I would take what you see in that film with some very liberal doses of salt. Apparently a lot of it is just made up.
Particularly the timeline.
I haven’t tried to find them. But, Paul Prenter gave some scathing interviews about Freddie. He managed Freddie from 1977 to 1986.
You’re right, Paul was angry after his breakup and what he claimed to experience has to be considered in that light.
I wanted to show my Teen Amazon Women on the Moon but it’s not available streaming anywhere as far as I can tell (though it is available on the Internet Archive) so I showed him Kentucky Fried Movie on Friday.
It’s pre-Airplane! ZAZ work and directed by John Landis with a number of sketches that spoof Bruce Lee, disaster, blaxploitation, and women-in-prison films, as well as ads from that time and TV news. Some of it was still pretty funny, imo, and the Bruce Lee parody was pretty good at poking fun at the tropes though the segment seemed to drag at points.
There was a lot more nudity in it than I remembered, we even skipped the final skit which involved a man and woman having sex on a couch while newscasters on their TV ogle at them. I don’t mind the nudity but I would argue that it’s also not the best form of entertainment for a family.
Not much to add here, but I noticed the two main baddies not getting killed, which drearily implies there’s going to be more. James Cameron would do better than to revisit this dry well again.
Trial By Fire, Netflix. Pretty good anti-death penalty drama starring Laura Dern and Jack O’Connell. This was far more affecting than Avatar.
Face/Off (1997)
I saw this when it was released, and it was over-the-top John Woo cheesiness but still good fun. When I watched it this time, I was expecting that it wouldn’t have aged well, and the cheese would outweigh the fun. But I was pleasantly surprised - it still is ridiculous fun.
The story is nonsensical yet awesome. Anything that is touched will either shoot sparks, explode, or most commonly shoot sparks while exploding. Nicolas Cage acts like Nicolas Cage, John Tavolta acts like Nicolas Cage, random breezes blow hair and floor-length jackets in slow motion throughout.
One thing I don’t remember from my first viewing – people are constantly running their hand down someone’s face to show love or caring. It happened so often that it became distracting. Anytime two people are together, you just know one of them is going to wipe the other’s face. Maybe John Woo has a face fetish.
Are you talking about Kentucky Fried Movie here? I haven’t seen it, but I watched Amazon Women on the Moon several times back in the day. This sounds quite a bit like it.
Yep. I wanted to show my kid AWOTM but it was unavailable so we watched KFM instead.
I watched Coma (1978) on AMC last night. It’s a medical disaster movie based on a book by Robin Cook. I was surprised to learn that it was directed by Michael Crichton. The stars were Geneviève Bujold, Richard Widmark, and a real young Michael Douglas. I read the book back in the day, and as far as I could recall, the movie followed the book pretty well. A bit campy, but it was okay entertainment.
He had planned to make five in total, but after this one he has said he may decide to stop here. I think he wants to do something different for a while, and also he’s getting a bit old, two more Avatars would take him into his 80s.
This weekend, we watched Brick (2005). It’s Rían Johnson’s (of Knives Out fame) first movie and it is awesome. It’s a hard boiled detective story set in a high school.
I figured he would do two more, but I am beginning to think he’s done with this. He’ll likely write the next two and hire a director he thinks can handle it, though he has very high and strict standards. Not sure who he would trust.
He loved RRR, so maybe S. S. Rajamouli?? He does speak English despite working in Telugu.
Blue Sun Palace, the last of the Film Independent Spirit nominees for Best First Feature I’d yet to see. Slow cinema (very) about grief and culture, specifically in the Taiwanese expat community in Queens. The acting is terrific, especially given the very long takes. There were a couple of choices I didn’t love, but overall I think it’s my favorite of the five nominees (Blue Sun Palace, Dust Bunny, East of Wall, Lurker, One of Them Days). I have to think about whether that makes it the best of those films, as I think a case could be made for Lurker, a film that made me pretty uncomfortable. I’ll end up voting for one of those two.
This reminded me to check if it was available for streaming, and by golly, it is! My wife and I watched it for the first time since seeing in the original theatrical release while we were dating! It’s really beautiful in hi-def and with a good sound system. We’ve seen so many clips and parodies since then that we forgot all the rest of the story. Jack Nicholson is almost a charactature now, but it still is so freaky.
Thank you, this is the sort of thing I look for in this thread. I’ve loved all of the “Knives Out” movies, and an early version of Rian Johnson will likely be a treat!
Ted 2012 Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis, Joel McHale, and Giovanni Ribisi
Seth MacFarlane project included with Amazon Prime
Peacock is promoting a prequel tv series based on the movie.
I hadn’t seen the movie. I found it very lame and predictable. It was 12 year-old locker room humor. But way too dirty to watch with a kid.
A teddy bear without a penis hiring prostitutes? Smoking a bong and leaving a duece in the corner is supposed to be funny?
I knew within 10 minutes the lifelong friendship pledge would get tested. A third wheel in a romance is always a problem.
Rating 4 out of 10 only because the 2nd half gets better with Sam Jones from Flash Gordon. I thought he died long ago.
Well I’m not a “macho”. I like my action movies to make sense. Internal sense. Internally consistent. LAH IMO did not.
And the excuse now why I don’t reevaluate it? I didn’t like it new, and I have too much else to watch. If I start reevaluting every movie I thought was bad, I’ll get mired in a recursive spiral. Which is how I used to end up watching The French Connection every few years. I’d get seduced by its reputation so I’d think I need to watch it, then remember 1) I’ve already seen it and 2) disliked it. Lather rinse repeat. No more!
But I still do laugh at a couple things, like the kid asking Slater "why are there so many beautiful women? Where are the normal women? “This is California!”
Kentucky Fried Movie was the film which launched ZAZ’s and John Landis’s careers, they got Airplane and he got Animal House off the back of that movie, which was a big success.
Landis was the only one involved when they did the same thing as Amazon Women on the Moon ten years later, he produced it, it wasn’t as successful, and frankly it was a lot weaker (though KFM has dated more perhaps in the years following, I am talking from remembering watching them a long time ago).
I second the recommendation, Brick is a really good movie. Joseph Gordon-Levitt does a great job in the lead role.
Yeah, I liked it, too. Who knew high school noir could work?