When Disney gets around to making an animated version of The Gnome-mobile, I’m cashing in my chips.
I have a bet going on for a decade now Disney will remake Song Of The South but strip away all the problematic parts just so they can reuse all those catchy songs again.
You think they’ll make the live characters animated and the animated backgrounds live? Kill me now!
Keep B’rer Rabbit, ditch Uncle Remus….hmmm..could work.
Strategic Air Command 1955 Jimmy Stewart, June Allyson
It used to air regularly on cable stations in the 70’s and 80’s. I hadn’t seen it again until tonight. Amazon Prime offers it.
Stewart was a colonel in the Air Force Reserves when he made this film. His military pilot experience adds authenticity to his performance.
It’s a good film that I’ve always enjoyed. It was meant to build public support. But the rah, rah stuff isn’t obnoxious. Probably because Anthony Mann directed the film. He directed Stewart in eight films, including Winchester '73 (1950), The Naked Spur (1953), and The Man from Laramie (1955).
Stewart’s character is similar to Ted Williams. His baseball career was interrupted by service in WWII and Korea.
I understand it’s the remake is the same story but do you suggest watching the original first?
That’s going to make for a very short film.
I doubt that they will ever remake Song of the South but if they did, I am sure they can sanitize it and make an interesting story. Remember that mamy of the films, like Cinderella, were originally more gruesome or violent tales, (A friend read earlier versions and said that Cinderella’s stepsisters cut their feet to fit the glass slipper.)
Yes, I remember reading that version. There was a lot of blood involved.
I’m saddened by the (quite legitimate) reasons to shun Song of the South and its stories insofar as the whole “Don’t throw me into that briar patch” reverse psychology story is so useful a fable and cultural reference. But where there’s Br’er Rabbit there’s also the accents and the tarbaby and a host of other ugly cultural baggage attached.
Wikipedia says that the Uncle Remus stories (on which Song of the South was based) were adapted to the plantation setting by Joel Chandler Harris but were originally African American folktales. So perhaps shorn of the plantation nonsense, they might not be that offensive? Or are they just too toxic overall?
According to Gary Larson, Mrs. Uncle Remus (Auntie Remus?) was none too happy with the bluebird on his shoulder and said he could do his own laundry if it continued.
I saw Song of the South in the theaters back in 1978/79. I paid to see Convoy with Kris Kristofferson and Ali McGraw, but found that movie so horrible that I decided to sneak into the other theater and catch the Disney cartoon instead.
Deep Cover (Prime, 2025) Recommended. It’s funny, well written, and the plot moves quickly. Perfect for lighter date night fare. It was certainly set up for a sequel. The film felt like a longer pilot episode of a limited run, but perhaps that’s our current level of ridiculous new release expectations.
Rewatching it now. It’s even more horrifying now that I know what’s coming.
Unicorn Wars
Highly recommended.
How intense can a movie about little cute bears fighting unicorns be? Pretty intense.
Patricide via poisoning, cannibalism of enemies, entrails spread out among the trees. This movie is pretty much a brutal war movie about the levels we are pushed to in war.
It’s animated like a children’s movie, but it is absolutely not for kids. Hard R movie, almost NC-17 with its intensity.
Check it out. Here is the poster
Well, they expand the female protagonist, Astrid’s, motivations a little bit. She was relatively shallow in the animated version. Just someone who was driven and took her training seriously.
In the live-action version, there’s a conversation on which she says she came from nothing and wants to make something of herself by becoming chief. And Hiccup is seen as a product of nepotism who would have been in big, bad trouble if he weren’t the chieftain’s son.
Anyway, to answer your question, it’s not strictly necessary to watch the animated version first.
Welcome to the Dope!
Thank you, John T. (Did i do that right? It doesn’t look right.)
The casting of Love with the Proper Stranger was just crazy. Steve McQueen as a native New York ethnic italian-american? Natalie Wood as an Italian American of the 1960s was even worse, except for her hair color. Both had their normal middle America accents. When I met working-class New Yorkers in the 1960s who grew up in Italian neighborhoods, I practically needed a translator, their New York accents were so thick. And the miscasting was the least of my problems with the movie.
The Sea Hawk (1940) HBO/TCM. Erroll Flynn swashbuckler. Set in Elizabethan England just before the Armada – our hero is tasked with covertly harassing Spanish treasure ships. He fails miserably but uncovers a plot and the impending Spanish perfidy.
The cast is the Warner Bros stock company – much overlap with 1938’s Robin Hood: Flynn, Claude Rains, Alan Hale, Una O’Connor; plus director Michael Curtiz and composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold. But for some reason the female lead is not Olivia deHavilland (she and Flynn made 8 films together) but rather someone named Brenda Marshall. I’d never heard of her – my first impression is that she’s a dead ringer for Cobie Smulders (“How I Met Your Mother”)
The story kicks of with King Phillip II of Spain explaining his megalomaniacal plans for world domination. Literally; he plans to conquer the world. It was subtle, (/s) but I think that perhaps they were attempting to draw a parallel to the situation in Europe in 1940. At least they didn’t give him a little black mustache.
Despite the title, there’s little actual action at sea. Flynn takes his crew to Panama to fight in the jungle and steal Spanish gold and fails. For some reason the scenes in Panama are sepia-toned; the rest of the film is in glorious black & white.
Brenda Marshall’s character is properly named Doña Maria (as indicated in the credits) but everyone addresses her as “Donna Maria”. I guess tildes were too complicated for 1940 audiences.
I was stunned to find my father was! I always knew he was in a non-combat role, (C47 mechanic) but that by itself doesn’t mean anything. He was 31 when the war started, and maybe the Army thought he was too old to be a foot soldier. Besides, there were a lot of non-combat jobs.
Yet just last week my brother, discussing his own Viet Nam era CE status, just happened to mention “oh by the way, did you know…”. No, I did not!
Anyway, for the thread, we just watched Gene Kelly’s Invitation to the Dace. It is three unconnected storied that are told only in dance. There is no dialog. The Sinbad the Sailor part is in MGM’s That’s Entertainment!, so we decided to watch the whole thing. I would say it is a failed experiment. The three stories are boring, and Gene’s choreography is pretty dull, considering his talents. The first segment was the most dull, and even I was thinking “should we even bother finishing it?”
Hellboy 2004 Ron Perlman, Linda Blair
On Max
A relative finally convinced me to watch Hellboy. It was pretty good. The story is a bit predictable, but I liked the costumes and makeup.
Red’s tail kept me amused. The puppeteer did a convincing job making it move as if Red was flicking it unconsciously.
Like a cat. There’s no deliberate movement of the tail. It moves depending on how the cat feels. Angry, curious, or whatever.