This latest attempt at a feature was born out of
blahmanda's initial idea for herself that she would attempt to watch the contents of her DVR in chronological order, focusing on all the movies she recorded in good faith, saved in good faith, but is likely to keep until humans undergo their next evolutionary change (I hope our vestigal tails grow back so we can more easily reach and grab).
Then I turned my critical eye to my
Netflix queue, examining what lack of attention and a tendency to clickclickclick on suggestions but not really sort them, and I mentioned to Amanda that I was considering applying her basic idea: freezing my queue as-is and trying to tackle it, poor organization and all, and blog-a-booing about it.
What she suggested a few weeks later is what we both settled on: we would Netflix one classic film (or, at the very least, one pre-1970s film) and one garbage film (of which we are both enthusiastic consumers) and watch both in a synched-up, Gchat style.
What is funnyish about this all is that I don't think it was either of our intentions to select two films that shared similarities. After all, Amanda suggested Spencer Tracy's post-
Adam's Rib, pre-
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner film,
Bad Day at Black Rock, without, I imagine, knowing much about it beyond the general description: a WWII veteran with one good arm conspicuously but unassumingly dismounts a train one day in a dying gold mining town and stumbles into an environment of barely contained paranoia and violence.
Predators, as we all know, is about Predators. Predators live in jungle environments, look like bipedal pig-sandworms with dreadlocks (or
Manny Ramirez), and hunt b-list movie stars of varying degrees of talent. But Amanda said it best:
Amanda: So what are all the Predator movies? You gotcher Predator, yer Predator 2: Predator in the City, yer Alien vs. Predator, yer Predators, yer AVP: Requiem...
That's a lot considering Predators are actually not that interesting! Nevertheless, the movies did share some basic themes that made the end-of-the-road comparison last night fun:
1) The heroes are unconventional
Bad Day at Black Rock's John J. Macreedy is "handiCAPABLE!" (according to Amanda), deliberate, and unflappable in the face of increasing threats against his person and his life. He's also played by Spencer Tracy, which means he's square and blocky in that Giants of Ireland way, suggesting he's better at eating potatoes and sitting on a barstool than solving mysteries and fighting dudes half his age.
Predators's Royce is an [insert some official-sounding military nonsense to which neither Amanda nor myself paid the slightest bit of attention] and talks like Brody saw Batman Begins and The Dark Knight the day before shooting started and thought it'd be pretty cool to use a scratchy voice as a character trait. Much like Han Solo or poor man's Han Solo, Mal Reynolds, Royce has a cynical, blackened heart (unless a lady is involved), a vaguely European accent that pops up from time to time, and a beak the size of Toucan Sam's. Not exactly your average cruddy action movie white hat
The difference lies in the condition each of them are in by film's end:
Macreedy:
10:17 PM me: I love how you described him as being so rumpled and dusty; it's so true and it wasn't treated as a Columbo-like deceit or anything.
10:20 PM Amanda: I loved how the wardrobe really marked him as an outsider. The dark suit and brown hat. Never has anyone been less dressed for the desert.
Royce:
10:32 PM Amanda: Hahaha! It was definitely necessary for him to take off his shirt! [Ed note. That's sarcasm: there wasn't even the excuse of covering himself in mud to drop his temp, making it hard for Predator's Heatvision to locate him...or if that was the intent, he smeared that mud real half-heartedly]
10:33 PM me: HEE!
2) The movie is largely supported by character actors
In Black Rock, you had:
- Lee Marvin ("Lee Marvin was the Ron Perlman of the fifties!" Amanda joked after I observed that he looked eerily like RPerl; I didn't recognize Lee)
- Ernest Borgnine, who was effective as a gleefully malevolent, googly-eyed bully
- Walter Brennan ("He really talked like that!" - Amanda again) as the town doctor, a rocking-chair philosopher who is the first to see Macreedy as the town's hope and savior
- Handsome-wormy Robert Ryan as town despot Reno Smith
- Long-before Throw Mama From the Train Anne Francis as the Pretty Tough and Pretty, Tough Girl
- Along with lesser-known folks like Dean Jagger (IMDb tells me he was The Major General from White Christmas; awww, we'll follow the old man wherever he wants to go...unless he's bootless, incompetent, drunk, and spineless) and that kid who played the desk clerk who didn't look remotely familiar.
In Predators, you had:
- Danny Trejo (surprisingly, spoiler alert, and assume spoilers from now on, the first to bite it!)
- Walton Goggins as a NON-Southern degenerate who alternated between panicked and charmingly (or straight-up) disgusting
- Topher Grace (mild-mannered...or is he?!?!?! Spoiler alert: he wasn't)
- "Mahershabazalabshazhalikishabwbaka Ali" (the black guy who died second; "Progress!" according to Amanda)
- Oleg Taktarov, star of Rollerball, I guess
- Alice Braga as The Pretty Tough and Pretty, Tough Girl
- Louis Ozawa Changchien as a Yakuza fellow who had a sword and was tattooed
- And, covered in pineapple rings and glazed with Method, Sir Laurence Fishburne...
9:53 PM me: He's like the intense, Shakespearean Fred Sanford.
9:54 PM Amanda: HAAAA!
He is certainly making some choices.
9:55 PM me: It's like he saw Ralph Fiennes in "Spider" and thought "I'd like to do that, but in a cruddy action-monster movie."
3) There is an evil being fought
In Black Rock, that evil was xenophobia, cowardice, and a regime comprised of ignorance, small-time, bad-neighbor criminal enterprise, fearful silence, and willful blindness: Robert Ryan's Reno Smith, after conspiring to cheat a Japanese-American farmer by renting him what he considered unfarmable land, heads out with some "friends" to have "fun," only to burn the farmer's house (and the man, for a while) and shoot and murder him.
Macreedy dismounts the train to award the farmer his son's military medal for saving Macreedy's life but finds himself the rumpled, dusty symbol of what is truly right and American: freeing the townspeople from the oppression of a petty criminal turned warlord and uncovering the crimes committed so justice can be served. He does so with a single-minded, quiet will, only raising his hand once (and boy, it's awesome when he does).
In Predators, the evil was Predators. As mentioned before, alien monsters that look like worm-pigs with dreadlocks. Oh, sure, there were several kinds, as Amanda discovered when watching the credits ("Berserker Predator, Tracker Predator, Original Predator, and Falconer Predator"; collect 'em all, kids!), but, you know, basically kind of the same (and that is not a xenophobic statement).
I guess at one point, the evil Royce and Isabelle battle is Topher Grace, whose Justin-Long spastic, barely-believable doctor cover melts away at a convenient point to reveal that "[he] is what you call A Dexter" (Amanda again), who believes this planet full of pig-worms is a Paradise for serial killers. You can imagine how that goes: Royce handily stabinates him and uses his bloody, weakened body as bait to kaboom! a Predator.
Try as I might, I can't make this a haunting allegory to our past or current state of American affairs.
***
I think Amanda and I agreed on both films for the most part:
Amanda: So, overall, which movie did we enjoy more?
11:10 PM me: I'd say "Bad Day at Black Rock." Overall, I liked Spencer Tracy coolly assessing over pkew pkew shirtless Adrien Brody.
11:11 PM Amanda: I would have to agree.
me: Not to judge each film by their heroes alone or anything.
Amanda: I think that Bad Day at Black Rock, while lacking Falconer Predators, had a better script overall.
I think the things we didn't agree on were minimal at best. In Black Rock:
9:05 PM me: This one-size-fits-all, full-orchestra score is driving me a little crackers; it doesn't fit the rest of the movie.
9:09 PM Amanda: It's very fifites. It's kind of working for me. It's more forceful than the visual elements, so it adds punctuation. Nice sense of foreboding.
Except I had to turn the volume way up to hear the dialogue and now the score is too loud.
In
Predators:10:36 PM Amanda: I have seen fic for this pairing [Royce/Isabelle]. Not gonna lie: I would read it.
10:37 PM me: Oh, boy.
10:38 PM You are such a sucker for an action hero.
And we both agreed on one thing: neither of us had the time, energy, and/or interest in tackling the gender issues of either film:
11:12 PM me: And Alice Braga didn't girly-run, at least.
Amanda: Oh, boy, should we talk about how Anne Francis was the only woman in [Bad Rock] and the only character to end up dead? Or should we noooouugggghhhh
11:13 PM me: I vote latterrrrruggh.
Hee hee.
So anyway, there were some fine moments, though I have to admit that the most fun was when we got off-track:
11:18 PM Amanda: Oh, A Guy Named Joe is on TCM right now if I feel like more Spencer Tracy. I've seen it, though, and I don't know that I need to see that more than once. Although I've seen Always more than once (also unneeded).
11:20 PM me: I was thinking of retiring to try and start one of my new books; I know I'll only get a few pages in before I zonk out, but I figure it's worth the effort.
11:21 PM Amanda: I just switched to Soapnet for a minute. Did you know Kin Shriner is on Y&R?
me: (I will probably give up and turn on the movie channel...
Amanda: Reading books! There's an idea.
me: Whoa, whoa, just got the Kin Shriner alert.
No, I did NOT know that.
Has he gotten hideous plastic surgery, or is he still smugly handsome as ever?
11:22 PM Amanda: I only saw him for a second. He might have some hair tomfoolery going on.
me: Well, I always forgive Jon Lindstrom for that.
11:23 PM Amanda: Hahaha! Victoria: "You read your mom's blog, didn't you?"
11:24 PM I'm sure Lauren and Phyllis (they have real names I guess) have had toooons of work done, but they don't look horrifying like whatsherface on B&B.
When a temporary Royce/bait Original Predator formed an alliance:
10:23 PM me: This is like the one episode of TNG where they saved the young Borg and Georgi named him Hugh and then Hugh became a resistance fighter.
10:24 PM Only this is Predators.
Amanda: "I, Borg"
Was the name of that
me: I think so!
Because "Hugh" was from the li'l Borg misunderstanding the pronoun "you."
(And now I see that Amanda was telling me, not guessing at the title, like I would have. Doy.)
And we got to get our film nerd on from time to time:
Black Rock:
10:43 PM Amanda: I love mid-century socially conscious earnestness, myself.
10:44 PM Some interesting stuff in Ryan's imdb bio
10:48 PM It's interesting to watch Crossfire, which is a noir about antisemitism, while keeping in mind that the novel it was based on was about homophobia.
10:49 PM Hey, also, how about that Cinemascope?
me: I know it's a dumb cliche but they really don't make movies like that anymore.
10:50 PM That shot of the windmill made me think for a little bit if anyone did that kind of non-clunky silent atmosphere setting without being a bunch of sarcastic goofs (Coen Brothers). I couldn't think right off the top of my head.
10:52 PM Amanda: I had something about the town and "dessicated humanity" but I lost it.
10:53 PM imdb trivia: "The suit that Tracy wears throughout the film was bought by him off the rack, at his insistence." Awesome.
10:54 PM The sign behind the hotel desk is a quote from English evangelist John Wesley: "Do all the good you can, By all the means you can, In all the ways you can, In all the places you can, At all the times you can, To all the people you can, As long as ever you can."
me: Wow, I didn't even notice that once.
10:57 PM Speaking of socially conscious movies from that era and Spencer Tracy: I could watch "Inherit the Wind" again. Probably right now if I had it.
11:00 PM Amanda: Oh, yeah, I haven't seen that in years.
This also made me want to rewatch High Noon.
me: Which I have never seen. I always meant to. That and "Shane."
11:01 PM Amanda: You know, you mentioned the Coen Brothers, and I think they are the closest thing around today to the kind of suspense that was in our feature tonight.
I guess "style" is a more precise word than the mushy "kind."
Predators:
10:16 PM Amanda: Poetic.
10:17 PM With the waving grass it was almost as if Terence Malick directed that Japanese-mobster-swordfights-alien-monster scene,
10:18 PM me: HA!
"The Thin Predator Line"
So I had fun. We haven't discussed options for the next go-round, but it was thrown out there that neither of us have seen
Shane.
Until then, please consider Amanda's ideas for next year's Yuletide exchange:
11:14 PM me:I have a feeling that Ernest Borgnine's character and Walton Goggins's character would have had a lot to talk about (you know, in a crossover AU).
Amanda: YULETIDE!
me: Those would be the BEST requests.
11:15 PM Amanda: Can Macreedy survive the Predator planet even though he's old and he only has one arm?
me: HEE!
Amanda: SHAME ON YOU, PREDATORS!
And PS if you think of a better name for this series than my lazy tribute to Face/Off, please feel free to suggest it in comments.
Corrections courtesy of Amanda: "Doc was the town undertaker (I
guess they called him "Doc" ironically?); you're thinking of Anne Ramsey
from TMFTT (that's what the kids call it at their TMFTT conventions
[MommaCon]). The lovely Anne Francis was Honey West, and spent the 70s
and 80s appearing in tv movies and Murders, She Wrote."
