Thursday October 6
The Virgin Suicides [e.tv.22.55]
The Beguiled [SABC3.01.00]
Friday October 7
Zombieland [M-Net.02.30]
Jaws 2 [SABC3.01.00]
Transporter 2 [e.tv.20.30]
Saturday 0ctober 8
Step Up 3D [M-Net.21.05]
Beethoven’s 5th [SABC3.14.00]
DANCE FOR THE 21ST CENTURY
Step Up [e.tv.20.00]
Sunday October 9
The Expendables [M-Net.20.05]
CLINT EASTWOOD IN DARKEST AFRICA
White Hunter Black Heart [SABC1.22.00]
The Cowboy Way [SABC3.19.30]
The Marine [e.tv.20.00]
Monday October 10
The Runaways [M-Net.22.30]
Tuesday October 11
Superhero Movie [M-Net.09.30]
Step Up 3D [M-Net.00.30]
Wednesday October 12
SLY HAS BEEN A STAR FOR OVER 30 YEARS
The Expendables [M-Net.22.30]
Honkytonk Man [SABC1.22.00]
The Grudge 2 [e.tv.22.30]
***
JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE...
During the years that I have been writing about film, many trends have come and gone but only one has become pandemic—the sequel and it’s first cousin, the prequel or reboot. When did this money making form of filmmaking start? Or did it just grow, like mould.
ALONG CAME JAWS 2
An early example of this trend was Jaws 2 [SABC3.Friday.01.00], made just three years after Steven Spielberg broke all box office records with an adaptation of Peter Benchley’s fins and fright novel, Jaws.
ONLY ROY SCHEIDER WAS AVAILABLE FOR THE SEQUEL
The way sequels work is simple; start with a familiar title, retain at least one of the original stars and zing goes the box office cash machine. By the time the audience realizes that all the good bits were used up the first time, great wodges of money have changed hands. At least that is the idea.
IN THE ORIGINAL-SCHREDER FLANKED BY ROBERT SHAW AND RICHARD DREYFUSS
This is more or less how Jaws 2 works. Of the original stars, Richard Dreyfuss was busy winning an Oscar; as for Robert Shaw, well, he was dead. So Roy Scheider, some deadly teeth and the sea had to suffice. Not nearly enough.
THE SECOND GODFATHER MOVIE WAS AN EARLY PREQUEL
Did the moguls realize that magic only happens once? Of course not, as long as the movie makes money, who cares. The Godfather and Airport trailblazed and before you could say ‘once more for luck’, the franchise was born.
VOIGHT AND HOFFMAN
Some 3, 4 and 5s have worked well; but most of them are really soap opera for the big screen. But, be grateful for small mercies, we were spared Dr Zhivago 2: Second Opinion or Driving Miss Daisy: In Third Gear or even Midnight Cowboy 4: The Early Evening. On that note, let’s crunch a few numbers from this week.
EVERYBODY DANCE
There are Step Up [e.tv.Saturday.20.00] and Step Up 3D [M-Net. Saturday.21.05 and Tuesday.00.30], 'dance till you drop' flicks, both there to compare, savour and enjoy. Great, if dance is your thing.
BEETHOVEN IN ONE OF HIS INCARNATIONS
Then there is Beethoven’s 5th [SABC3.Saturday.14.00] a ‘direct to DVD sequel’ like 3D, another way to retread the same material over and over again. The movie, as fans surely know, has nothing to do with the classical composer and everything to do with a dog.
A WHOLE LOT OF SCREAMING GOING ON
In Final Destination 3 [e.tv.Saturday.01.50], mere mortals, might I add not for the first time, try to defeat The Grim Reaper. Yet again, these poor folk don't succeed; in all sorts of graphic and grisly ways.
TAKASHI SHIMIZU- JU-ON TO YOU TOO
The Grudge 2 [e.tv.Wednesday.22.35], like The Grudge before it, is from a Japanese source, like the first one, most of it gets horribly mangled in translation.
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DIMPLE,STUBBLE AND ALL
Transporter 2 [e.tv.Friday.20.30] has Jason Statham as a grungy James Bond. Everything is as you would expect, No more, no less.
IT'S THE 'SPOT THE EXPENDABLE' COMPETITION
Statham is also in The Expendables [M-Net.Sunday.20.05 and Wednesday.22.30] which isn’t a sequel but feels like one. All the good old boys, Sylvester Stallone, Dolph Lungren, Eric Roberts, and Mickey Rourke act macho and blow things up for almost two hours. Will there be a The Expendables 2? Filming, as we speak.
JOHN CENA-HIS BICEPS DO MOST OF THE ACTING
The Marine [e.tv.Sunday.20.00] is from the same pack of cards, this time, a film financed by those wrestling people who tried to turn their own John Cena into a star; not very successfully. Beware; there is a direct to DVD sequel, lurking out there somewhere.
WOULD YOU LET SOMEONE DRESSED LIKE THAT INTO YOUR HOME?
Superhero Movie [M-Net.Tuesday.09.30] is an attempt to satirize the Superhero genre, the movie consists of Drake Bell, three laughs and numerous flatulence jokes. The film is a dead cert to spawn a sequel or three.
DUELLING ZOMBIES
Zombies, together with vampires and the undead were a B-grade camp joke in the in the 50s; now they are touted as semi serious cinema. In Zombieland, Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Abigail Breslin and Bill Murray make the proceedings appear more interesting than they actually are.
WOODY AND KIEFER
Woody Harrelson is also half of a buddy- buddy duo; with Kiefer Sutherland in The Cowboy Way [SABC3.Sunday.19.30]. This one, dating from 1994, is marginally less tiresome than some of the other buddy bonding movies.
STEWART AND DEKOTA FANNING
The Runaways [M-Net.Monday.22.30] is the story of Joan Jett and her antics as an early female rock star. Both Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning are rather terrific, as is Michael Shannon as Kim Fowley, the band’s slimy manager. Fowley has done almost everything in the music industry, my favorite snippet of trivia is that he wrote Alley Oop way back when.
SUZI Q IN HER PRIME
The Runaways is a lively rock movie, but just a thought, Madam Jett was not the first female rocker, she was just louder and more sulky. Before her, there were Susie Quatro, Heart, The Go-Gos; and what was Linda Ronstadt? if she wasn’t a rock singer(at least some of the time).
JONI MITCHELL IN CONCERT
And, yes, Kate Bush or even, delving into the archives, Carly Simon and Joni Mitchell. But if you enjoy a good mix of music and drama, The Runaways is fine, strident and fairly noisy.
SADLY ATTRACTIVE
The Virgin Suicides [e.tv.Thursday.22.55] is both compelling and frustrating. Somehow, the climax is anticlimactic but, like the novel, by Jeffrey Eugenides, the movie is compelling and there are some fine performances; I sometimes forget just how good an actress Kathleen Turner is. The film always reminds me of Picnic at Hanging Rock; all that muted female sexuality.
CLINT IN JIMMIE ROGERS MODE
If you managed to catch the Eastwood documentary last week, there are three Clint Eastwood movies around this week, Honkytonk Man [SABC1.Wednesday.22.00] which I reviewed not so long ago, White Hunter Black Heart [SABC1.Sunday.22.00] and The Beguiled [SABC3.Thursday.01.00].
EASTWOOD AND A GRIM LOOKING ELEPHANT
Of all Eastwood’s work White Hunter, Black Heart and The Beguiled are two of the most interesting. Almost twenty years separate the two films; in 1971, when he made The Beguiled with/ for Don Siegel, his career could have gone either way.
ROLL 'EM
By 1991, when he both starred in and directed White Hunter Black Heart, the lightly fictionalized story of American director John Huston hunting in Darkest Africa( while shooting The African Queen), Eastwood was, for want of a better word, a movie icon.
JOHN HUSTON COMPLETE WITH ERNEST HEMINGWAY WHISKERS
John Huston was extremely pleased with himself. He fancied himself as the Ernest Hemingway of film and spent a lot of his time living up to his self created image. He sounds like an extremely unpleasant man; however, you don’t have to be a nice person to make good movies.
WALTER HUSTON IN HIS OSCAR WINNING ROLE
Huston was also an extremely talented writer and director. He holds the distinction of winning an Oscar himself (as director) for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre while directing his father Walter, who won an acting award . Some forty years later, he guided his daughter Angelica to do the same in Prizzi’s Honor.
PETER VIERTEL WITH HIS ACTRESS WIFE DEBORAH KERR
In White Hunter Black Heart; based on a novel by veteran Hollywood writer, Peter Viertel, Eastwood does capture the time and place rather well; when men were men and animals were helpless.
LONG AGO WHEN WE WERE YOUNG
The Beguiled is a good, if not great piece of film. Eastwood, looking impossibly young, plays a Civil War soldier who stumbles into an all female environment, releasing all kinds of tensions and drama.
GERALDINE PAGE IN A TRIP TO BOUNTIFUL
This is an oft used plot ploy; which works here very effectively and features the very talented Geraldine Page, whose brilliance was finally recognized late in her career; when she won an Oscar for A Trip to Bountiful, just two years before her death in 1987 and the wistful Elizabeth Hartman, best remembered now as the blind girl in A Patch of Blue.
ELIZABETH HARTMAN AT THE HEIGHT OF HER CAREER
Hartman’s acting always had a slightly fragile, slightly tragic quality to it; in real life, she committed suicide at the age of 43. The Beguiled is slow moving but, in places, quite exquisite.
EASTWOOD WITH GERALDINE PAGE
Try and catch my pick, The Beguiled [e.tv.Thursday.01.00], what cinema should be about.