Recently watched movies

[mariab]

Tom Wescott wrote:
That's the 80's. I'm very interested in the 20th century eras prior to 1983. Like you, the 70's are very fascinating to me.
Really, that's already the '80s? I thought the mullet was more representative of the mid-70s? I find the 1970s completely fascinating, politically, socially, and the music... I also own Stacy Peralta's skate documentary Dogtown and the Z-Boys – the original with the original shots by Craig Stecyk, not the stupid Hollywood flick made recently. I could watch it like, everyday and not get bored. But oldie surf films (like the original The endless summer) bore me, the surf style's too lame...
Has anybody seen White Dog? It's political, very 1970s, and Christie Mc Nichols is amazing. The dog(s) are amazing too.

To C.D.:
In Germany we have TV news from the 1980s. It's fascinating. (It's good though that they don't have radio news from the 1940! Although I'm sure they have them in archives, also from the London pirate stations, announcing D-Day and stuff...)

[Robert]

Lord Haw Haw :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_wYBn_olDg

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi Maria. I've seen White Dog, about the dog trained to kill black people. I however have not seen Dogtown, although you've really piqued my interest.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Tom_Wescott]

C.D.,

I must confess that radio isn't really my thing.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[mariab]

Tom Wescott wrote:
I've seen White Dog, about the dog trained to kill black people. I however have not seen Dogtown, although you've really piqued my interest.
Wow, finally someone who's seen White Dog. I got it on VCR and watch it fairly often. Paul Winfield (the black animal trainer), Burl Ives, and Christy McNichol are excellent in it. And the dogs (it was many dogs, not just one) are SOOO beautiful, and they act too. Even the score (by Ennio Morricone) is very good. Normally I'm not for bombastic orchestral scores for movies, but this one fits with the dog's confusion, especially when they show his legs when he runs in circles in his cage over a motif on the piano, and then comes another motif on the lower strings in minor mode, followed by a solo oboe. Real cool. Curiously, the book is by a French guy.

Dogtown the original documentary is amazing. It has tons of original video featuring Tony Alva and Jay Adams as teenagers skating empty pools, it shows Alva catching possibly the very first air on film, out of a pool coping, the music is original from the`70s, there are interviews of all the Z skaters later in life (including Jay Adams post jail), Peralta analyzes the socioeconomic evolution of Southern California and the surfers/skaters sub-culture in a thought-provoking way, and I think that parts of it are narrated by Sean Penn. As it is, I think I might watch it later tonight, this is a nice idea.

Tom Wescott wrote:
I must confess that radio isn't really my thing.
Interesting, mine either. I'm always too preoccupied by things to turn it on when doing odd jobs in the house.
Reminds me that my stupid piece of sh*t CD player from the stereo is kaput, I need to buy a new one, possibly before New Year's. A real drag. For some reason, there hasn't been one Xmas recently where not one godamn piece of electronic equipment fell to pieces during the festivities. Last year it was the VCR, which prompted my to buy a new VCR/DVD system just before Xmas. This year we found out during the party that the CD player doesn't even open anymore...

[c.d.]

Hi Maria,

When I mentioned old time radio programs, I meant entertainment programs not news. Before TV really took off in the 1950s, the source of entertainment was the radio. The period from the late 30s through the 40s is known as the Golden Age of Radio. People gathered around the radio to hear comedy programs, westerns, detective shows, mystery etc. It really brought the country together during World War II. I find them very entertaining and a nice change from watching TV.

c.d.

[mariab]

Hi C.D.,
I got what you mean. It's like in Woody Allen's Radio days. I don't think we have such retrospective programs here in Europe, but it might be that there are and I've never heard of them.

[Tom_Wescott]

Right now I'm watching season 8 of 24 on dvd, but I also rented The Big Chill and the two Brady Bunch movies from the 90's. I love the Bradys.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[mariab]

I've never watched 24 yet (is it with Kiefer Sutherland?), but even the French are crazy about it. I'm not sure if it plays on German TV.
Man, we watched The big chill 3 times on Xmas day/Boxing Day, as my friends staying over are more babyboomers than genXers. It's a good movie, but man, no wonder I feel a bit lost and even more desillusioned than ever now. What's clever is that the characters in the movie are both pathetic and (semi)sympathetic. I'm afraid that my American boss, who's in his early 60s and to whom I'm very close, is very much like The big chill characters. He keeps wimpering about how he supposedly knew the “Chicago Weathermen“ and how he used to be deprived when he was young (which is not even true, he was a fairly well off Jewish New Yorker of divorced parents, living in Manhattan, and able to travel in Europe as a grad student). Babyboomers truly depress me!
The Brady Bunch is a piece of American culture I've not yet quite understood. Are these movies, or TV series? Did Sara Michelle Gellar play a part in there?

[Tom_Wescott]

It's the story...

The Brady Bunch is a piece of American culture I've not yet quite understood. Are these movies, or TV series? Did Sara Michelle Gellar play a part in there?

The Brady Bunch was a tv series that ran for five years in the late 60's and early 70's. Like Star Trek, it was much more popular after it went off the air and the cast has done a lot of stuff together since, including multiple TV shows, appearances, and it became a movie series in the 90's, with three films. To name a girl 'Marcia' now is to condemn her to a life of people screaming 'Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!'. SMG had nothing to do with the Brady Bunch, but she did play Veronica in two Scooby Doo movies.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[mariab]

Tom Wescott wrote:
To name a girl 'Marcia' now is to condemn her to a life of people screaming 'Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!'.
I've often heard of people being described as "Marcia Brady", but I'm still not clear on what she stands for. Is she something like “the preppy popular girl“ or “the family matron“, or what? I recall a quote by SMG in Cruel intentions (which is a more or less silly remake of Dangerous liaisons) saying “I'm the fu*king Marcia Brady of the Upper East Side“). ??
I haven't seen the Scuby Doo movies or the 3 Japanese remake horror films that SMG made (horror films about haunted houses bore me), but there's a more or less interesting movie with her named Veronica decides to die (possibly a tongue-in-cheek reference to Scuby Doo and the Scoobies in BtVS?) where she's suicidal in a mental institution, but the ending of the movie is pretty trivial (rom com ending). My favorite movie with SMG is Suburban girl with Alec Baldwin, which (despite a very stupid title) captures very thoroughly the dynamics in a May-December relatioship, in the editing business in N.Y.. It's a free adaptation of (parts from) Melissa Banks' The girls' guide to hunting and fishing (which was a super-advertized girly best seller that came out about a decade ago). The movie (Suburban girl) went straight to video though it's not bad, it's clever and even deep, not at all typical rom com, with some fine, fun acting by the entire cast. My DVD copy is so worn out, I need to buy a new one. Until a few months ago I used to carry it around when travelling and watch it all the time, but this phase is over, I guess.

[corey123]

Hello Maria,

Have you ever seen Scooby Doo? It was a cartoon about a talking dog, plus SMG didn't play Veronica, she played Daphne

Happy New Year.

[mariab]

Hi Corey,
I guess I misspelled it, it's Scoobie Doo. I might have seen an episode once. Mostly I get the references through BtVS and the Scoobies (her clique of friends who help her fight evil, like the clique of human teens who surround Scoobie Doo). I have a very cool book with essays about BtVS which makes fun of Scoobie Doo in one essay, where there's a demon student in Hell's college writing an essay about a supposed human religion “worshiping a large canine, somehow related to the Slayer“. (Only Buffy fans might get the reference here. Actually, embarrassing as it might be, I own 4 different books with essays on BtVS.)

[corey123]

Hello Maria,

No worries. Good memories with that show. I used to watch it a lot when I was younger. Not so much now though.

[mariab]

I guess it's Scooby Doo. I was never interested in that, but I still watch BtVS a lot. I even take certain episodes along when travelling (depending on the situation expected to encounter, or whatever's going on at the moment). It's amazing how many people of different ages have watched along, and loved it.
Happy New Year to all.