All Tomorrow's Blogs

It's a new year and I resolve to renew my tradition of one post/review per month. I actually have seen a movie or two that I plan(ned) on reviewing. Included in that category is GI Joe and Despicable Me, the former via Netflix and the latter via my trusty dollar cinema. Speaking of which, there were some changes made at said dollar cinema that I disapprove of but that's another story. Anyway I never got around to writing any of them due to several instances where life just got in the way.

In the mean time I'd like to congratulate our considerable stable of bloggers here at Ten Dollar Popcorn for earning yet another award!


2010 was a good year and it's well deserved indeed. I'd like to thank all four of our readers for their support.

Hardware Wars, Redux

It... It's like a train wreck. I couldn't stop staring at it. It's hideous, yet beautiful. When I was in High School some friends of mine and I made a movie or two on 8mm video, it didn't even have audio (we were rockin' it old school) and our budget consisted of whatever materials we could scrounge from our houses. What I'm about to introduce you to is videos with production value that is not much better than that, but there's a twist. Each video is a scene from Star Wars: A New Hope and they have been strung together in order to re-create the entire movie. I was reminded of a spoof of Episode IV called Hardware Wars when I was watching it. If I can find that on Youtube I'll link it also and you can decide for yourself.

I know what you're thinking "That sounds awful!". I can only give you partial credit for that response. It is awful, but magnificent at the same time. Dare I say, Awesomely Awesome. I'll tease you no more, the title is Star Wars Uncut and the link is below. If, in the future I can post those old 8mm movies I made with some friends then I will. Currently negotiations have stalled but we are working with a editor from the History Channel (no kidding, really!) to get them transferred to digital.

Star Wars Uncut

trailer for Star Wars

Hardware Wars Pt 1

Hardware Wars Pt 2

"I Heard You Paint Houses"

Looks like a new mobster movie is coming out from Martin Scorsese. Marty is bringing out the big guns (De Niro, Pesci) this time for a film adaptation of the true crime book "I Heard You Paint Houses" by Charles Brandt. It'll be called The Irishman after the subject of the book, Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran. It's a first hand account of the Union thuggery of Sheeran under the management of Jimmy Hoffa. "I heard you paint houses" is how Hoffa introduced himself to Sheeran. It alludes to the splatter of blood on the wall after a hitman kills his target. Sheeran was a killer, Hoffa needed a killer, it was a match made in somewhere other than Heaven. It goes on to describe the downfall of Hoffa and how Sheeran had a part in the murder and disappearance of him. It reads like one of those "of course, well that makes sense" types of solutions of history's mysteries. Of course, as good as it reads, as believable as it sounds, one never knows. I liked the book a lot but you won't catch me trotting it out as Gospel when someone suggests a theory of the final whereabouts of Jimmy Hoffa.
Will it be as good as Goodfellas and Casino? They were both based on true stories too. Truth be told, I liked Goodfellas better, in part because although they changed the name of the story from Wiseguy to Goodfellas, they kept the real names of the characters. On that topic, they maintained the title of Casino but changed the names of the characters and locations in that movie. Wonder why? I think it has the potential of completing a "trilogy" of sorts if this maintains the endless soundtrack style of Goodfellas and Casino. Did anyone see the 1992 movie Hoffa with Jack Nicholson and Danny DeVito? DeVito was supposed to be a combination of several characters, including Frank Sheeran. Not a bad movie but not as good as I expected either. Still, I look forward to this movie and I will be happy to pass my brilliant musings about it on to you once it gets to my trusty dollar cinema. Oh, this one is supposed to have Al Pacino in it too. A+ in advance if he uses his Godfather voice and not his carnival barker voice he used in The Devil's Advocate.

link to article about The Irishman

trailer for Goodfellas

trailer for Casino

trailer for Hoffa

trailer for The Godfather

trailer for The Devil's Advocate

Top Gun 2: Electric Boogaloo

Can it be true? Will there really be a sequel to Top Gun? Well, all I know so far is that it'll probably be about a cocky young female pilot... er, Naval Aviator instead of a cocky young male Naval Aviator. Sadly it also seems that our old pal Maverick will not be played by Tom "glib" Cruise. On that note I kind of doubt that "Iceman" will return since Val Kilmer's, well, not in flying shape just now.

And what about the commander that was Marty McFly's principal in Back to The Future, will he make it back? I'll have to do some more research. I don't want to rely on fan sites and Hollywood gossip rags so I figure I'll just speculate wildly and if any of it actually happens then I'll claim to be a genius. I suppose since Dr. Green died in that eject scene in Top Gun then he'll probably not be back in Top Gun 2, whatever the name of it will be. Oh, wait! Maybe it can be a zombie movie and he can come back. Or, better still he can come back in some sort of Obi Wan "ghost" capacity.

Well we all know that "Mav" wanted to be an instructor for Top Gun so how will the movie makers handle that? Will they try to resolve the inconsistency with some back story or will they just gloss over and hope you forget about it like so many loose ends from the Star Wars prequels. I got it I got it! Tim Robbins can reprise his role as "Merlin" and HE can be the new Top Gun instructor and the cocky new female pilot can be his mom, Susan Sarandon. Well, no. Come to think of it, that may not work after all.

Now. for your enjoyment. The return of the Ten Dollar Popcorn Players doing their rendition of the 1st classroom scene of Top Gun. Red Robot is "Viper" and Speakerface is the new "Maverick".

Blarney and Bullets!

A few friends find unlimited joy in making fun of my taste in television shows. Particularly when I try to get them to watch Top Gear on BBC America. Now I know very little about cars. Sure, I can maintain a few things but when it comes to actual car knowledge my philosophy is:

I break it. Mechanic fixes it. Together we're a team.

But it is a car show with actual automotive knowledge distribution. But that doesn't matter because I can't afford any of the cars portrayed on the show anyway. Yet. BWA-HAHAHAHAHA! *cough* sorry. Actually, even the American made cars on the show are models they don't sell in America so there's no value there either. The show is great because of the dry and (often) self-effacing humor of the hosts. Any other description would not do it justice, you just have to see it for yourself.

While I was searching the channels one night to find an episode of Top Gear, I noticed a movie that I once had interest in seeing but not enough to pay for it. Miller's Crossing(1990) was coming on another station so I hit 'record' and noticed it was getting late so I recorded the episode of Top Gear also and went to bed.

When I finally found time to watch Miller's Crossing I found out it was a Cohen Brother's film. Despite that fact it had no young married couples trying to kidnap a baby, no 1930's chain gangers re-enacting the Odyssey, and even though it was a gangster movie, it had no hit-men being shoved in wood-chippers. This one is about an Irish mobster in the early 1930s that gets involved in a made for TV plot line. Ooh, that was kind of a harsh way to start this. Allow me to start over.

Tom (Gabriel Byrne) is the main character in this version of the prohibition mobster movie. But the strange part is, there is no "big score" or "big take down" or "escape" theme to the story. It's also not the "Biography of Tom the Mobster". So what is it? Well, for starters Tom is an advisor to a New York crime boss, not the typical drug dealer, stick-up man, assassin, or wheel man of your typical gangster movie. So he's already made it pretty far in his chosen profession. But he's got problems. He's in way over his head with bad gambling debt and he can't stop making those bad bets. His boss Leo (Albert Finney) doesn't seem to care what Tom thinks even though he's his advisor and truly seems to like Tom. He's in a love/hate relationship with Verna (Marcia Gay Hardin) that is indifferent to him as he is to her. I know, that sounds like it doesn't make sense, but if you see the movie you know what I mean. Overall he's an aggressively unappealing character. Add this room-clearing personality to a plot that has no main direction and you've got a made for TV movie. Albeit with really good directors.

Why Doesn't Tom Care?

I know I've been kind of vague about what the plot is, well that's because it's not very memorable. Tom is trying to stop a gang war between his boss and another boss. That seems like you could make a pretty good story from that right? Well, yes but then you'd probably have the main character actually apply some effort to his task. That didn't happen here. I thought, maybe if I compared this to another mobster movie, a classic, then I'd learn a little about why this one didn't appeal to me. So I watched The Public Enemy with James Cagney from 1931. This one didn't have a "big score" plot either but it was a "story of my life" movie and apparently a very popular one since it was played 24 hours a day to packed movie theaters for a while after it was released.

If this post wasn't so long already I'd break down some other mobster movies and compare them to this one so I'll be happy to leave that conversation to the comments section.

So if you want a mobster movie about a slacker wiseguy that really doesn't care about his life, job, or the people he associates with then I highly recommend Miller's Crossing to you. Otherwise go rent The Godfather, The Godfather part II, Goodfella's, Casino, or even The Public Enemy if you haven't seen it before. Just don't lose sleep over missing Miller's Crossing, and by the way don't ever watch The Godfather Part III. PeeeYoooo! What a stinker that was!

Trailer for Millers Crossing

Trailer for The Public Enemy

Trailer for The Godfather

Trailer for The Godfather Part II

Trailer for Goodfellas

Trailer for Casino

Top Gear TV show

I refuse to link to anything involving The Godfather Part III

Based On a Novel By...

Thanks to the two-week free trial of Netflix I have been able to see a plethora of movies that snuck past me. Even my patience worked against me as their stay in the dollar cinema eluded me due to a busy schedule and possible apathy toward them. The two movies in question were based on novels, which can be a mixed blessing. One was by all accounts a children's book from a popular series and the other could be argued either as a "young adult" book or simply light reading. If I'm not mistaken there are some fans out there of each of these series that will argue quite strenuously that they were NOT children's books, maybe because they might feel embarrassed about reading them. As I've noted before, I have no problem with people knowing that I watch kids movies and read novels that my have been targeted at kids or young adults.

The first was about a young man who felt he was an outcast all his life and didn't really know why. That is, until he found out he had magical powers and then a whole world opened up to him that, until then he thought was just a make-believe world of historical fantasy. At first he was an outcast even in the magical world until he proved himself with amazing acts of heroism with the help of his new friends!

The other book, which was aimed at a broader audience, dealt with a more dark subject matter. The story included young love that we knew, at first, must be denied. Deep heart-ache was the mainstay of some of the characters that weren't quite human. We learned that one of the main characters must choose between the love of two who are of very different races. All the while, outside forces threaten their very way of life.

Both of these novels were destined to become movies since Hollywood's decision to just give up and let other people do the thinking when it comes to new ideas. Besides, each was part of a series of successful books so the studios knew they had a veritable cash machine on their hands as long as the first movie did mildly well. By now I'm sure you've guessed the movie about the "outcast boy" is Percy Jackson, The Lightening Thief and the darker movie with the love triangle is Dragons of Autumn Twilight.

The Lightening Thief bugged me because it was a book I read with my children and although it wasn't great writing, it was entertaining and the story flowed pretty well. The movie kind of felt like the production of someone who had an enormous budget and was determined to use every penny of it, even if it made the movie look plastic and garish. The good story and the knowledge that the director was Chris Columbus probably encouraged me to set my sights unreasonably high for this one. I mean, Columbus directed the first two Harry Potter movies so it shouldn't have been a stretch to think this would be a keeper... right? Hey! Now that I think about it, Harry Potter was also about a boy who... um, nevermind.

The film version of Dragons of Autumn Twilight was actually little known even to those who read the novels. Apparently with good reason. Since I read the books as a young teenager I was very interested in how it was adapted into a movie. Kiefer Southerland even lent his name to the voice acting credits! Did you catch that? "Voice" acting credits. It was made into an animated film, one in which Hanna Barbara would have been ashamed to produce, good thing they didn't. It was a mix of over-the-top voice acting and clumsy computer animation mixed with traditional ink animation. The early, animated Lord of the Rings movie (remember that one?) was awe-inspiring compared to this. If you've read the books then don't waste your time on it. Unless you have some morbid curiosity about it then knock yourself out. I mean it. Knock yourself out instead of watching this because it's that bad.

As I think about it, there was another movie about a love story involving strange semi-human races. I'm pretty sure it also involved the word "Twilight" in some way but the name escapes me.



trailer for The Lightening Thief

trailer for Dragons of Autumn Twilight

trailer for The Lord of The Rings (1978)

But First, a Note About The New Layout

I thought I'd give the stagelight-looking layout a whirl, just to see how it would look behind the increasingly popular and significant musings of the important subject that is... my opinion of (mostly) dollar movies. Turns out I don't like it as much as I did the plane-Jane generic blog look. The problem is I CAN'T SEEM TO RESTORE IT TO IT'S ORIGINAL LOOK!

*grumble*

Yes, I'm aware I missed my June deadline of another post. As an apology, July will include TWO updates to Ten Dollar Popcorn.



Including this one.