As I continue my look back at films that have a big anniversary this year, I come to...how about....
30 years ago!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yes 30 years ago we were introduced to Businessman Edward Lewis and Vivian Ward who ran her own independent small business on the streets of Hollywood.
Here is the original trailer from Touchstone theaters lol:
Well you know the story....even though it is dated a bit...well maybe a lot, the theme still works because it is timeless (Prince And The Pauper/My Fair Lady).
Lets start with fun and not so fun facts!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:
-The original title of this film was 3000 dollars...the original price for Vivian set by Edward
-The movie was suppose to be a dark drama about prostitution in Hollywood. Vivian needed money to go to Disneyland. In fact Edward got tired of her drug problem threw her out of the car. She eventually took a bus to Disneyland. Gary Marshall made a different film obviously lol.
-The scene with the 250,000 necklace ..was actually a 250,000 dollar necklace , and was guarded the whole time by security, because it was borrowed for the filming..
-Speaking of the necklace, the scene where she first sees the necklace and reaches and he closes the box on her fingers was not in the script. Gere did this as a practical joke. Marshall liked it so much he kept it in the film.
-The famous poster above. They darkened Gere's hair after the fact. Oddly that is not Julia Roberts body
-Julia Roberts was not the first choice here..Jennifer Connolly turned it down. Molly Ringwald turned it down. Meg Ryan; Emily Lloyd; Winona Ryder all got the script and either turned it down or tried out and was turned down for the role.
-As for Richard Gere's part, Al Pacino and Albert Brooks were considered for the part of Edward.
-Richard Gere and Julia Roberts were 18 years apart in age.
Now for some quotes:
-:Your Late!
Your Stunning.
Your Forgiven
-Big Mistake. Big. Huge! I have to go shopping now.
-I would have stayed for two thousand
I would have paid four
-It must be difficult to let go of something so beautiful
-50 bucks Grand Pa...for an extra 20 the wife can watch
Well there is my latest revisit...20 years later....
Be safe and as always thanks for your time from the shadows.
As noted in my last blog. Since we are banned from theaters, I am looking back at films with big anniversaries. So I come to:
25 years ago!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yes 25 years ago this year came ..........
TOY STORY
Directed by John Lasseter
Written by John Lasseter and Pete Doctor
Toy story broke ground with this movie in a bunch of ways:
1-Hello John Lasseter!! Hello PIXAR. PIXAR had shorts including the lamp and ball before this film but here was a full length story.....speaking of story...
2-Yes a story. PIXAR did what many small (at the time) computer animated studios did not do yet. There were silly animated shorts out there showing what you could do with computer animation, but there was not a group out there willing to take the time to do not just a full 80 minute film but deliver a wonderful screenplay to go with it.
3-Disney took a chance here. Remember PIXAR was kind of a part of Disney. They were all in all a contracted company, with large Disney financial backing. It took years for eventually Disney Animation Studios to swallow up PIXAR or PIXAR swallowing up Disney Animation Studios. depending how you look at it. No matter how you look at it Toy Story was a game changer.
What is amazing to see, if you go back and look at Toy Story again, how, for lack of a better phrase, generic it was computer animation wise. Toy Story is very herky jerky in its motions. It is almost fun to go back and watch how far computer animation has come.
This is not putting down Toy Story. Toy Story gave us a story for kids (How jealousy ...Woody with Buzz ...can hurt the people around you) (Do not be a Sid). Plus a story for adults they get the nostalgia of Mr Potato Head; Slinky Dog; Army men!! The film worked across generations.
Well that is enough of my opinions...lets get to....
FUN AND NOT SO FUN FACTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
-Toy Story is the first animated film to ever get an Oscar Nomination for best screenplay.
-Lets not forget this is the first animated film scored by Randy Newman
-Billy Crystal was asked to be the voice of Buzz. He turned it down. He regretted it so much he called John Lasseter and apologized. John put him in Monsters Inc. .,and the rest is history Mike Wazowski!!
-Early scripts had Barbie as a big part in the film. However Mattel did not want Barbie in the film because they wanted young girls to use their imagination with Barbie and not get told how she speaks and how she moves. The character was reworked as Bo-Peep. Of course after the success of the film, Barbie was in Toy Story 2.
-Note the name of the toolbox Woody is stuck in. Binford. Yes Tool Time from Home Improvement Tim Allen's show.
-Gi Joe was suppose to be blown up by Sid but Hasbro wanted no parts of GI Joe being blown up so it was changed to Combat Carl.
-Tim Allen said they originally wanted Jim Carrey to be Buzz and Paul Newman as Woody. The budget was not high enough so in stepped Hanks and Allen. Lasseter said Hanks was always the first choice. He never said publicly who the first choice of Buzz was lol.
-John Ratzenberger was Hamm and from that point has been a voice in every PIXAR film.
-The highest grossing film of 1995
- The film required 800,000 machine hours and 114,240 animation frames
Well here are some great quotes:
-Way to go Idaho
-You are a sad strange man and you have my pity
-To infinity and beyond
-I am not really from Mattel, I am from a smaller company purchased by Mattel in a leveraged buyout.
-Tuesday nights plastic erosion meeting, I think, was a big success.
Well any way.........TOY STORY 25 years later, go back and take a look in appreciation of the film that started it all!!!
From the shadow as always thanks for your time.
-
Sunday, March 22, 2020
ALMOST FAMOUS
Directed by Cameron Crowe
Screenplay by Cameron Crowe
Since I am banned from movie theaters. I am going to post many fun revisits to movies that are celebrating an important anniversary this year!! Well ...can I start with anything better than ALMOST FAMOUS!!
A high-school boy, William (Or The Enemy) is given the chance to write a story for Rolling Stone Magazine about an up-and-coming rock band Sweetwater, as he accompanies it on their concert tour he learns a lot about Rock And Roll and life and love.
20 YEARS AGO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Okay, if you have not seen it, what are you waiting for????!!!!!
You want stars??
Here you go:
It is a Cameron Crowe film which should be enough!!
BILLY CRUDUP
FRANCES MCDORMAND
KATE HUDSON (losing the Oscar to Marcia Gay Harden was one of the biggest Oscar blunders)
PATRIC FUGIT
ZOOEY DESCHANEL
ANNA PAQUIN (Yes Anna and Elsa's MOM)
FAIRUZA BALK
PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN
JIMMY FALLON
BIJOU PHILLIPS
RAINN WILSON (Dwight!!!)
JAY BARUCHEL
JASON LEE
ERIC STONESTREET (Yes Modern Family)
PETER FRAMPTON!!!!
If it is a revisit for you, here are some fun facts:
-The film is director Cameron Crowe's semi-autobiographical account of life as a young Rolling Stone reporter. The actual group Crowe first toured with was The Allman Brothers Band. Gregg Allman distrusted him, and kept asking if he was a narc. Crowe was in a near-fatal plane crash while traveling with The Who. The character of Russell Hammond is based on Glenn Frey of Eagles. All these stories were part of the movie.
-Penny Lane asks William if he'd like to go to Morocco with her. He says, "Yes... ask me again." According to Cameron Crowe, "ask me again" was Patrick Fugit stepping out of character and asking Kate Hudson to repeat her lines for another take. Crowe liked the take as-is and kept it in the final cut.
-Stillwater's songs were written by Peter Frampton (who also had a small part in the film), Cameron Crowe, and his wife Nancy Wilson of the rock band Heart, a fact indicated early in the credits. The music acknowledgments credit Russell Hammond and Stillwater as if they were real authors and performers.
-There actually was a band called Stillwater in the 70s though the band depicted here is not them. They agreed to the use of their name after reading the script.
-The roles of Russell Hammond and Penny Lane were originally written for Brad Pitt and Sara Polley respectively. Polley dropped out to work on her own project, a low-budget Canadian movie. According to Crowe, Pitt worked with Crowe for months before finally admitting, "I just don't get it enough to do it." Kate Hudson was originally cast as William's sister.
- At the age of 18, director Cameron Crowe wrote the liner notes to the "Frampton Comes Alive!" album by rocker Peter Frampton. Frampton returns the favor here by acting as a music consultant for the film.
-Penny Lane dancing in the empty, debris-strewn Cleveland auditorium is Cameron Crowe's favorite scene in the movie (MINE ALSO AND THE TINY DANCER SCENE!!!!)
-When Frances McDormand's character reprimands Billy Crudup's character over the phone, Crudup was actually was on the other end of the line.
-At the end of the movie, when Russell is in William's bedroom, he stands in front of a poster of the Allman Brothers' "Live at the Fillmore East" album cover. A reference to the real band.
-Produced in 92 days
-Brittany Murphy, Mena Suvari, Anne Heche, Neve Campbell, Jenna Elfman, Bridget Moynahan, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Rose McGowan, Chloë Sevigny, and Rebecca Romijn auditioned for the role of Penny Lane.
-The scene where Russell gets electrocuted on stage is based on an incident where Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley was severely shocked on stage during a concert on Dec 12th, 1976 at the Lakeland Civic Center in Florida.
-The real life Lester Bangs died of a drug overdose at a fairly young age. Eerily, Philip Seymour Hoffman, who portrays him in this film, would later die of a drug overdose also.
Well there are your fun and not so fun facts!!
AND NOW SOME GREAT LINES:
-If you think Mick Jagger will be out there being a rock star at 50 you are sadly mistaken
-You will meet them all again to the journey to the middle
-We are not groupies, groupies sleep with rock stars, we are band aids
-Rock stars have kidnapped my son
-Listen to Tommy With A candle Burning, you will see your future
-I AM A GOLDEN GOD
What I cannot figure is how Kate Hudson did not win Best Actress for this role!! Marcia Gay Harden for Pollock??!! Really?
Watch this and I rest my case. It is the perfect combination of Actress and Role. With some Mad Hatter thrown in, she does so much with just a look:
ALMOST FAMOUS I give 4 1/2 out of 5 stars almost perfect (That Ending UGH!).
You can rent Almost Famous on Amazon for just 3 dollars!!!
I will leave you with the Tiny Dancer scene!!!! You Are Home!!!
This is the true life story of Christian music star Jeremy Camp ((K. J. Apa) and his relationship with Melissa Henning (Britt Robertson), and the footprints that this relationship left going forward.
This is a Christian based film. I understand that these movies have small budgets. I also know the last one I saw The Overcomer was poorly acted and poorly written and was in my top ten worst films of the year last year. However I still hold out hope, that maybe once, even on a low budget, it will all come together and maybe just maybe they can give us a really good film.
Well...this was better than the Overcomer for sure. For one reason Britt Robertson. She owns this film and I always think she is an underrated actress. Here she commands the screen, even with a slightly weak script she is all in. She is wonderful.
It also has Gary Sinise as Jeremy's dad. He does not have much to do but when he gets his chance for the fatherly advice scene he is ...well Gary Sinise!!!
Now the big problem is the miscasting of K.J. Apa. He is stiff as a board. He cannot lip-sinc. He has no chemistry with Britt Robertson, and that is kind of important. There was never a time I believed they were a couple. I am also thinking that, maybe he is not that good of an actor and up against Robertson and Sinise it shows. A big casting mistake by the Erwin brothers.
The story itself is nice and uplifting and like noted...true. Kinda overly corny but, I imagine that is what you pay for.
Well anyway 2 1/2 stars out of 5 right down the middle for I still Believe. Worth a look when it comes to home viewing. Still not the christian based film homerun I hoped to see.
Jack Cunningham (Ben Affleck) is a former high school basketball star who reluctantly accepts an offer to coach back at his old school. However pain from his past and demons keep showing up.
The story has an umbrella of sadness. It is hard to watch.
However Affleck is great. He pulls you in, you want him to do well. To turn it around. That is the heart of the film.
As for the basketball part: All the kids are great. It has a "Hoosiers" feel to it. Sadly that part of the story never gets a closure I felt. Director Gavin O'Connor I guess wanted the team to not be the focus, he wanted this story to be about one thing, Jack Cunningham coming to terms with his issues, and for that to happen, sadly, and often, the individual has to hit bottom to start the climb up.
It is a good raw story...and again what a great performance by Ben Affleck!
Based on the classic Jane Austin book here is another remake of Emma! Emma Woodhouse spends much of her life meddling in other peoples lives...often creating a mess.
I have never been a big fan of Emma. I feel it drags often. The story goes no where in the first hour then has a big finish. People like the Emma story because of the big finish...they forget the time it took to get there and it is rather uneventful.
This version works because of casting:
Anya Taylor-Joy as Emma!! I mean has Taylor-Joy ever given a bad performance??!! Here she says so much with just a look, She is great with a look and a little twitch of her mouth.
Mia Goth as Harriet is soooooo soft...so good at holding her own against the steam roller that Emma (Taylor-Joy) is.
Bill Nighy in a small role as Mr Woodhouse shines and adds levity.
Also adding levity is the great Miranda Hart (Call The Midwife) as the very talkative but well meaning Miss Bates.
I see one miscast, and that is Johnny Flynn as George Knightley. He has to have chemistry with Taylor-Joy and unfortunately the answer is no. They just seem awkward together and clumsy.
Again I am not a huge fan of Emma. I do not hate the story I just think it feels long and stagnant in the first hour, still I love the last hour and conclusion like most everyone else. For this version the acting shines...so 3 stars out of 5 for Emma worth a look for sure.
