The Incredible Hulk wreaking havoc on Yonge Street, beating tanks up in front of The Big Slice and swatting shoulder-fired missiles down on the U of T campus promises to be one of the highlights of a long hot Toronto summer. My friend Dov and I thought long and hard about other amazing Toronto-centric sequences that no doubt will await us in the multiplex...
The Hulk having dinner at Cafe Diplomatico and then going to Soundscapes
The Hulk walking everywhere or on his bike wearing a helmet with wings on it
The Hulk riding a paddle boat at Ontario Place
The Hulk at H&M trying on low-waist jeans
The Hulk at the Brass Rail
The Hulk in K-Town ordering another garbage can full of kimchi
The Hulk turning Play De Record into Break De Record
The Hulk getting rejected by the NFB
The Hulk in Yorkville tickling young ladies passing by with tree branches
The Hulk ordering a triple-triple at Timmy's and rolling up the rim of the actual store
The Hulk getting in on that 2 day rebate on his April Metropass because of the TTC strike
The Hulk hanging around the Central Reference Library waiting to check his hotmail on the free computers
The Hulk starting a facebook group to promote his DJ night in Kensington Market
The Hulk renting an apartment on Roncesvalles, inspiring a hulkaccino drink at his local fair trade coffee spot
The Hulk producing an award-winning season at Soulpepper after being named the new Artistic Director
This eighties interview with quote machine David Lee Roth from the French Enfants Du Rock is greatly enhanced by the gallic touch of the giggling interviewer, the subtitles and the video toaster effects.
I have the first three seasons of Miami Vice on DVD and they are awesome enough, but I feel that this is a show that should have been released with the original commercial breaks of the eighties. I remember a great night out many years ago that ended with us all over at someone's house watching their roommates' 6-hour VHS tape of Vice episodes with the original ads, and night turned into day...
Since then I have made a point of searching Goodwills and Value Villages for old VHS tapes marked Miami Vice - that was a show that people tended to record weekly on a timer and fill up a tape.
Anyway, here is are some prime Vice commercial breaks to prove my point, from a Pittsburgh NBC affiliate.
Next week Eclipse is putting out The Delirious Fictions of William Klein on DVD - never dreamed that Mr. Freedom would receive a Criterion-level restoration and release, but here it is, along with Who Are You Polly Magoo? and The Model Couple, three over-the-top satires by one of the masters of photography. Here is a tribute to Mr. Freedom that should wet your whistle.
Tullio De Piscopo brings it on, full Stop Bajon. This song is like potato chips for me these days. I heard this song again down in Argentina when I went a bit overboard buying vinyl - loading up on trashy disco compilations from the eighties put out by a DJ named Pato C. More on him later.
Though it's probably a bad, bad movie, I'm dying to get my chance to see the 1973 remake of Frank Capra's Lost Horizon, a prime example of the disconnect between the Hollywood Studios and the movie audience of the seventies. And I don't want to see it so much because of the moviemaking but rather to see how the songs are deployed in context of the film, as this is the only original motion picture musical written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David; in fact its colossal failure was the beginning of the end of their partnership. I bought the soundtrack on a whim a few years ago, partly because the movie was so famous for being bad and partly because of its garish gatefold cover of the steps of Shangri-La. I didn't actually listen to the record until I went on a huge Bacharach bender and tried to sample everything he did. (Another fantastic discovery along these lines was Bacharach and David's score for Promises, Promises on Broadway, another remake, this time of The Apartment, with Jerry Orbach. The clip below is a mindblowing number from the 1968 Tony Awards of the most uncharacteristic song from the show.)
This is a clip from a Bacharach TV special made around the time of Lost Horizon and Burt seems pretty enthusiastic about the project and working with a children's choir (was there ever a man who seemed more comfortable in his own skin?) but in a more recent interview he painted the experience as a nightmare - perhaps the reception it received got under his skin over the years.
But it's a terrific score, anyway, considering Sally Kellerman sings a few of the songs. I would have been classified as a "heavy user" of this soundtrack a couple of years ago - I played it a few times a week, not my usual practise. Of course there is no DVD of the film, even as a cash-in on Bacharach's cult status. How happy I am to be able to present this appreciation of one of the highlights of Lost Horizon courtesy of two hilarious Dutchmen.
The first thought I had when I saw the final one-sheet for this summer's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Meth was: hasn't anything happened to me in the last eighteen years? It looks exactly like the other posters in the series, in the sense that it looks like it came off a template of eighties action movie poster design. I will repeat my grousing of last year. Harrison Ford is now older than Sean Connery was when he played his father in the last one. But Connery was supposed to be a senior in that film...I highly doubt Ford's role is to be that of the grumpy old man in this one. Please let there not be a shirtless scene.
This seems to be a bit of a step back for Spielberg. I think it's a bit old-fashioned to continue to knock him for being Mr. Blockbuster, a non-risk-taking director who, to quote from an anti-Spielberg essay written by Crispin Glover (sic), “wafted his putrid stench upon our culture, a culture he helped homogenize and propagandize” (this from the guy who signed up for Like Mike and Charlie's Angels). I myself probably skip as many of his new releases as I see but I cannot take cheap shots at his body of work or his skills as a filmmaker. Minority Report was top-notch and his last film, Munich, even with the WTF sequence towards the end, is a masterpiece that time will be very kind to; maybe someday people will wish it had won Best Picture instead of fucking Crash. I know he pops between these lofty heights and The Terminal, but the career work is worthy of a Cinematheque series as much as that of Lynch or Scorsese... let the comments flamewar begin.
Another great moment from the history of Cannon Films - from the British release of their late eighties thriller Crack House, here is star Richard Roundtree introducing the film with a public service announcement about not doing crack, while settling back in a teensy, empty little multiplex theatre with springy seats.
The Incredible Hulk wreaking havoc on Yonge Street, beating tanks up in front of The Big Slice and swatting shoulder-fired missiles down on the U of T campus promises to be one of the highlights of a long hot Toronto summer. My friend Dov and I thought long and hard about other amazing Toronto-centric sequences that no doubt will await us in the multiplex...
