Entries in the Category "rifftrax"
"Future events such as these will affect you...in the future!"
Tonight I saw Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space in a live Rifftrax event. (Once upon a time, I wrote about Rifftrax here.) The famous riffers were in Nashville commenting on a live viewing of the film, and it was aired via satellite in hundreds of movie theaters nationwide. In addition to the famously awful Plan 9, the show included a 60s-era short about the glamorous life of air stewardesses, and a live performance from a guy who did novelty songs about zombies (which zombie aficionado Jeremy really liked). All I can say is, I hope the event makes money so that they can do it again and again.
The entire show was hilarious, but the movie (plus riffs) really delivered. The MST3K guys poked fun not just at Wood’s indifferent production values, not just at the amateur actors with whom he populated his films (although a great deal of hilarity was generated over the actor who played the police chief and his obvious unfamiliarity with how people handle guns—seriously, he scratched his face with it at one point) but also over the sloppiness of the narrative itself. “Do any of these characters have any connection with each other?” the riffers asked at one point. “Where are they in relation to one another?” Wood’s notions of night and day were clearly fluid as well, not tending to remain consistent throughout the longer scenes. (For example, a chase scene would begin at night, the characters would race through a sunlit glade, and then inexplicably stumble back into nighttime.)
I loved the movie Ed Wood, which I watched as part of my Summer Movie Watch, and I will admit that the obvious affection Tim Burton showed Wood, Bela Lugosi and Plan 9 itself sort of colored my viewing of the film. It wasn’t hard to laugh at, thanks to the MST3K guys, but I found myself trying to ferret out what was good about Plan 9, as though I could have a psychic conversation with Wood and say reassuringly, “I can see what you were trying to do. That line might have been really chilling delivered by a gifted actor. And I bet those costumes were way scarier in your sketches!”
Regardless of this minor guilt factor, it was supremely entertaining. Jeremy and I quoted lines to each other all the way home.
Movie Reviews: Hollywood Satires
I loved this movie, in no small part because of Johnny Depp’s performance. I don’t know who first decided that Ed’s main character trait would be unflappable optimism--whether it was the screenwriter, whether it was director Tim Burton, or whether Depp brought that to the performance himself (I wouldn’t be surprised, honestly)--but damn if it didn’t elevate a pretty standard biopic to something unusual and sparkling. Depp did the same in his Oscar-nominated (remember?) performance in the first of the truly silly Pirates of the Caribbean movies. He said, “Pirate? Only if I can play it drunk and gay.”
Just a note on Johnny Depp: this guy is such a fascinating creature, honestly. You just don’t often find a character actor with a face as perfect as his. He is quite beautiful. Jeremy and I saw Public Enemies a few weeks ago and I couldn’t get over it then, either.
Martin Landau was terrific, too, of course, as Bela Lugosi—he won an Oscar, and for a comedy, which almost never happens. His one-sided rivalry with Boris Karloff made me feel somewhat uncomfortable watching Frankenstein the next day (like I maybe should have thrown Lugosi’s Dracula into the mix, too, just to be fair). Incidentally, Lugosi has the most insanely entertaining IMDB page ever. Just read the titles of some of the movies he graced with his presence! (Ghosts on the Loose, The Ape Man, Night Monster, The Corpse Vanishes, Black Dragons, The Wolf Man, Spooks Run Wild, The Black Cat, Invisible Ghost, The Devil Bat, Black Friday, The Dark Eyes of London, The Phantom Creeps ETC.)
Anyway, the movie has plenty to recommend it besides Depp and Landau. It shines a light on the motley crew of actors and producers and Baptist financiers who helped Wood to realize his cracked visions and shape them for the big screen; it does it in that special Burtonian way where viewers feel the need to align ourselves with the outsiders, cheer them on. It’s shot gorgeously in black and white and it even piqued my interest in seeing some of Wood’s notorious flops; so much so that, in a few weeks, when a theater in the area plays a Rifftrax version of Plan 9 From Outer Space, I’ll be there.
More satires from Preston Sturges and Robert Altman after the jump.
Continue reading "Movie Reviews: Hollywood Satires"
Websites of Note, 1st Edition
I have tons of websites that I’m obsessed with and visit regularly or more than regularly; I expect that, like “Why am I watching this?” from the other day, this topic will recur.
LOSING THE COW
This short blog I found in sort of a roundabout way; the blogger was a recapper at Television Without Pity (which I’ll cover on another day), then I followed her from there to her personal blog, on which she linked to this blog, which was devoted solely to her weight-loss efforts. Though she updated it a couple of times in 2008, the posts are largely from a few years earlier.
People who know me know that I am emphatically anti-diet, and, while I don’t discourage physical fitness for anybody, I find the obsessive pursuit of it a bit pointless. (It’s like this: I’ll walk the dog and do Pilates sometimes, but I won’t beat myself up if I skip a month or two. And I’m never giving up cheese.)
What does this site offer me, then, that I find so noteworthy? Philosophy, plain and simple. You have to start with the first post, in which the blogger (whose name is Linda Holmes, incidentally, and who now writes for yet another site that I like) explains how her approach, honed over 30 years of lifetime overweight-ness, differs from everyone else’s.
It’s like trying to win a tug-of-war, and you pull as goddamn hard as you can, and you don’t make any progress at all. And it seems like you should be able to do it, but you just don’t. And when you seek advice, you get the same piece most of the time: “Pull harder. You’re not pulling hard enough.” ... Here’s the advice you don’t get, that you should get:1. Tie the rope to something secure.
2. Walk along the rope until you find the other end.
3. There will be a guy standing there. Kick the shit out of him.
...More after the jump.