BLADES OF GLORYI tried to tell Joanna that this was an inspirational, heartwarming, based-on-a-true-story sports movie, but she wasn’t buying it. Of course not. I mean, Will Ferrell and Jon Heder figure skating? That’s really all you need to know about this movie to decide if you might like it. It’s crude, goofy, and silly. In other words, I am the target audience for this one. It’s no TALLEDEGA NIGHTS, mind you, but I enjoyed it quite a bit.
NECESSARY ROUGHNESS
Shayna and Joanna wanted to see this one because it was filmed on the campus of our mutual alma mater, the University of North Texas. (Actually, it was North Texas State University when I went there.) It’s a pretty good little sports comedy about the usual gang of misfits coming together to learn from each other and prove som
ething, in this case that they can actually win a game. No championships here, just a more modest goal. But there are some funny lines and we enjoyed seeing all the places that we know so well. Well enough, in fact, that at one point in the movie as Scott Bakula (who plays the quarterback) gets in his jeep and drives out of a dorm parking lot, Joanna and I both said, “Hey, he turned the wrong way.” You see, that’s a one-way street in front of Kerr Hall.RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK
Saving the best for last (even though we watched it before the movies mentioned above), Joanna wants to
see the new Indiana Jones film, but she’d never seen any of the others. So we watched this the other day and I thoroughly enjoyed it – again. I’ve seen it numerous times and always enjoy it. This time I was struck by how stylistically similar it is to the movies of the Thirties and Forties. I know that’s what Spielberg and Lucas were shooting for, but they really nailed it for most of the movie. It’s a really pure film – not much CGI, especially by today’s standards, and great stunts performed by real people without all the modern-day quick-cut editing that geezers such as myself don’t like. In fact, I realized watching the movie now that I don’t like the big finale as much as I do the rest of it because it’s so much more SFX-laden. As gosh-wow as it was, especially watching it in a theater back in 1981, I sort of wish they’d found some other way to do it.
3 comments:
Judy and I were at a writing conference in Denton when NECESSARY ROUGHNESS was filmed, and the actors were staying in our hotel. Next time you see Judy, ask her about the time she breathed on Robert Loggia. We have a good Jason Bateman story, too.
The fairly recent movie with Tommy Lee Jones as a Texas Ranger assigned to guard some UT cheerleaders was entertaining too. The cheerleaders were way cute, and the way cutest was Kelli Garner, who I keep hoping will land a breakout role sometime. Woops, you know, come to think of it, I may have picked up this movie a while back because you mentioned it positively in the blog.
I really believed that Indiana Jones had reached the end with LAST CRUSADE, and its recycling of Nazis and holy artifacts from RAIDERS.
You can't tease us like that with the Jason Bateman story, Bill.
Post a Comment