I first saw this film a long while ago on a site called Atom Films, now atom.com. It was likely the best film I saw when I did frequent it. It’s a simple and beautiful film that tells a wonderful tale of first love and exploits many filmic elements well.
I was fortunate to find this film again after so long although in three parts. With all of them posted below it should flow well enough.
The Walking Dead (Image Comics/Robert Kirkman)
It’s been a while since I posted one of these and much of the reason is because I usually touch upon a number of properties and I am left to ponder a while as I amass enough new-formed opinion to justify a new entry. However, three very specific things have occurred to me since I last discussed comics and the movies.
First, being a question of form in which the adaptation is made. In my return to reading comics, now more avidly than ever, there is nothing I have read more of than The Walking Dead. It really does play out like a post-apocalyptic soap opera with murder and zombies in the mix. So much so that reading Compendium One or the trades is preferable to monthly for that particular series. Having said that I admit having only seen the pilot of the show but two things I do know are it was meant to be a television show and I applaud Robert Kirkman for giving the show a different direction than the comic based on what I know. It’d be next to impossible to make a motion picture of The Walking Dead as satisfying as the book. The task would be rather herculean especially considering that the comic is still ongoing. Similarly, I have not read George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice books, which is an itch I may soon need to scratch, however, one only needs to watch the first season of Game of Thrones to see it was meant for television, more specifically a drama on a cable network where the story will not be censored or interrupted by commercials. In certain ways, the serial treatment makes it more immersible once you get into the extras on the Blu-Ray it has you.
Maisie Williams and Sean Bean in Game of Thrones (HBO)
The moral of the examples above is that again the supremacy of the motion picture as the most desirable vehicle for adaptation is quickly being shown to be a fallacy. Some stories are more conducive to other storytelling modes and fans should take note and think about how, if at all, they want to see their favorite works reinterpreted.
And this kind of leads directly to my next point: one of the most anticipated films of the year is The Avengers. Part of the reason why is that Marvel has had a string of hit films which have featured a member of the superteam and thus though The Avengers may be in theory a new property there is a built-in fanbase. Conversely, not that this is an original notion, but DC is also planning a Justice League film. The main difference being there may be casting incongruities and all the major members of the League haven’t had their own film, or a hit, etc. So how can the Justice League film possibly come close to the The Avengers?
Marvel 1985 (Marvel)
Well, they can’t turn back time and make a Flash movie starring [Insert guaranteed box-office draw] here that makes infinitely more money than The Green Lantern but what they can do is akin to industrial espionage. Allow me to explain, when I was in Orlando recently as I was in Universal Studio’s Comictown I stopped in the Marvel store and found a trade paperback of Marvel 1985, a mini-series that came out just before I returned to comics. I really enjoyed it as a whole but what I really liked about it, and what I noted, was it could serve as a great introduction to the Marvel Universe to someone who knows zero about it based on the story it tells. Now clearly, the story of 1985 makes it such that it can be an introduction but it made me realize that if there is a character, or other device in The Justice League film that acts as a liaison between the film and the neophyte audience member it might just work better than expected.
The Justice League (DC Comics)
In conclusion, the method of adaptation usually can be said to tap in to the spirit of the work being adapted, or it should ideally. For example, after seeing Tintin I felt that motion capture would be a great treatment for other animated properties, especially those given lackluster live action treatments like Asterix, which I was glad to discover has been most recently adapted in a hand-drawn feature called Asterix and the Vikings.
Asterix and the Vikings (M6 Films)
Jack Wild and Billie Hayes in Pufnstuf (Universal)
As those who know me, and if such a person exists, cyberstalk me know I created this blog after writing on another site, which shall remain nameless, for a while. The point is, I have material sitting around waiting to be re-used on occasion I will re-post them here. Some of those reviews may have been extemporaneous at the time but are slightly random now, hence the new title and little intro, regardless enjoy! This review pertains to the DVD release.
The timing of the release of Pufnstuf, the motion picture adaptation made in 1970 of the popular TV series, was no coincidence. Across the top of the cover is blazoned from the producers of Land of the Lost. However, this kind of tie-in advertising on a cover can be misleading.
Just from seeing the trailer and a few episodes of the original Land of the Lost series anyone can tell the two are vastly different. Land of the Lost box sets are likely likewise brandished “Now a Major Motion Picture.” Even though the series and the release are as dissimilar as The Brandy Bunch renditions were it’s not necessarily a bad thing it’s just another case of caveat emptor.
Pufnstuf, as a motion picture looks almost exactly like it did as a show, puppety costumes à la Sesame Street and some times two-dimensional set pieces. That’s what the show was. Having never seen the movie what’s great to see was the occasional cinematic device thrown in to spice things up, usually during songs like fast- and slow-motion, quick cuts (like New Wave speed), matte painting (some better than others), creative use of stock footage, image flips, cuts to orange (of all colors) and even a slightly canted shot or two.
For film fans many of the voices, as you may or may not know are inspired by old movie stars, it’s the cartoon logic of funny for adults and kids but for vastly different reasons, examples being: John Wayne, W.C. Fields, Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney.
For fans of the show it’s an old-fashioned origin story basically replacing the theme song and showing how it all got started and it even answered a few questions or went slightly more in depth like: how Jimmy and Freddy the Flute first met, why a British kid is on a crazy island full of anthropomorphic Americans and adding an outsider element to make the fact that he’s alone away from his family OK, if we ever thought of it. I also appreciate the fact that the parents didn’t appear, they were ghosts. As they should be in a kids story.
The film features a pretty good cameo by Mama Cass, who of course sings but oddly you don’t mind the wait because she’s pretty funny. All the songs are pretty good and original to the film. Jack Wild carries most of them and handles them with his typical ease and flair.
Typically, when dealing with a television show being turned into a movie when I have been a fan of the show. I want to see something akin to the best episode ever, if the film is intended to be a straight remake and not a reboot or spoof. What you get with Pufnstuf is just that, everything at its absolute peak. Billie Hayes is hilarious in what is definitely her best rendition of Witchiepoo. In an episode there would be cheesy jokes that would make you roll your eyes or sigh, a lot of the jokes here are still cheesy but they work. The only thing that comes close to it was the aired only once episode, which is on the DVD of the series, where mushrooms were eaten, no lie. The music and consistency of this puts it over the top.
This DVD is a must for any Krofft fan who enjoys their creations as they were first intended, not how they’re being reintroduced to the world.
Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum in 21 Jump Street (Columbia/MGM)
One interesting aside that I realized as this review has become somewhat delayed is that there has been some internet chatter contrasting this film, which was a dramatic TV show that metamorphosed to a comedic film with Dark Shadows. This film has been well received and the Dark Shadows trailer has been met with much disgust and vitriol. Aside from the obvious differences between film and trailer the other thing that bears mentioning at leas from my perspective is that you can even turn something from drama to comedy or horror to comedy so long as it perceived as funny. This film always looked funny and it’s even funnier than advertised what we’ve seen of Dark Shadows thus far is not as amusing. In the interest of digression, let us continue with the film we know about (for it has been released) that successfully change the predominant genre it plays in yet mixes in elements of others within it and allow me to end the Dark Shadows conversation by saying I am holding my breath that I do like it but am now very anxious.
Now it’s not the most difficult thing in the world to make incompetent law enforcement funny. It just usually is but this film does so in a very interesting way. It starts with the personal connection between the two leads and then after one stasis scene reverses field as they’re in the police academy and see that they can help each other. Eventually this convenient arrangement made for mutual interests evolves into a friendship. So they pass but they’re not very good in the real world and it leads into their being reassigned and thus things proceed. What makes it even more interesting form that point forward is that there is some tongue-in-cheek, meta treatment of police procedural film plots best exemplified by Ice Cube playing the Angry Police Captain, who is angry and he knows it.
Yet the film isn’t only content with just making a hilarious undercover cop spoof as they go undercover in a high school (as they are, according to the captain, Justin Beaver and Miley Cyrus looking mofos) it does it’s own interpretation of your standard high school film. Yet the best thing about it is not only does the hilarity escalate as they stumbled their way to a plan of action as to how best to infiltrate the drug ring in the school but slowly and surely their prior high school personas invert.
This inversion is facilitated and intimated immediately by the positive generational commentary in the film. The tropes that have been the staple of high school films for years are becoming stale in part because the subcultures of the student body are more diverse and fragmented than ever before and thus in this film even as it only sketched its youthful characters broadly it renders a more positive and complete portrayal of a student body than you usually see in such films.
All of these plot elements are great but comedies perhaps more so than any other genre is truly brought to life by the performers on screen and this may seem like the unlikeliest pair you ever heard of but Hill and Tatum really do make magnificent foils. Hill really has been flexing his muscles lately and provides many of the punchlines here but Tatum as straight man does have his moments including some dramatic ones that add to the surprising depth of the film.
The film is layered but it is a comedy and I scattered the word funny about the first few paragraphs of this review yet the time comes when discussing any comedy to decide: How funny is it? My initial reaction is one I have not wavered from, it is likely the most complete and engaging comedy I’ve seen since Anchorman. With the important caveat that Anchorman was a film which grew on me. I liked it at first and grew to adore it.
What truly puts this film above most is that the laughs stay consistent but all the other tropes, complications and necessities of plot whether the police procedural ones or the high school movie ones get folded in seamlessly. Not once did I groan because such and such scene was coming up and I knew it would it’d prolong the conclusion of the film. A lot of that is also attributed to the writing and performance. In liking the characters and having them already split watching them is easy whether even though they have fought.
21 Jump Street is a hilarious film, which tells a pretty good crime tale and a great high school story when all those things are combined you end up with a pretty fantastic and special movie.
John Belushi in 1941 (Universal/Columbia)
Owing to the fact that I have decided to honor Steven Spielberg this year with my version of a Lifetime Achievement Award I figured it was an appropriate time to dust off some old reviews I wrote when I took a course on his work. The remarks still hold true, he is an amazing filmmaker.
Here is concrete proof that comedy is unquestionably the hardest genre to succeed in. Without trying to get inside Spielberg’s head and trying to determine exactly what it was that he was trying to do with this film, one can look at it as is and be left scratching their head. It is at best funny in small patches and most definitely a humongous waste of talent both on and off camera. I applaud Spielberg for not only making a huge departure from his big successes (Close Encounters and Jaws) but also for poking fun at the latter in the opening sequence of the latter film. This stands out as one of the few truly comic sequences throughout a film that is plagued by many difficulties. This film especially pales in retrospect considering that I’ve laughed much more during his action/adventure and sci-fi films and this film doesn’t seem to make any sincere satirical jabs at the paranoia in the United States following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, nor does it really succeed at being a farce. In its better moments, which were few and far between, 1941 is hysterical. More often than not, however, 1941 is poorly executed slapstick, ham-handed, off-the-wall nonsense that follows the wrong characters and actors.
So that this isn’t a complete diatribe there are some wonderful performances to be found here but as I’ve mentioned above these people make their exit from the film much too early. Probably the best performance in this all-star cast is that of Slim Pickens. He delivers not only some of the best lines of the film but delivers them only as he could with that imitable voice of his. Elisha Cook is also there but that’s about all what strikes me as really being odd is how ill-utilized these actors were. Most of the cast was a mish-mash of SCTV and Saturday Night Live stars who really didn’t do anything noteworthy. Dan Aykroyd got to do some of his shtick but his performance was undermined by some stupid writing, when towards the end for no reason known to man he went bonkers and exclaimed, “I’m a bug,” while he had wrapped oranges over his eyes with pantyhose. It got worse though John Candy, one of the funniest people who ever lived was just there for seemingly no reason, it was as if the casting director went amuck knowing that Spielberg could get any actors he wanted and got big names to do meaningless roles. Another under used player was Joseph P. Flaherty who provided the film with one of its best lines following the USO riot (“Maybe in the future we could have some Negroes come in and we’ll have a race riot.”) was also hardly there. Then there was Belushi, who I’ve always found overrated, doing an annoying version of the Penguin from Batman. He was occasionally funny in this and in other roles but overall I was unimpressed.
The big problem this film had was that it was more likely to lose its audience before tying all the storylines together. The additional factor of having the last 45 minutes of the film being one explosion, crash or pratfall after another didn’t help much at all.
Another factor that didn’t help this film was that on home video (apparently this version is somewhat different than the theatrical release) it is 2 hours long, it’s very difficult to do a comedy that lasts more than 90 minutes long.
About the only thing that made me realize that this was a Spielberg film was the inclusion of the Dumbo screening, which was both fitting to the story and helped me make it through that part of that performance because it is one of Disney’s finer works. The score was also a non-entity that I didn’t even think Spielberg worked with John Williams. The writing was also schizophrenic, spotty and unusually unfunny most of the time and I was almost shocked to find that Robert Zemeckis had a hand in writing it. It’s as if everyone was embarrassed with the end result so that there were no opening credits only closing ones.
The Movie Rat 