The Writer's Poke

I'm sure I only noticed this because I watched Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987) and Weird Science (1985) back-to-back, but both John Hughes films freeze on the chaos/change agent character at the end of the film. In Planes, the freeze is on the smiling Del (John Candy); and in Weird Science, the freeze is on the winking, smiling, and now high school boys' gym coach, Lisa (Kelly LeBrock). I thought about that for a while, because maybe Del and Lisa are more similar than you'd think on the surface. In any event, they serve similar purposes in each movie. But when you start watching Weird Science, you're not worried about the freeze shot at the ending. In fact, although I've seen the film a number of times, I've never thought about it being a "Hughes" movie. However, his Chicago fingerprints are all over it. (Even in Planes, another movie I don't immediately think of as a Hughes movie, when they show the exterior of Neal's -- Steve Martin -- ...

This is a John Hughes film. I never really think about it as such, because Steve Martin and John Candy are front in center in my mind. I should mention that this movie utilizes micro-scenes from known actors very well. By that, I mean, the movie opens with Kevin Bacon and Steve Martin (Neale) racing for the same New York taxi. Bacon is only in the movie for that scene, maybe three minutes tops, but it's a cool scene, and it was nice that Bacon played the part. It seems to add to the movie. Even shorter, Ben Stein plays an airline counter agent. He has one line and is in the movie for less that 20 seconds. But you notice him. The use of "micro-scene performances" by known actors like Bacon and Stein interests me, because sometimes they seem "important" and "useful" when the parts are being played by someone we recognize. Other times, you might notice someone in a movie with a bit part, and you are left wondering, "Why did they bother to agree to be...

I thought of this movie as an invitation to visit Steve Martin's brain. It started out weird, but if you want to see the really weird stuff, check out the John Lithgow deleted scenes. L.A. Story might be an appropriate title, but it's not too memorable. I remember "Dirty Rotten Scandals" and "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles," but when I woke up the next morning, it took me a minute to remember what this film was called. It works within the Rom Com genre, and it features Harris (Steve Martin) and Sara (Victoria Tennant). He's a "wacky weekend weatherman," -- you have to be wacky in L.A., because the weather supposedly never changes. She's a British journalist in L.A. on assignment. In real life, Martin and Tennant were actually married when this film was made; I read a review or two that suggested that maybe Tennant wasn't the best person to cast in the role, but I thought she was fine, and a good contrast to Sandy (Sarah Jessica Parker)...

I wondered about this one. Lon Cheney plays the parts of two Manchurians -- the old Wu and the son Wu. The idea of a white actor playing an Asian character doesn't 100% bother me, but I do wish the character of Nang Ping (Wu's daughter) had been played by an Asian actress (she's played by the white actress (Renée Adorée). Basil Gregory (Ralph Forbes) will fall in love with Nang, and they will kiss and stuff, which means to meet "code" or society restrictions, Nang had to be played by a white actress -- I'm thinking a white actor and an Asian actress probably weren't allowed to kiss on screen in 1927. (So the idea that a white guy and an Asian woman could fall in love is really progressive, if you think about it.) Anyway, the old Wu is somewhat progressive. He wants to raise his son as a good Chinese, but he also understands that for his son to be ready to live in the modern world, it will help for him to know the ways of the West. Mr. Gregory (Holmes Herbe...

It's weird that Lon Chaney plays a mad scientist who has taken over the old asylum, but he's not really the star of the show. Instead, we follow the local town dufus whose been told that to succeed in life, he just needs to follow his ingenuity.  I suppose I could write a longer review about this one, but it wasn't scary, and nothing about the simple story was all that interesting. At the beginning of the movie, I guess one way that they got the mad scientist bodies to work on was to cause car accidents. They would lower a mirror down from a tree onto the road, and then the driver would see his own car in the reflection and have an accident in the attempt to avoid a head-on crash.  Local dufus finds the three guys in some sort of dungeon at the asylum. One is the asylum's director, and another is the guy who had the car crash at the beginning of the movie.  Rating: 1.5/5 stars

Certain actors seem to pop up in movies together. Anyway, Tara Fitzgerald and Sam Neill have worked with Grant in other films, and I just wonder how the casting works, and how often actors ask for, request, or suggest other actors to appear with them in different films.  In this one, Antony (Hugh Grant) is a clergyman who is going to visit Australian artist, Norman Lindsay (Sam Neill), with the purpose of maybe convincing him to tone down the obscenity in his paintings? Antony acknowledges that nudity can be completely fine, but there's a difference between nudity and obscenity. He brings Estella (Tara Fitzgerald), his wife, along.  The Sirens are Norman's models. Norman's compound and studio is somewhere inconveniently located in the Australian outback, and as it turns out, Estella and Antony get stuck there for a few days. Sheela (Elle Macpherson) and Pru (Tziporah Malkah) are the main two Sirens, but maybe they're not the only ones to count as "sirens." Nev...

Original title: Remando al viento So the film has an English-speaking cast, but the director and crew speak Spanish. I got to be honest, I probably spent more time thinking about why a Spanish-made film was being shot in English than I did about the story being told. This is Lord Byron and the Shelleys in 19th century Europe. They were young and poetic. They agreed to write some stuff, and when Mary Shelley (Lizzy McInnerny) wrote Frankenstein -- not something the film ever dwells on -- people close to her start dying. She feels cursed, and "the Monster" starts following her around. I enjoyed the settings, as well as seeing Grant and Elizabeth Hurley on screen (she played Claire Clairmont), but beyond retaining a basic knowledge of the underlying story itself, I know this is one of those kinds of movies that I will watch and quickly forget. Although "the Monster" is featured in the film, this one was not shot as a horror movie, nor is "the Monster" meant t...