitting in a diner eavesdropping on a rather amusing conversation between two older ladies chatting about movies with part of the chatting being about actors they’d get swoon-y over. Omar Sharif’s name came up and one of the gals got a bit carried away, saying “Oooooh, that handsome man! I’d keep him tied up with my stockings for DAYS!” Yikes. Well, I had to make a mad dash from my booth behind them into the restroom to have a big laugh and of course, those ladies were cracking up when I returned because they knew why I scooted away. When some guys say stuff like that in a far different tone, it’s usually not a good thing. But two ladies of a certain age dressed in their Sunday best? They get a welcome and well-deserved pass. Anyway, goodbye, Omar – you’ll me missed but your best work will live on forever.