ah, Brazil
a movie whose tagline should have been (but wasn't):   Mistakes? We don't make mistakes

yet we do. we do make mistakes, as in all bureaucracies, and someone will be found to blame.

Brazil is Terry Gilliam's dystopian vision of a not-too-far-future from a present that took an odd turn around the 1930's. there are many anachronisms and technical hybrids like old typewriters hooked up to tv screens and rotary telephones with amplifiers. the scenery and architecture are similarly affected: the public buildings pay hommage to 1930's German expressionism (think Metropolis), while apartments and other living spaces are oddly futuristic, with large numbers of exposed ducts everywhere.

the story references George Orwell's 1984 and Franz Kafka's The Trial.  the unnamed government bureaucracy has made a mistake by eliminating a Mr. Buttle rather than Mr. Tuttle, who's believed to be a terrorist of some kind. a low-level employee of the Ministry of Information, Sam Lowry, is assigned to investigate.  in this process, Lowry meets a neighbor of the widow Buttle, who is the same woman Lowry has been seeing in dreams.  Lowry meets the renegade Tuttle...

...and things get complicated.

the world of Brazil, while different from ours, is not that different.  consider a day at work in the Ministry of Information

and its my own damn fault

back in the olden days of b&w TVs, Friday night was fight night.  thus,

Yo, Adrian! It's me, Rocky.

Rocky was a labor of love, the little movie that did, a personal tale that became a multimillion dollar enterprise. it is also the movie that has spanned the most sequels (Rocky II, III, IV, V, VI aka "Rocky Balboa"). what's the name for this? a hexology?

the taglines for the movie are interesting, if a bit confusing.

You have a ringside seat for the bloodiest bicentennial in history! *

A Philadelphia fighter who never made the big time...He showed he could take on a challenge...and won something bigger than a championship bout.

Meet the "Italian Stallion": a small-time guy with big-time guts who yearns to be a hero...just once!**

He's a has-been battler with one dream left...and one last chance.

His whole life was a million-to-one shot.

* Rocky was released in 1976.  references to the American Revolution of 1776 Bicentennial are everywhere.

** a small-time guy with big-time guts.   I'm a 12-year-old at heart. I won't tell you what I thought it read.

Silvester Stallone gets mucho credit for writing the movie (in a 3½-day bender as legend has it) and more so for refusing to sell it to several studios that were interested in the story but wanted to cast their own choices (including Robert Redford. Robert fracking Redford. damn), but Stallone stood firm on his demand to himself play the role of Rocky Balboa.

no doubt Stallone was Rocky, but much of the movie's success was due to the fine supporting cast. Mickey, Adrian, Paulie. Apollo Creed

check the patch on Paulie's shoulder on the third pic.  Philadelphia represent, yo.

(damn. for the second day in a row I can't embed from YT.  is not just me, teh SO had the same problem)

here be the links to watch:

Trailer:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8DlBN_LLiA

Cut me Mick  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpYosdIQ9JA&feature=related

Gonna fly now (theme from Rocky)  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioE_O7Lm0I4  

                          

and because is not something I expected to find while searching for Rocky pictures:

oh weels.  I found the trailer and a couple more clips from  Babe in YT, but VOX won't let me add them or even search for them.  something about "life being cruel sometimes".  whatevs.

ahem.  Babe is a tale of a little orphan pig who looks for and eventually finds his life's role. not as the centerpiece of a holiday dinner, he hopes.

cute.  but there's been talking animals in movies before.  but not like this one, where each animal lips were synchronized with the audio, even when dubbed in other-than-English languages.  that's some serious effort.
another bit of trivia:  Babe, the pig himself was played by 58 genuine Staffordshire piglets in various stages of development.

Babe the pig isn't the only one who speaks:  everyone speaks, Ferdinand the paranoid duck, Fly, the sheperd dog who becomes a mother-of-sorts to Babe much to the displeasure of her mate Rex, the house cat, the sheep, the barn mice... they all have more lines than the laconic Farmer Hoggett and his wife ("the Boss" to the animals).

it is possible I'd seen stand-up before watching Richard Pryor Live on the Sunset Strip, but if so, Richard made me forget about it.  RPLotSS was one of the first shows that incorporated performance into stand-up

Richard covered a lot of ground in 80 minutes. a meditation on love, loss and the difference between men and women:

Walt Kelly and his friends Pogo and Porkypine still say it best:

 

"Y'know, it seems to be me this is all backwards....

We, Ever'body, ought to keep our big mouths shut all the

whole year long so's we'd have time to think of two minutes worth of

somethin' to say on the eleventh day of November."

 

 

 

 to all veterans and their families, thank you.

before he became a caricature in Meet the parents and Meet the parents II, Robert DeNiro was actually very funny in the 'comedic thriller' Midnight Run.  (NOTE: how do you know you are old? old old? when a movie you watched when first released is touted as a classic. teh ouch.  if Midnight Run were a college students it'd be finally drinking legally)

whatever a 'comedic thriller' is supposed to be, this movie was it. cant' think of any other movie that qualifies.

and to think it almost became a-for-sure-train-wreck.  check it

"one of the studio (Paramount)  proposals for the role of Jonathan Mardukas was Robin Williams*, who agreed to audition  <shudders> meanwhile, the director, Martin Brest, had auditioned and cast Charles Grodin in the role, which lead Paramount to drop out of the production and sell the rights to Universal."

a lot can go down between thursday and saturday..

the first time I saw Friday, one of the reasons it made me laugh is because Ice Cube's character, Craig, looked and had expressions exactly like my brother.  by now neither mr. Cube nor more brother look much like each other or their younger selves.
set in one of the same neighborhoods that three years earlier had been the site of riots made this light coming-of-age comedy feel hopeful.

the characters of  Friday :Craig, Smokey, Deebo, Debbie, are the best thing about it.  as memorable, as, say,those of  Fast Times at...

the time frame of the movie is the "Friday" of the title. Craig, who still lives at home (much to the dismay of his parents), has just lost his job. as he figures what comes next he becomes involved with his friend Smokey's schemes and troubles.  most of the action takes place in and about the front porch of Craig's home

trailer

"you are fuckin' the rotation!"  Smokey schools Craig on the etiquette of joint-sharing

Friday's soundtrack feature the biggest hip-hop starts of the mid-1990s.  the 'theme' song by Ice Cube

the outstanding track, Dr Dre's Keep their heads ringin

'

there are two movies follow up to Friday:  Next Friday, with most of the same actors and crew, and Friday After Next, without.  I haven't seen either, but I've heard that Friday After Next is worth watching.