Footloose (2011)

directed by Craig Brewer (2011)

The town that banned dancing!  This is a ridiculous premise for a movie, but I guess when you're doing remakes from the 80's you're forced to stay within the confines of whatever terrible concept.  I mean, you don't absolutely have to, some remakes only borrow the name to bring brand familiarity to the game.  This remake is not one of those though.  Too bad. It could have been about a dude who dances his way across America in a wheelchair after a terrible tour in Iraq,  or maybe a guy who couldn't stop dancing, like in that fairytale The Red Shoes. Or even a thiller solving the mystery of all the feet washing up on the shores of B.C.

Whatever, I don't remember the original very well except for the song and Kevin Bacon dancing around in tight jeans and cowboy boots to the Kenny Loggins' song.  I have vague recollections of the plot.

Actually, watching the remake revived more memories, like it was John Lithgow doing the preacher dude, I mean he wasn't doing him haha,  just portraying him.  This time it was Dennis Quaid playing the holy roller, and I kept thinking that it was kind of appropriate that Jerry Lee Lewis got all religious and turned his back on rock and roll.

I don't remember why the town banned dancing in the original, but I'm assuming it's because of a terrible drinking and driving auto wreck which wouldn't have happened if there hadn't been dancing before that to loosen the morals of the kids towards all that boozing for sexy time made them forget about how stupid it is to drink and drive, at least that's what happens in the remake.  The accident is pretty shocking.  I didn't expect it because I forgot that it was about a town that banned dancing and I was just enjoying the opening party dancing scene.  Gotta gotta cut loose.  I have to tell you it was a pretty harsh contrast and brought the start of the movie way down low.

When the Kevin Bacon replacement (Kenny Wormald) goes to school and almost gets into a fight with a tall hayseed, (Miles Teller),  I suddenly remembered, oh yeah, Christopher Penn  (RIP) played the local, because this guy is totally doing Christopher Penn doing that hayseed part.  It was my fave part of the movie.  Hayseed don't know how to dance so he's got to learn in a montage sequence, first the Kevin Bacon replacement's little cousins are teaching him their cute little girl dance moves - I guess they know the moves from watching TV or the kids teach each other, dance knowledge was only suppressed 3 years back, so I dunno, these girls are young, they probably only remember a town without dancing so dance osmosis potential has got to be the highest at their young age.   Whatever, it's a cute sequence, him all bumbly toed and then bringing it home with proper line dancing and what not.  I liked him the best in the film. Christopher Penn replacement, you dun good.

IMO, for a movie about kids being all footloose, there is too much emphasis on NON-dancing.  I know this is a town that banned dancing and the kids have to dance in secret, like the drive in hoedown, (btw it was kinda ridiculous that the old dude was smuggling in the crunk sounds - did this town ban the internets too?)  I just think there should have been more depictions of secret dance clubs and West Side Storyesque dance fighting or something, because the replacement activity - reckless car driving at the track, was not as much fun.  I mean it was OK, just I didn't expect Fast and Furious in the fields ya know?  And really, not as many people can race cars as can dance.  And the only racing that has a plot point is actually school bus racing which is not that fast to be honest.

The movie is dumb, but it's based on a dumb movie.  It's fun, but it has stretches of boredom and eye rollery stupid dialogues.  I particularly liked "You're hotter than socks on a rooster." I think the original was the same though.  Still I think the original is probably better.  The 80's version has better acting, but less dancing, though more iconic dancing I'm guessing.  I'm not sure though, the angry dance scene in the remake is maybe better, for sure more over the top with the emotive expression.  He is really venting with his choreography. They are both campy, so probably hit the old one if you're a retro hound with principles of holding out against the future or if you're feeling the 80's and want to see old stars when they were young. Check the remake if you want to hear remixes of the old tunes and  see new stars before they fizzle or shoot up or  should that be out? Who knows, both probably, this is the folks what live in n Hollyweird, and odds are some of these folk will end up in rehab.   Not Miles Teller I hope.  He's got a bright future I'd bet.

Blow Out

directed by Brian De Palma (1981)

I caught most of this last night and even not seeing the whole thing, I can understand why it was a failure at the box office.  It's got a gigantic plot hole that makes you totally lose all belief in the story, then it piles on a terrible ending that makes you hate the hero too.

John Travolta is a movie sound FX guy who's doing foley work.  He's capturing sounds with his super sensitive mic near a bridge and that puts him right position to record an accident.   He sees a car go off the rails - an apparent blow out - and rescues a woman in the car, saving her from drowning.  The driver dies, and he's a Governor, the apparent candidate to beat for the next US Presidential election.  I missed all this and started watching at the accident aftermath in the hospital, but I really didn't miss much at all, because somebody was filming the accident too, and you get to see that footage later, ad infitum, mostly in flashback form when Travolta listens to his recording.

So what's wrong this movie?  It comes down to 2 things, plausibility and accountability.  It's a conspiracy flick and I'm fine with that, I think there are all kinds of conspiracies naturally going on all the time, that's not unbelievable.  It's the way Travolta's character treats Nancy Allen, the supporting woman in peril character.  On the one hand he rescues her, then he's always manipulating her, because he likes her, but also because he wants her to stick around so she can help him figure out who caused the accident.  His interactions with her are so self serving, then for no plausible reason at all,  he deliberately puts her in danger. Really it felt very misogynistic, and it made no sense except to set up the finale. Besides, the bit where he uses her scream in a horror film?   Man, that took the cake.  Callous much?

I did like all the behind the scenes film and sound editing stuff.  Film geekery good times.

It's a cool period piece with lots of street scene detail too.  And the acting is good.  I bought Travolta's frustration and bitterness, though Nancy Allen's naive prostitute was a little too cliche.  Dennis Franz as a sleazy photographer and John Lithgow as a psycho henchman were especially good in their small roles.

It's such a good looking flick that I wanted to like it so I was disappointed how brainless it goes in the final reel. Could be it was better before 2 reels were lost.  Parade footage was reshot at a cost of $750,000 and  maybe there were more crucial details in those reels that went missing.  Was there stuff that couldn't be restaged due to circumstances, and that compromised the integrity of the story?  Maybe that's giving too much credit to action sequences saving the day though.

It's a very meta movie about reality as a construct, and how media is not necessarily an accurate reflection of reality, that it too is an abstraction that can be distorted to shape and influence the world as well.  I liked that - there's lots of clever in this film.  Just the ending I hated.  It's so dumb and melodramatic.

I have to say in spite of my misgivings, I enjoyed it.  I was captivated by the flick from the moment I started watching it, even minus the beginning.  De Palma's stuff is entertaining even and perhaps particularly when you don't like the characters.  He does pulpy and bizarre really well and I always look forward to seeing whatever he does.  I think Tarantino really learnt a lot from him visually.

Redtails

directed by  Anthony Hemingway (2012)

George Lucas does Star Wars X-Wing dogfights in the original old school style going to the origin story of it all with the WWII Flying Aces or whatever the pilot dudes were called BITD.  It's about a company of black pilots, the Tuskagee Airmen, at least that's the angle for the making of this particular flick, so there's racism and patriotism and all that other WWII propaganda hoohaa brouhaha going on in this.

I caught the last half of it, got to see the dogfights and that was fine with me.  I missed most of the bonding and training, all the establishing of the stereotyped characters, the hero and the reckless rebel, the stoic Sargent, and all the baby faced boys toughening into REAL MEN TM.  I also missed most of the overcoming the honky ofay opposition to an all black pilot battalion.  I bet it was tedious, because the part I did see had enough corny dialogue to carry me through a few shitty movies.  It does have Terrence Howard going for it though. I saw him once in real life and he's so pretty I wouldn't have minded his character development scenes much at all.  There's a whole bunch of pretty men in this actually, but I only recognised a couple.  Cuba Gooding Jr.'s character with his jaunty cocked cap, reminded me of Hogan, from Hogan's Heroes.  Andre Royo, Bubbles from the Wire plays a mechanic and there were some white people I recognised too, like Byran Cranston from Breaking Bad.

It's a pretty crappy flick, about par for a propaganda war glamourising production in its plot, but it's got really shitty dialogue and the pacing is off. About the best thing going for it, is it's set in the only good war, with NAZI Germany enemy combatants to ruthlessly blow up and destroy.  That, and the pretty mens and planes.  Plus it's a black story so the racism issues are important, it's just a shame it's not done very well.  There was another movie made in 1995 based on the same story, called The Tuskagee Airmen, but I haven't seen it.  It's on youtube though.  Lawrence Fishburne?  John Lithgow?  Even has Cuba Gooding Jr. again.  Looks better than this one Holmes.

There's one thing I don't get about war movies.  How can you make such a terrible thing into something noble?  I mean really, war means killing ACTUAL people, destroying fathers and brothers and mothers and daughters and babies! and that's not even considering all the material destruction, like homes and roads and shops and offices and bridges and schools, museums libraries factories etc etc.  All that doesn't even count, because the enemy is less than and smashing them is the job.   What they want? What their grievances are? None of that even matters, because they are the dehumanised other.  It's ridiculous.