The Contenders:
Barbra Streisand: Funny Girl (co-winner)
Vanessa Redgrave: Isadora
Katharine Hepburn: The Lion in Winter (co-winner)
Joanne Woodward: Rachel, Rachel
Patricia Neal: The Subject was Roses
Friday, August 30, 2019
Wednesday, August 28, 2019
Wednesday Horror: Halloween III: Season of the Witch
Film: Halloween III: Season of the Witch
Format: DVD from Manteno Public Library through interlibrary loan laptop.
Format: DVD from Manteno Public Library through interlibrary loan laptop.
When Halloween III: Season of the Witch (hereafter referred to just as Halloween III) was released in 1982, it was a huge disappointment. That’s kind of a shame, because it really is a cool idea. John Carpenter’s original plan was to create a new Halloween movie every year telling a completely different non-Michael Myers horror story. The fans of the original two films weren’t having it, though, making this a box office disappointment and forcing the return of the Shatner mask in subsequent movies.
In that sense, Halloween III was perhaps a little ahead of its time, or perhaps simply the wrong idea that the wrong time. Creating something like an extended anthology that would be a series of unrelated films under the same umbrella name is a pretty great idea. It’s a shame that this underperformed so much and the basic idea had to be scrapped.
Monday, August 26, 2019
Friday, August 23, 2019
Wednesday, August 21, 2019
Wednesday Horror: I Sell the Dead
Film: I Sell the Dead
Format: DVD from Mokena Community Public Library on laptop.
Format: DVD from Mokena Community Public Library on laptop.
I think horror comedy is probably not that easy to do well. To make a good horror comedy, you have to do more than just have a horror movie with some jokes in it. I Sell the Dead is a movie that is clearly aware of this. It wants to have a real horror connection here, but also doesn’t want to take itself that seriously. It would be easy to call it a throwback to more classic horror films, but that would be selling I Sell the Dead short. It’s not a throwback to older movies; instead it feels very much like a cinematic homage to old EC comics like The Vault of Horror.
This is going to be a film told in flashback. A man named Willy Grimes (Larry Fesenenden) is led to the guillotine and has his head neatly removed. We switch to a cell in the prison where Arthur Blake (Dominic Monaghan) is awaiting his own slicey end. Before he is lead to his execution, he is visited by Father Duffy (Ron Perlman) to provide something like a confession that can be used as a cautionary tale for others who might want to take up his life of crime.
Monday, August 19, 2019
Saturday, August 17, 2019
Off Script: The Devil's Advocate
Film: The Devil’s Advocate
Format: DVD from Lasalle Public Library through interlibrary loan on laptop.
Format: DVD from Lasalle Public Library through interlibrary loan on laptop.
I went into The Devil’s Advocate having seen it before, but not really remembering a lot beyond the basic plot and the fact that it starred Keanu Reeves and Al Pacino. I had forgotten or never realized that Charlize Theron, Tamara Tunie, Jeffrey Jones, and Craig T. Nelson were in this as well. The plot is one that, upon hearing it, I wondered why it hadn’t been done this fully before, or at least done to this extent. Put simply, a lawyer discovers that the guy he is working for is literally Satan. This is a big reveal at the end of the film, but I honestly don’t feel bad putting that in the opening paragraph here. First of all, the movie is called The Devil’s Advocate, and second, if you don’t realize this pretty quickly, you’re not really paying attention to the movie.
Kevin Lomax (Keanu Reeves) is a high-priced criminal lawyer currently working a case where a middle school teacher has been accused of sexual abuse of one of his students. While the young girl is on the stand giving testimony, Kevin notices his client more or less jerking off, and in this moment, he realizes that the man he is defending is guilty. He asks for a short recess and retreats to the bathroom, where we learn that this might well be the first case that he ever loses. But no, despite the horror of his client and the clear guilt, Kevin goes back into the courtroom and gets the man cleared of charges. He’s just that good.
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