Foundation Movie Review Time

After some internal dialogue within the Foundation, I've decided that I'm relying too much on lists these days...and that maybe a little much of the blog is taken up by TV these days...so I'm going in a slightly different direction. I'm giving you a good, old fashioned, Siskel and Ebert like Movie Review.

First off, this movie played in limited release at the Kendall Theater, which being new to the "Good" side of the river...there, I said it, the good side...I haven't been to often enough. But the place is absolutely DESOLATE at 9:30 on a Monday, let me tell you. Other than that, it's a very good venue for movie watching. nice seats, convenient parking/t access etc.

Anyway, The movie I was there to see was Life Of Reilly, a film version of Charles Nelson Reilly's One Man Show called Save It For The Stage. Loyal reader Dan Nolan would say, this blog has focused a little too much on Mr. Reilly, but I'm fine with that. Basically, it's a two hour movie with Chuck telling stories and spinning yarns about his INCREDIBLY interesting life, from being a nearly blind kid in The Bronx, to surviving the Hartford Circus Fire, to joining an acting class whose fellow students included: Jason Robards, Jerry Stiller, Hal Holbrook, Anne Meara and the incredibly ageless (with the help of many many plastic surgeries) Charles Grodin. Basically this movie was about Charles Dropping Names of all the people he knew, and worked with, as well as talking about how difficult his life was growing up with a family stricken with alcoholism, depression, mental disease, adultery, and poverty. But it is extremely powerful going between laughing and nearly crying several time throughout the movie.

See it if you can...

Just a little TV stuff, Chuck and Life were both picked up by NBC to finish out their first seasons...Here's hoping that they catch on and stay for even longer than that.

Expect more later.

Craptastic Power Ballads!

Yes, its Duffless and I'm back and torturing you again. I absolutely adore cheesy, hammy, overacted soap operaesque crap rock ballads. To set the stage I'll give you some introductory examples:

1. Holding Out for a Hero by Bonnie Tyler, I swear the lyrics were written by a romance novelist. Truly craptacular! Fake thunder sounds, a street-wise Hercules fresh from the fight, does it get any better?

2. Meatloaf's- I'll Do Anything for Love, But I Won't do That. People always joke about what Meatloaf will or won't do, which yes is/was kinda funny - however one of the greatest/crappiest/greatest rock lyrics of all time is found in that song and is always overlooked. "Would you hose me down with holy water, if I get too hot?" So we are to believe that this woman is so enflamed with desire for the Loaf, that nothing short of holy water could possibly cool her down? Classic!

Which brings us to one of my all time favorite Craptastic Power Ballads - which really cannot be fully appreciated without watching the video. Allow me to present - Heart's - All I Wanna Do is Make Love to You.

The gist of the plot -

1. On a rainy night, a woman alone picks up a hitchhiker and takes him to a seedy motel room and proceeds to bone him all night and leaves the next day.
2. Another rainy night a few years later she finds herself back at that same motel, this time holding her son.
3. The hitchhiker now works at the motel's front desk. He looks at her child and immediately recognizes that he is the father because of his similar eyes.
4. The women confesses that she loves another man but he couldn't knock her up so she went out to get herself pregged up, but she really appreciated all the orgasms and the gift of her bastard son.

Things to think about:
1. Hello, AIDS anyone? This was 1990, people were living in fear of getting AIDS and here is some woman riding(hee hee) around trying to get knocked up.
2. Invitro was readily available in 1990, as was adoption.
3. She not only picked up a stranger on the side of the road, but he didn't even have a coat or an umbrella in the rain - man she got lucky this dude was 90s style hot.
3a. Despite the lyrics clearly stating that he was indeed wearing no coat, you see that in the video he is wearing a cool guy leather jacket and at one point has apparently and gentlemanly given it to her to wear over her shoulders - he only removes it to make sweet and tender love to her. Also note that despite the rain, when he gets in the car he's some how completely dry.
4. She left the next morning, and we are supposed to believe he was upset about this?? Sounds like the ideal situation for him, you have to presume she paid for the room the night before. Free sex and no awkward morning after,dream come true! If a 90s Wilson sister bangs you, you pray, PRAY, she is gone the next morning, especially if its Anne or is it Nancy, which ever the shittier, fatter one is - I can't tell, its all in soft focus and slimming black side panels.
5. Notice the blonde Wilson sister worshiping her phallic like guitar at the 1:20 mark and at the end of the video. All hail the powerful sperm filled cock!
6. He loved that women who boned him so much that he got a job working at the motel so she could find him? Yeah, creepy PSYCHOs never work at motels.
7. He determined paternity based on eye color. WTF
8. If you are in a highschool english class where your teacher just showed you that songs are really poetry, listen up you can use these next subtle metaphors: "He brought the woman out of me, So many times, easily" - OH YEAH!!!
"And in the morning when he woke all, I left him was a note, I told him I am the flower you are the seed We walked in the garden We planted a tree" - I don't get this one, its far too subtle for me, pure poetry! Andrew Marvell move over!

Well, I hope you've enjoyed this flashback. Remember, wrap that shit.

Lists

I'll be quite honest...generally I hate making lists. I don't make shopping lists, I don't make to do lists, I don't make christmas lists...I do however enjoy a TOP LIST...for example the delayed but happening Top 50 Songs of all time list, the AFI top 100 Movies list, and especially the Classic Rock Top 500 Classic Rock Songs of All Time Memorial Day Weekend List. Here is a list, I don't get. The VH1 Greatest Songs of the 80's list. I'd have included a link straight to their site, but apparently the VH1 website is more difficult to navigate than either the various "ways" of boston, be it the Jamaica, River, VFW Park, West Roxbury Park or whatever, or The Boston Herald's website. Anyway, I will state at first that I have no problem overall with the list...Because A) it was voted on by viewers and people are stupid and B) no one contacted either Duffless or myself, so really, this list isn't valid.
100 Greatest 80s Songs List

First off I'll start at the top...This list is crap for the simple reason that the top 6 songs, aren't even the best songs by the artists that sang them, with the exception of Princes When Doves Cry...that one belongs, even higher than 5.! Pour Some Sugar On Me? Hasn't anyone ever heard of Photograph? Livin' On A Prayer, good song, but No Wanted Dead Or Alive....And the Hall And Oates Song? First off, find yourself in the 20's, and change your name to Maneater or Private Eye, and we'll talk...And Billy Jean? REALLY, I Mean Really? Not Thriller? Ok, that one could be argued, which one was the better song, and whether or not the thriller video enters into it.

I'm not going to get too picky with the actual spots on the list, but I'm pretty sure this list was voted on by people that weren't even alive in the 80's...My evidence? Please look at numbers 30-33. Again, I could go even further, but how is any of those songs not in the top 20? Love is a Battlefield? Top 10. Tainted Love, arguably top 10, Sister Christian? Only one of the greatest rock anthems of all time top 15 at least. Queen and David Bowie, under pressure? How is that not better than Hall and Oates at number 6, the only reason that this atrocity could occur is that people thought the song came out in the 70's, or the backlash of Vanilla Ice sampling it, really hurt.

I'll give the show credit, it did well, not so much with the rankings, but with the former 80's stars that they were able to russle up and interview...as well as some nice where are the now segments (The chick from Berlin is definitely Wicked Hot even today), but the actual rankings were putrid, I know viewers voted them in, but couldn't there have been a veto process?

Also, here is a list of the top songs of the last 25 years that VH1 Did as well, in case you are interested.
VH1 Top Songs List

Finally I may as well just do it...My top 10 Songs of the 80's list admittedly, this list is going to be songs that I'd have seen on MTV or heard on the radio, so VERY commercial radio driven:

10. Tainted Love (Soft Cell)

9. Don't Stop Believin' (Journey)

8. Jump (Van Halen)

7. Sister Christian (Night Ranger)

6. Love Is A Battlefield (Pat Benetar)

5. Don't You Want Me Baby (Human League)

4. Take on Me (A-HA)

3. Thriller (Michael Jackson)

2. Rocket Queen (Guns And Roses)

1. When Doves Cry (Prince)

Of course I should really do a list where I break this down by Pop and Rock, but really this blog isn't all about lists...

Ok, so one more thing, if anyone sees me with a starbucks cup these days, please punch me in the face, the Egg Nog Latte is out, and I CAN NOT AFFORD either the costs or the caloric intake. I'd drink those all day, every day if I could. But that's a story for another day I guess.