Midnight Family is a documentary that is well worth seeing. I saw it on DVD.
Category: Film
Tweet on the Star Wars Holiday Special
The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978) was not well received and has never been officially released. It is on YouTube. There is now a documentary about it.
My thoughts on The Last Waltz
I recently watched The Last Waltz (1978) for the second time. I saw it in a theater as one of five customers on an afternoon show when it was new.
Here are some random comments:
It was sad to see so many young people in 1976 and know what happened to them later. Many of the performers are no longer with us.
There have been criticisms that the film focused too much on Robbie Robertson and they are valid.
Most of the songs are not complete but they are skillfully edited and well-photographed. Criterion has done a fine job with the Blu-ray disc.
Neil Diamond still sucks.
Muddy Waters is great.
None of the Band performances is better than the original recording. I saw them four times between 1970-1974 and thought they were better earlier. They were certainly more animated by 1976.
I wish they had credited the horn section players and arrangers (or did I miss it).
It’s surprising that the big group singalong (“I Shall Be Released”) and the final actual song they played (“Don’t Do It” were not originals. They had plenty of songs they wrote they could have selected.
Dylan’s choice of songs was odd. The performance of “Baby Let Me Follow You Down” is outstanding. I have never liked “Forever Young”. On the album, the Dylan/Band songs include “Hazel” a mediocre song from Planet Waves. Why?
People smoking cigarettes
No unusual song choices for the Band performances. This is true of their live albums too. It’s always “The Weight”, “Stage Fright”, “The Shape I’m In’, “Up On Cripple Creek”. I would like to have seen “Look Out Cleveland” or “Sleeping” for example.
The strange cast of The Running Man
The Running Man (1987) has a really eclectic group of actors in it. Here’s a list from Wikipedia:
- Arnold Schwarzenegger as Captain Benjamin Stuart “Ben” Richards
- Richard Dawson as Damon Killian
- María Conchita Alonso as Amber Mendez
- Jesse Ventura as “Captain Freedom”
- Yaphet Kotto as William Laughlin
- Jim Brown as “Fireball”
- Erland Van Lidth as “Dynamo”
- Marvin J. McIntyre as Harold Weiss
- Gus Rethwisch as Eddie “Buzzsaw” Vatowski
- Professor Toru Tanaka as “Professor Subzero”
- Mick Fleetwood as Mic
- Dweezil Zappa as Stevie
Mexican horror films coming to Blu-ray
New York Times oral history of Bad Santa
Keaton’s “One Week” is on the Criterion Channel
It was his first short and I think it’s one of his best. Great surprise ending.
Article on movie projection in theaters
Tweet on actress Michele Morgan
Michele Morgan was a French actress who also made films in the US. I think the first one I saw her in was Passage to Marseille with Humphrey Bogart. I have also seen Port of Shadows and Joan of Paris. She was excellent and I recommend these films. They are all on discs.
Sad! 