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Xanadu (1980)
Kitschy. Goofy. And Olivia Newton-John singing "Xanadu"
270th film of 2022.
RUNNING COMENTARY
Funky opening Universal spiny world with aircraft going around: airplane, passenger plane, Concorde, spaceship, and then BALL OF MAGI ENERGY LIGHT. And as the opening music plays, its genre changes with the year of that sort of flying aircraft.
Opening musical number. Yay for ELO song. But:
Producer (to director): So. This opening. Are you sure you took enough psychotropic drugs?
Sonny's car looks like it was previously owned by a Muppet bear.
Michael Beck (to his agent): So, what do you have for me? I mean I just had that awesome role in THE WARRIORS.
Agent: I have just the project for you. It has Olivia Newton-John in it. AND Gene Kelly.
Michael: Awesome sauce. Sign me up! Hope it's not a musical...
80's Popcorn Vendor in yellow short-shorts that ride up her bum!
Roller boogie Olivia! I bet she thinks this is a-muse-ing.
Man is Sonny a jerk. And we're supposed to be rooting for him?
From Roller Boogie to Boogie Woogie, Newton-John's got you covered.
Sweet soft shoe number with Kelly and Newton-John. He's still got some of that old magic in his feet.
ZOOT SUITS!!
This musical number - a mish-mash of Swing and Rock music - is actually pretty decent.
So, Sonny and Kira kiss and they call all animated? I'll give the movie this: they certainly have been hitting on every kind of musical film style. I'll also give it this: Fish Sonny is creepy horny.
I watched AN AMERICAN IN PARIS just before watching this. The animated number ended with a red rose. Feels like maybe that was a nod to Kelly's earlier film?
Producer: No, seriously. How many hallucinogenics have you taken?
Aw. Sonny told her he loves her. And she tells him she loves him, too. Good thing they've only known each other for, like, four days? Never fall in love with you muse. Especially when she tells you that she's got 8 sisters and Zeus is her father. And she... PULLS A MOVE STRAIGHT OUT OF HARVEY!! Sonny looks up muse in the dictionary and she added in the bit at the end of the definition, "Now do you believe me, Sonny?
Still not enough evidence, she makes a tv turn on and shows Sonny a black and white film where the characters talk to him (in character) and Kira appears in it. Sonny's disbelief is palpable and now he feels betrayed by it all because she's leaving. Like, why even tell him if you're just going home to Mount Olympus? Or was it back to the painting her and her sisters came out of to begin with?
Now Sonny's whining about Kira being gone so he can't go to the big opening of Xanadu and celebrate it with his business partner, Danny (Gene Kelly). I'm not sure why I should be rooting for Sonny.
Whiny man finds the mural of the muses, and on some wild, much thought about, hunch decides to roller skate as fast as he can down the alley and ram himself into the painting. I did not realize he was part warrior/part Wile E. Coyote.
Now Sonny didn't run into the wall and get a concussion and made it into electric light blackness. Or maybe he did and he's hallucinating. Nah, he made it. He orders Zeus to let Kira go, like a mortal should with the head Greek god. Then we get to hear Zeus and Hera argue in front of the daughter and mortal. Class. Hera tries to convince Zeus is all "No way! I'm almighty Zeus!" and Hera's all, "Really? That's what you're going with?" And Zeus is all, "I'm sleeping on the couch again, aren't I?"
Now it's time for Kira to sing a sad song, wearing a blouse with big puffy upper-arm sleeves. And sings to the camera as well. Nice of her to make eye contact with me. I feel for her. But the song grabs at Zeus' heartstrings so he lets her go back to Earth for "a moment." Or possibly "eternity," because neither Zeus nor Hera seem to be able to tell time.
OPENING OF XANADU WITH A BIG ROLLER-SKATING EXTRAVAGANZA! With all the mish-mash we saw earlier in the film and we get them dancing off calling out Xanadu and we've got ZOOT SUITS AGAIN!! If nothing else, it's worth it to see ZOOT SUITS!.
I'm digging how all the people showing up for the big opening shindig came color coordinated: girls in red, boys in blue.
I'd like to point out that this skating around the rink with all the people clapping hands and stuff in rhythm, slowly building up to them chanting "Xanadu" over and over, took two minutes. All they're doing is skating around in circles. It took another minute to get to the big, big moment, and that is:
THE SINGING OF "XANADU"! WOOT! And we have jacketless Zoot Suit dancers popping!
There are some very weird little dance pieces during this. Two dancers were holding umbrellas that were shaped like the umbrellas you get in drinks.
Omg. At an hour and twenty-eight minutes, they've started a tap routine. Now, there's nothing wrong with that, except they look like they're dancing on the floor of Carrousel in LOGAN'S RUN and should be flying into the air at any moment to explode in shots from laser beams. And given this was 1979/1980, there were enough laser beams around that exploding people could've happened.
Newton-John is tapping with them in an outfit that looks like she should be serving milkshakes, now rockin' a song wearing a leopard print outfit with bad rock chick makeup that -
Er. Now it's cowboy themed. She's wearing a "country girl" outfit complete with long frills and a big-ass cowboy hat. This is what they followed up "Xanadu" with?
Back on Carousel!! WHO'S GOING TO EXPLODE?? Why aren't people chanting "Renew!!"??
And now the montage of songs gets back to singing "Xanadu" and wtf is Newton-John wearing? Oops, back to the cute outfit she was wearing when she met Sonny. Sonny doesn't deserve -
OMG!! SHE JUST FLEW UP INTO THE AIR AND EXPLODED!!
Poor Sonny is left standing sad, then walks away from the stage to sit with Gene Kelly, who promptly asks him if he wants a drink. "No, thanks," Sonny replies. But then Kelly asks a server to come give him a drink anyway. Only it turns out to be a Kira look-alike. We know it can't be Kira because we saw Kira explode.
And that's the end of my running commentary because the film's over.
I originally saw this in theaters when it came out, and you know what? It's not as bad as I recall, and not as bad as the perception of it has been over the past 42 years. It's a good film? Mm. Maybe, maybe not. It does have a pretty solid soundtrack, with only one song I thought was schlocky. And it had a very questionable mish-mash of genre songs there at the end. And Sonny wasn't worth Kira's time. Still kind of a jerk there at the end. But that could be because Michael Beck had no idea what he was doing in this film.
I found a quote of his, "The Warriors (1979) opened a lot of doors in film, for me, which Xanadu (1980) then closed." Oof on his career.
I'd also like to point out that although this wasn't his last acting gig, this was Gene Kelly's final feature film. I wonder if it did for the remainder of his career what this film did for Beck.
There's a kitschiness to the film that says "Watch me," so you might as well give it a whirl.
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As always, no matter what kind of review this has been, good or bad, props are given to anyone involved with the making of this film. It's not easy to get a film made, so kudos are deserved.
Rim of the World (2019)
When kids and aliens mix
First things first: this is a McG film. It's a busy action film. But unlike the bigger boom dude, Michael Bay, McG knows when to let the film go smooth and quieter.
RIM OF THE WORLD is fun. It's a great pastiche of tropes and genre ideas, tossed in a blender by writer Zack Stentz, then put on screen by McG. Unlike some other reviews I've read, I have no problem with the way the film turned out. I didn't mind the very noticeable atmosphere changes in terms of lighting, because lighting is its own language, something that can help convey emotions in both going big and being subtle.
It would be interesting to go back and watch it to catch the individual meanings and foreshadowing. I find lighting in films fascinating when I start looking back on a film. I can generally sense it it's not something that I pay close attention to when I'm first watching a film. I took a lightening design course in university years ago. The course was part of a theater degree I was shooting for, but the prof had us study films (as well as a sunrise. That was during winter in Alberta. It was very brisk out that morning). I'd also taken a year long film course where my final paper was about the lighting use in THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL. It was actually that paper that inspired me to choose Warren Beatty's DICK TRACY. In both of those films, the use of the lighting had very specific purposes: in THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, it was about how light and shadows were used; and in DICK TRACY is was on how colours we know to mean something in real life is subverted in that particular film.
Lighting is fascinating.
Anyhow. What I got from RIM OF THE WORLD is that sense of action/adventure films comes from 4 decades worth of films. It felt like the kind of film I would've watched when I was a kid in the 70s. And before anyone brings up how much "foul" language was used in RIM they should check out 1976s THE BAD NEWS BEARS. Yes, kids talk like this. Does the film keep with the trope of teenagers (in this case, thirteen-year-olds) saving the world? Yeup. And I don't have a problem with that.
I like the arc that the four teens went through: simple and effective. I liked how the thirteen-year-old flirty flirt went on between Alex (Jack Gore) and ZhenZhen (Miya Cech). I liked that Dariush (Benjamin Flores Jr.) went from being a complete d**k to helping Gabriel (Alessio Scalzotto) by writing down numbers on a sheet of paper (in his own blood, I might add) so that Gabriel could open a safe. Gabriel has some issues with numbers, something dyslexic in nature. Each one does their part in helping to save the world. And I'm fine with that journey. I was entertained and that's pretty much the least I want out of something.
I'd like to point out that between Stentz and McG, though I'm gambling that this was an editorial choice in the end, there was one moment near the beginning of the film that was wonderfully done and that completely pointed out a trauma that Alex went through. A fire engine with its sirens going off went past the car Alex and his mom are in on the way to the summer camp Alex is going to. In probably not even a full second, there's a snap image of fire. Just a snap. But that trauma is laid right out. A PTSD moment beautifully spliced together.
It's not a film for everyone, which seems to be the point of all the negative reviews. I'm not a fan of bashing films or filmmakers... not even MOONRAKER, which is a prime example of how not to write a film - so many things that even Bond film logic gets bent and broken. World logic is a thing. Some people commented on how there were "plot holes," which is a term I dislike because people just seem to throw that thing around like it's the be-all, end-all of saying that they weren't paying attention to things. Most things that are called "plot holes" aren't that.
I liked it. It's not a film for little kids, obviously. It's about an alien invasion and there's deaths and some aliens nom-noming humans. It's for teens and adults.
If an end-of-the-world by alien invasion is your thing, then this is fun.
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As always, no matter what kind of review this has been, good or bad, props are given to anyone involved with the making of this film. It's not easy to get a film made, so kudos are deserved.