Mixtape Movies – Fandango

As promised I am posting a Mixtape Movies each week to give you an idea of what I have planned. For this first one as well as the final post I am going to quickly run through the process as it may help anyone unsure of what I was thinking.

I thought it would be fun to start with the movie that gave my blog its title: Fandango. Set over a single day during a time of transition for the young characters, Dazed and Confused and American Graffiti were obvious choices. I quickly added Stand By Me involving a younger group of friends. The journey they were on seemed appropriate to fandango and with Richard Dreyfuss it shares an interesting link to American Graffiti where he plays a similar character at a different time in his life.

For my final pick I was going to go for the quintessential high school movie; The Breakfast Club. I discounted it as a contemporary film and not a nostalgic one. It is also set indoors in winter where all the others are set outdoors in summer. I then considered: Animal House, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Say Anything, Rebel Without A Cause, The Last Picture Show, Rushmore and Risky Business. Discounting all of these for one reason or another I went back to The Breakfast Club because it just fits, and that’s what matters in a mixtape. As we are translating an idea from music to movies, I have also lent towards movies with memorable music.

Finally my wildcard movie: Big Wednesday. Where all the other movies are set over a day or two Big Wednesday is set over a period of years and shows the transition not just the turning point in the life of the characters. So here is my first Movie Mixtape:

Stand By Me (1996) directed by Rob Reiner – Labor Day weekend, September 1959, four friends set off on a journey to find the body of a missing boy.

The Breakfast Club (1985) directed by John Hughes – A diverse group of kids attend a Saturday detention. What at first appears to be a simple tale of teenage rebellion against authority figures actually turns into a movie about acceptance and understanding.

Dazed and Confused (1993) directed by Richard Linklater – May 1976, It’s the last day of school in an Austin, Texas suburb. The following years seniors split their time between planning for a party that night and hazing the incoming freshman.

American Graffiti (1973) directed by George Lucas – August 1962, two high school graduates spend their last night cruising the strip in their small California town before they are due to fly off to collage.

Fandango (1985) directed by Kevin Reynolds – May 1971, a group of students set out on a final road trip from their fraternity house in Austin, Texas to the Mexican border on southwest Texas

Wildcard movie:

Big Wednesday (1978) directed by John Milius - Set over twelve years from 1962 to 1974, the life of a group of surfing friends is told against the backdrop of the Vietnam War.

Mixtape Movies

Its been a long time since my last Blogathon, many people reading this will have read or taken part in A Life in Movies, My Movie Year or Desert Island DVDs. Like my first blogathon “Desert Island DVDs” my latest idea takes an existing idea and applying it movies.

Some of you, like me will be old enough to remember mix tapes. For those that aren’t, there was time not that long ago where they were commonplace. Put simply a mixtape is a collection of songs on a compact audio cassette. In practice they were, or indeed are so much more than that. Compiled for one’s own pleasure or to give to someone else, a mixtape is an art form in itself, they certainly says something about the compiler.

Mixtapes are most relevant when shared, to give someone a collection of songs, some they will know, others they don’t but will come to love is a true gift. The best mixes are of songs that are completely unconnected but fit together perfectly. So how does this translate to movies? The idea behind Mixtape Movies is to compile a list of movies that fit together. There are no hard and fast rules but here are my guidelines:

A selection of movies with no direct connection (star, director, source material) but that fit together or compliment each other.

Around six movies, five plus one wildcard (a movie that doesn’t quite fit but still belongs).

An idea on format: A paragraph explaining the theme of the mix, a list of the selected movies with an image, poster or trailer. You may also chose to write a sentence or two on each individual film. If you want to get creative design some cover art.

Unlike previous Blogathons the mixtapes are not definitive personal lists, they are just small expressions of creativity in linking the movies. Therefore participants are welcome to submit numerous mixtapes if they wish.

I will post a homepage with a link to all participants on 22nd June. Anyone wishing to join in send me an email: fandangogroovers@gmail.com please include this link to the homepage on an Mixtape posts: http://wp.me/prVbF-2T4

To give you an idea of what i have planned I will post a Mixtape Movies each week until the 22nd.  

The Great Gatsby – The Catcher in the Rye – On the Road

Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her;
If you can bounce high, bounce for her too,
Till she cry “Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover,
I must have you!”

As I walked out of a screening of The Great Gatsby I tweeted a 140 characters review of the movie concluding that some stories are just better on the page than the screen. The problem with Gatsby is that many of its 172 pages (in my Penguin Modern Classics edition) are taken up with thoughts and descriptions, the very things that it is hard to depict in film. The most notable thing about them is that Gatsby (and all the other characters) only have a voice through our narrator Nick Carraway. Is he a reliable narrator? He is clearly enamoured with Gatsby and disillusioned with the world he lived in. Is Carraway as much the embodiment of author F. Scott Fitzgerald as Gatsby is? The disillusionment certainly lends the new film version a certain relevance and prospective today. The format does however present problems forcing filmmakers to rely on voiceovers and in the case of Baz Luhrmann’s new version words floating of the screen with the aid of 3D.

The only conclusion I can reach about this movie is that it is as good as it can be. The Robert Redford/Mia Farrow version from 1974 (directed by Jack Clayton with a screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola) is very faithful to the book but fails to capture the essence of the novel. And that was the problem, the book isn’t great because of what is going on in the story, it is great because of what is going on under the surface. I wouldn’t even go as far as to call it a subtext, it is more a feeling, an essence. Maybe the abandoned Truman Capote script would have “got it?” we will never know. Made post Watergate, the movie lacks the cynicism you would expect of the era but also misses the heroic but naïve romantic Gatsby of the novel. It lacks both the hope and the despair.

Long considered the “holy grail” of un-filmed novels, JD Salinger described his masterpiece The Catcher in the Rye as “unactable” and refused to let Hollywood adapt it. After his death in 2010 there was a lot of speculation that a film would be made. I have very mixed feelings about the prospect of a film being developed. I think it would be best if it were not made, but if it were I would want it to be the best movie it could be. That is why I would rather have seen the proposed Billy Wilder movie in the 60’s and not a big budget star vehicle made by whoever is fashionable in Hollywood at the time. But can it really be successfully filmed? If the rumours are true we will find out in about two years. If The Great Gatsby is the seminal novel of the Lost Generation, the equivalent for the Beat Generation has to be Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. Filmed last year by Walter Salles. Well made, well cast, like Luhrmann’s and every other version of Gatsby it got the look and story about right but lacked the essence of the book, again it was about as good as it could have been for what is essentially an un-filmable novel.

To give my thoughts prospective; I am a movie lover first and don’t hold with the notion that films are inferior to there source material, but I do believe that some stories are better on the page than the screen. And that is the problem with many of these great novels. In the wake of the release of The Great Gatsby I have read and heard many people (including the new movies star Leonardo DiCaprio) say how they read the book at school and didn’t think much of it. Literature is no different to music, film or any other art, it is so much better when we come to it ourselves in our own time. Anyone who reads a novel because they were forced to is going to appreciate it far less than someone who chooses to read it. The conclusion; if you have got as far as to read this last paragraph, you must have some interest in the books mentioned, so read them, if you were forced to read them at school, read them again, but only when you want to!

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Moviedrome

Any British film fan of a certain age will have fond memories of Moviedrome. For those who don’t, it was a film series shown on BBC2 between 1988 and 2000 dedicated to cult movies. More than just series of films, Moviedrome featured an introduction originally by director Alex Cox (Repo Man, Sid & Nancy, Walker) and later by Mark Cousins.

In the first two years, as an impressionable 12/13 year old I had my first experience of: The Wicker Man, Big Wednesday, The Last Picture Show, Barbarella, Johnny Guitar, The Parallax View, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), The Fly (1958), The Man Who Fell To Earth, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, The Man With The X-Ray Eyes, D.O.A. (1950), The Thing From Another World, The Incredible Shrinking Man, THX 1138, Night of the Comet, The Big Carnival aka Ace in the Hole, Alphaville, Two-Lane Blacktop, Trancers, Five Easy Pieces, Sweet Smell of Success, Sunset Boulevard.

Then in the third year something interesting happened. Alongside movies I had never seen – Yojimbo (my first Kurosawa movie), Something Wild, Carnival of Souls, Manhunter (the first and still the best Hannibal Lecktor movie), Badlands (my first Terrence Malick movie) and Performance – they started showing movies I had already seen and loved such as: Assault on Precinct 13, Brazil, Get Carter, The Terminator, An American Werewolf in London, The Beguiled, Rumble Fish and Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? Many of the films shown are well known if not that well seen. But then others really blindsided me: despite being 27 years old at the time, Sergio Corbucci’s spaghetti western Django had never been shown in UK cinema’s or on UK network television until its premier on Moviedrome in 1993.

 This continued into the fourth season with one of my all time favourite genre/B movies Mad Max II shared a double bill with Orson Welles’ bizarre documentary about fraud and fakery, F for Fake. It was around this time that they started showing more themed double bills including The Day of the Locust / The Big Knife, Alligator / Q – The Winged Serpent, Wise Blood / The Witchfinder General, but the one that stood out for me was the David Cronenberg double feature Dead Ringers and Rabid. To the best of my memory, this was the first time I had seen a Cronenberg movie, I quickly looked out all the other s and have been a fan ever since. The real appeal of the series isn’t just the movies I got to see, it was the introductions by Cox. A man passionate and knowledgeable about movies, particularly genre movies. This you must remember was at a time before the internet as we know it. A time when information about older movies wasn’t as freely available and copy of Halliwell’s Film Guide was as close to IMDB as existed at the time. Listening to Cox talk about Cronenberg’s body of work and in comparison to other horror directors and revelling in its wideness and the “vicious horror lurking behind the most mundane things” certainly gave me a greater understanding of what made certain horror movies disturbing.

Alex Cox’s final season of Moviedrome came in 1994 after a seventeen week run, many of them including double features, Cox ended with Kiss Me Deadly, Robert Aldrich’s seminal noir thriller adapted from Mickey Spillane’s novel of the same name. the movie features an interesting maguffin that Cox borrowed for his 1984 movie Repo Man. The interesting thing about the timing of this movie on Moviedrome, was that it was still fresh in my memory a few months later when I saw another movie that also borrowed the idea, Pulp Fiction. It was around this time that I started studying film at university as part of my degree course, many of the films on the watch list had been movidrome films.  The series seemed to have come to an end in 1994 but was resurrected in 1997 with Mark Cousins introducing and choosing the movies. His choices often seemed more recognisable or mainstream, or was it that I was so immersed in film by this time a had already come across them? None the less the choices were always interesting and as Cousins promised they were “movies you won’t forget”.

Since its cancellation in 2000 there has not been anything like Moviedrome on British television. Nothing, including film courses at university has ever introduced me to such a breadth and depth of weird and wonderful movies. Mark Kermode has dabbled with the formula providing movie introductions on his blog and to Film4’s Extreme Cinema season, but this is far from the scope and impact of Moviedrome. All I can do is that Alex Cox, Mark Cousins and BBC2, and appeal to BBC or any other channel to do something similar.

You can see a list of all films shown on Moviedrome HERE

Thanks for Two Million Hits

With my blog reaching a landmark two-millionth hit this week it seems like an ideal opportunity look back at what I have done so far and forward to where I am going. When I started the site back in 2009 I had no idea what I was doing or where I was going. I had no agenda and no plan, I just wanted an outlet for my ramblings on film beyond bending the ears of my friends and family. My second post was actually a collection of paragraph reviews I had previously published on Flixster via facebook. By my second month I had started writing full reviews; in 2010 I wrote little other than reviews, reviewing every film I watched in the cinema (more than a hundred) that year. My most clicked on posts came from appearing on IMDB’s now defunct “hit list” and Word Press’ Freshly Pressed. The articles that have had the most visits via search engines have been about Robin Hood, The Cars from Death Proof and Anne Hathaway as Catwoman prior to the release of The Dark Knight Rises.

The other thing I didn’t realise when I started blogging is that it isn’t a solo pursuit. It is very much a community. As well as collectives like The LAMB many blogers read, comment on and even provide content for other blogs. I certainly read many other movie blogs (see the side bar of this site for the “Blogroll” of sites I read) at the expense of printed media. Many bloggers have joined forces to create bigger better sites. While I have resisted this and stuck with a solo project, I have provided content for other sites and organised a few blogathons; winning LAMMY for best blogathon three times. I have also appeared on The Matineecast and MILFCAST pod-casts.

Where am I going? The simple answer, just like the day I started, I don’t know. I still have no agenda or plan. Forgoing any format or deadline I am still happy to post when I have time and about what I feel like talking about. The important thing for me has always been that I write about what I want to write about and hope that people want to read it. As there has never been a commercial element to the site I have never felt the need or desire to chased extra traffic. I been asked about the possibility of buying my domain name and start accepting advertising, but I like the idea that as long as Word Press exists my innate ramblings.

All that leaves me to do is thank those who have helped, supported or simply read Fandango Groovers Movie Blog in that past four and bit years.

Groovers Video Vault 7: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)

With Star Trek Into Darkness, the sequel to the surprisingly good reboot opening this weekend it seemed like a good time to look back at an older Star Trek movie. And as I own the movie on VHS it is also joins my ongoing video vault feature. It is often argued that The Wrath Of Khan is the best of the original movies, it probably is but I cant help enjoying The Undisclosed Country.

The Enterprise is no longer the gleaming new flagship of the federation, like its crew, it is old and ready to be superseded. The Next Generation TV show had already been running for four years by this time. Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise are sent on a peace mission to escort the Klingon Chancellor to negotiations on Earth. When the Chancellor is murdered Kirk and McCoy are arrested and put on trial. They have to escape, find the real killers and prevent the new president of the Federation from being assassinated at the conference. Put simply all in a days work for Kirk, Spock and the rest of the old regulars.

Filled with comedy moments and references to the previous movie and TV show, it is a fitting final mission for the Enterprise’s original crew. The real appeal of the movie is a simple but effective conspiracy plot making the movie a perfect blend of whodunit and action adventure. The story is credited to Leonard Nimoy who also executive produces and reprises his role as Spock. After the dreadful Star Trek V: The Final Frontier directing duties are taken away from William Shatner in favour of Nicholas Meyer whose previous credits include Wrath Of Khan. The plot feels very much of the time, made in the late 80’s / early 90’s with an ecological disaster providing the catalyst for the plot and the Klingons empire in crisis shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is also full of timeless ideals and themes as you would expect for anything carrying Gene Roddenberry’s name. All the familiar old faces return and are joined by some new ones. Look out for a supporting performances from Kim Cattrall, Iman and Michael Dorn (Worf in The Next Generation) as well as a cameo from Star Trek fan Christian Slater (his mother, Mary Jo Slater was the movies Casting Director).

As the final outing for the original crew, The Undiscovered Country is an apt title. As explained in the movie dialogue is a reference to the future from the “To be, or not to be” speech from Hamlet (translated from the original Klingon. We aren’t just looking back at the history of the franchise but forwards to its future and the message of the movie is very much about putting aside differences to help make the best future possible. As mentioned this is a movie made at the beginning of the final decade of the 20th century. A centenary that saw two world wars and humanity found many new ways of destroying itself. The literary references don’t end there with Shakespeare, there are also mentions for Milton and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (an ancestor of Spock). A lot of the Shakespeare quotes come from Christopher Plummer who is clearly having a great time a superbly villainous Klingon, but they are at their most poignant when spoken by Kirk who actual has a small character arc within the movie as he finds a little humility. Possibly not the best Star Trek movie, but it is up there with the best and it is certainly one of the most fun.

Possible Inspirations For The Cars from Death Proof

1970 Dodge Challenger: The most directly referenced car in the movie. Not only is it the same make and model in the same colour, but Kim (Tracie Thoms) and Zoe (Zoë Bell) describe it as a “Vanishing Point car”

1969 Dodge Charger: Stuntman Mike’s (Kurt Russell ) Charger appears to reference two movies. It has the same license number as the ’69 Charger in Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry (938 DAN) and looks just like the Charger involved in a classic car chase with Bullitt’s Mustang.

1972 Mustang: the Mustang is full of references including to his own movies. The has a colour scheme reminiscent of the outfit worn by The Bride (Uma Thurman) in Kill Bill (itself a reference to Bruce Lee) and the Kawasaki motorcycle she rides. The livery is also similar to the 1972 Ford Granada Coupé (sometimes incorrectly referred to as a Mustang) in Alexandre Aja’s French horror/thriller Haute Tension (Switchblade Romance in the UK). It is very similar to the 1971 Mustang to Eleanor from the original Gone in 60 Seconds (and not the remake Gone in Sixty Seconds as Kim reminds us “NOT that Angelina Jolie Bullshit”). If you look closely at the rear of the car it says “Lil’ Pussy Wagon” referencing the Pussy Wagon from Kill Bill.

1971 Chevrolet Nova: Unlike the other cars in the movie, Stuntman Mike’s Chevy Nova doesn’t appear to be a direct reference to any movie, but look a little deeper and there are lots of references. It shares a licence plate with Bullitt’s Mustang (JJZ 109). The Duck hood ornament (also used later in the movie on the Charger) is copy of the one seen on the Rubber Duck’s Mack truck in Convoy (1978). A more tenuses link is the primer grey paintjob, a possible reference to the 1955 Chevrolet One-Fifty from Two-Lane Blacktop (1971).