"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

Posts Tagged ‘Mr. T’

Spy Hard

Thursday, May 28th, 2026

May 24, 1996

I’m not saying this as a complaint, this is not why I didn’t like the movie, but I was kinda surprised to watch SPY HARD thirty years later and find out that it was not in any way a parody of DIE HARD. I mean obviously it’s a spoof of spy movies, and also a few action movies, and also a few random other things pulled out of a box with a blindfold. But the only thing Inoticed that made me think of DIE HARD was a shot of plummeting much like the death of Hans Grueber. But this isn’t the villain at the end, it’s the hero’s lady in a prologue.

You all remember how it went down. Leslie Nielsen was a veteran actor going back to the ‘50s, then the Zucker Brothers put him in AIRPLANE! and found out how fun it was to see him acting serious about ridiculous things. So they made him the star of their tv show Police Squad!, which moved to the big screen as NAKED GUN: FROM THE FILES OF POLICE SQUAD!, which then got two sequels, and now many of us mainly knew Nielsen as a comedy guy. So then directors unaffiliated with Zucker-Abrams proceeded to use him in less successful (both artistically and financially) spoofs, and they either weren’t nearly as good at this style of comedy or just got to the party too late and we were already sick of this type of shit. In the case of SPY HARD I’d say it was both. (read the rest of this shit…)

Baseketball

Tuesday, September 4th, 2018

Okay, I’m not gonna look up who it was, and I forgive you, but somebody asked me to include BASEKETBALL in this series, and I’m a people pleaser, so I watched it. I hope you’re happy.

You see, the idea of BASEKETBALL is that it’s like baseball, and yet also it’s like basketball. That’s why it’s called baseketball. The first syllable is the first syllable of the word “baseball” and the second and third syllables are the second and third syllables of the word “basketball.” But the thing is those are usually two totally different sports. That’s why combining them into one is silly silly laughs for everyone. It makes no sense!

Okay, to be fair, this was not originally intended as a topic for a movie. Apparently director David Zucker and friends made up the sport and played it for ten years and it became a big thing in their neighborhood (“inspired by a true story” say the production notes), and maybe he looked into the abyss and the abyss looked back at him so he thought it was acceptable as an idea for a movie. Or maybe he just wanted a movie for his friends to watch. (read the rest of this shit…)

Penitentiary II

Tuesday, February 27th, 2018

PENITENTIARY II (1982) is that thing we love where a director has been burning it up on the fringes and then they get a little more resources behind them and they really go for it. Still low budget and outside of the mainstream, but more professional than the first PENITENTIARY (1979) or the two other features writer-director Jamaa Fanaka made while still a student at UCLA. So he’s still hungry and crazy, but able to accomplish more. It’s one of the beautiful parts of life.

And you know this shit is gonna be good when there’s an opening scene and then a full credit sequence set to grimy DOLEMITE-esque blaxploitation funk and then a long STAR WARS style scroll explaining in more detail than necessary what’s going on.

The score is by Jack Wheaton, additional music by Marvin Gaye’s guitarist and musical director Gordon Banks. I tend to think that outside of the electro stuff like Zapp and “Atomic Dog,” funk no longer existed in the ’80s. Tell that to these opening credits, though: (read the rest of this shit…)

Rocky III

Wednesday, November 18th, 2015

tn_rockyiiiSome important and possibly relevant events happened in the world during the three years between ROCKY II and ROCKY III. Disco records were blown up at baseball games, Pac-Man and Donkey Kong were released, some motherfucker shot J.R. and the U.S. boycotted the Olympics in Moscow. Minutes after Ronald Reagan (THE KILLERS) was sworn into office the Iran hostages were totally coincidentally released, and the next day the first DeLorean DMC-12 was built. Later MTV went on the air. All the sudden it was 1982.

Movies had been changing too. ROCKY was the biggest movie of ’76, but of course ’77 brought us STAR WARS, and since then we’d also had THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK and RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. It would be quite some time before another drama was the #1 movie of a year (not until RAIN MAN in 1989 I believe).

The ROCKY series evolves with the times, and the transition to the ’80s is a drastic one. After the traditional Bill Conti fanfare (title scrolling over championship belt) and end-of-the-last-one recap we get a moment of contemplation and then… jugga jugga jugga jugga BRRRMMMMP!…BRRMMP BRRMMP BRRMMP! electric guitars and fireworks. “Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor is as purely, un-self-consciously motivational-speakerish as “Gonna Fly Now,” and even more audaciously grooving and tackily emblematic of its era. The song is so ridiculous it’s kind of a betrayal of the dirty, street level reality of the series so far, but it’s dead perfect for this slick new ROCKY of the aerobics-and-American-flags Reagan years. (read the rest of this shit…)