A year ago a watched the other half of this double feature film noir DVD. This second movie is much better but is based on a completely ridiculous premise. A man on the run from the mob assumes the identity of another man who looks like him. When I say “assumes” I mean it. Takes his job. Goes on the town with his wife. And nobody catches on?! Despite this, there are some clever twists and turns that keep it exciting even though everything happening is fully implausible.
Ok, my wife wanted the entire family to watch this and I fully expected to be bored by it, but, you know what, it’s a really good movie. It does have some creepy undertones in the relationship between Christopher Plummer and Julie Andrews. Also, I am noticing how in the movies, whenever there is an ex-nun, she is always portrayed as simply being an average girl who is good-natured, pure and that’s about it. In reality, I would expect ex-nuns to be quoting scripture and being your average annoying evangelical-type most of the time.
It’s hard to believe that this soundtrack won the Oscar for original score in 1979. Other than the disco beat of “The Chase,” there’s not much to this. In fact, a couple of the tracks, “Istanbul Blues” and the vocal version of the “Love Theme,” are downright terrible. Maybe people were just impressed with the novelty of an electronic musical score? Or everyone was just on drugs back then.
My Adam Carolla film fest continues with this documentary about Paul Newman’s racing career. There are no amazing revelations here except that Newman was a better racer than most of us realized. It’s a pretty straightforward character study of a charming man living a charmed life.
Although I haven’t written about them here, I have played through much of the first series of Bit.Trip games on the Wii. Most of those games could be classified as rhythm games with an Atari 2600 aesthetic. Beat and Runner were the stand-outs of the original six games. The former is a frantic pong-a-like and the latter is a platformer distilled to its most basic mechanics.
Runner 2 is mostly the exact same mechanics as Runner but with a 2.5D graphical makeover. Getting through the entire game is not a huge challenge. The true test comes in trying to achieve perfection by collecting all the gold and amassing the most bonus points. As such, it has more in common with a Contra game than a Mario game. Memorization is key. This is not deep, narrative game design but, as a pure arcade challenge, it’s well worth the few bucks it costs on Steam.
I used to listen to Adam Carolla’s podcast pretty regularly but stopped around the time Alison Rosen was unceremoniously let go from the show. Her firing wasn’t the main reason for abandoning the show, but it seemed like a good breaking point. An OCD collector’s attitude and an hour-and-a-half long daily podcast make for a huge time commitment from which I needed to free myself. In any event, I still wanted to see Adam’s crowd-funded movie, Road Hard. If you are familiar with Adam’s rants none of the jokes or gags will surprise you. Fortunately, there’s a decent story to hang the schtick on and I was never bored even though I knew the material. It’s not the slickest film around (there are some awkward tonal choices in the middle) and would have probably benefited if it were helmed by a more seasoned comedy director, but, as it is, it was enjoyable.
Although a couple of the pieces on this soundtrack recording sound like they came straight from The Donna Reed Show, the overall vibe is a chill lounge groove. This is best expressed in the CD’s showcase track, “Lolita Ya Ya.” The album is interspersed with double entendre laced dialogue from the film, which is something I always like on soundtrack releases (i.e. Apocalypse Now). I would often bring this CD into my life drawing classes, but it seemed to only person who appreciated it was the male model who had a ridiculous tattoo of Buck Badger in the center of one of his butt cheeks. I think I was in good company.
I read this mostly because I am an admirer of Apocalypse Now. It sorta lost me by the end so I really didn’t enjoy this.
The second Star Track reboot film was mindless fun. I was never bored despite the lame retread story, excessive attempts at style, and ill-advised grasps at nostalgia. Someone yells, “Khaaann!” Hardy, har. There’s a lot to complain about here, but in the end I liked it despite these flaws.
This giallo has been on my must see list for a very long time. Scored by Ennio Morricone, the excellent soundtrack is probably the best part of this movie. For whatever reasons, the film has alluded me. Years past, and the DVD eventually went out of print. Having finally seen it, I can say It definitely is not worth the high price tag one sees on eBay these days. The story is deliberately confusing in the beginning. Was there a killing or not? And what’s with all the mannequins? Eventually it all falls into place, but the revelation isn’t that surprising or even interesting for that matter. Outside of a few of the scenes with the aforementioned dummies, there really isn’t much style here to elevate this beyond a basic middle of the road Italian thriller.
