I tried to write this whole long post about Sunday's King of the Hill and how sad it is that NCLB has made a lot of schools try shady shit to pass the test, but it was a really boring post. I got bored just writing it, so I can only imagine you passing out and drooling on the keyboard and that's just not a good idea. So I'm looking out for you by being less boring.
Instead I'll talk about how much Street Smart sucked.
Street Smart is this movie with Christopher Reeve that was made in 1987. I don't know how it ended because I fell asleep. Beefcake kept making me wake up to watch something else that sucked so I'd raise my head up and look and go Uh huh and put my head back down. And then when he was done with his oatmeal he turned off the movie and we both went to sleep, so neither of us actually know how the film turned out. It sucked that much.
Because that's my general rule: If you don't care how it ends, it's a piece of balvarine turd. (I may or may not have been playing Fable all day.)
So here's an example of why it sucks. Kathy Baker plays a prostitute and there's this scene where she's having sex with Christopher Reeve and it starts with her telling him a story about some time she seduced this Russian guy. As she tells the story she acts it out until the end when she's on top of him and they're literally rolling on the bed together.
Now here's what's wrong. This is the moment these two characters have supposedly been building up to, and now finally after some forced sexual tension they do it. It=sex. But while she's talking and climbing on him the camera is in a wide shot with no close-ups and for some reason "Natural Woman" starts playing so loud that you can't hear her Russian John story. And then every couple of seconds it fades out and you hear a sentence and then it comes back again. It's like the editor hated the dialogue so she covered it with music. And there was no chemistry so the director covered it up with a wide angle.
Why did we watch this horrible movie in the first place, you ask? Well, it's what my mom and I coined a "back of the box" movie. My stepdad used to go to Blockbuster and pick up some random movie and read the back of the box and then rent it and it would be awful. So Mom and I used to ask him when he brought home a movie if is was a back of the box movie. So Street Smart was a back of the box movie. And it was awful.
Morgan Freeman was nominated for a best supporting actor nomination for that movie, if I remember right.
ReplyDeletehaha. i never heard of this film, but Christopher Reeve? Ew. He made crappy films (I never got into the Superman films).
ReplyDeleteHe made crappy films (I never got into the Superman films).
ReplyDeleteSave for "The Remains of the Day," (though he was not one of the main cast), a good performance considering his role as a 1930s foreign relations congressman who's part of Roosevelt's brain trust, and then goes on to purchase Darlington Hall decades later.
Indonesian TV showed 'When Harry Met Sally' when I lived there. While Meg Ryan was faking her orgasm, the censors BLOCKED HER MOANS BY REPLAYING HARRY CONNICK JR'S SONG.
ReplyDeleteBecause women aren't supposed to have orgasms, right?
So I, of course, had to go around correcting THAT misconception.
I remember C.R. him putting in a decent performance in "Deathtrap". (A clue as to how old I am: I saw it during its theatrical run.) I was also impressed with "Somewhere in Time", after catching in on cable last year.
ReplyDeleteFreeman was nominated for Best Supporting Oscar that year - and he won a few other Best Supporting awards from other groups, including the LA Critics Assoc.
I've never seen STREET SMART, but I've always been kind of curious. Freeman was nominated for it and it was probably his first step towards the megastardom that he achieved. The film was a pet project for Christopher Reeve, who was able to get it made at Cannon, partly by agreeing to appear in SUPERMAN IV. Of course, Freeman was the actor who wound up getting acclaimed for the film and SUPERMAN IV was, well, SUPERMAN IV.
ReplyDeleteI watch movies like that alot. Sometimes they even have won awards. What I try to get out of them is:
ReplyDelete1. Why it did not work.
So I can avoid doing the same damn thing by accident.
2. Find the good things about the movie.
Which is sometimes challenging, because sometimes it is only one thing in the whole movie. Sometimes it's a phrase, a delivery, the visuals, or maybe a good sound effect. But there is almost always something worthwhile in every film. Of course, some movies should come with a listing of the box that says "great sound effect in scene 3, at 12 minutes and 33 seconds in" or something like that to let you know there is some redeeming quality. Sometimes it's the basic story even when badly acted, scripted, shot, and with bad sound.