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Posts Tagged ‘Bruce Broughton’

Baby’s Day Out

Wednesday, July 3rd, 2024

July 1, 1994

BABY’S DAY OUT was a financial flop panned by critics, and from what I remember kind of a breaking point where for a while John Hughes became thought of more as the kids-movies-about-testicle-smashing guy instead of the beloved-‘80s-teen-coming-of-age movie guy. I don’t really have a strong opinion about his work but I found this one for the most part unfunny and annoying. I’ll try not to be too mean about it.

Hughes is the writer/producer, but the director is Patrick Read Johnson, who was a miniature model maker on 2010: THE YEAR WE MAKE CONTACT, BILL & TED’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE and WARLOCK, second unit director of DEAD HEAT, and writer/director of SPACED INVADERS. It makes sense that this would come from someone with that background, because it’s a big live action cartoon with FX by ILM, including one of the first c.g. three-dimensional cityscapes and whatever tricks are involved in making it look like an actual baby is crawling around a city being lifted around by cranes, barely avoiding getting run over, etc. (read the rest of this shit…)

Silverado

Thursday, May 24th, 2018

SILVERADO is Lawrence Kasdan’s upbeat 1985 western about some cowboys and, you know… they meet up and ride together and there’s guns and a jail and a saloon and a guy trying to steal land and all that. I don’t know, it’s a western.

This was Kasdan’s third time directing, after BODY HEAT and THE BIG CHILL. But consider that in the half decade before this he co-wrote THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK and RETURN OF THE JEDI. This is his rare directing job that has some of the vibe of those George Lucas productions. He wrote SILVERADO with his brother Mark (CRIMINAL LAW) and all these decades later he wrote SOLO with his son Jonathan (who had a bit part in SILVERADO at the age of 14) so I thought it would be a good time to write about this one.

(read the rest of this shit…)