The Couch Potato Report - December 13th, 2008
This week The Couch Potato Report peels a no hit summer, the biggest hit of the summer and a man on a wire.
By pure coincidence, three of my favourite films of 2008 were all released on DVD this week, and I am very excited to tell you about all of them!
In just a moment, I will rave about THE DARK KNIGHT and the documentary MAN ON WIRE, but this week's HOT POTATO is a film that made me feel like a kid again, and I absolutely love it when a movies does that!
So, our HOT POTATO this week is the made in Montreal film A NO HIT, NO RUN SUMMER.
In this film it is the Summer '69 and the city of Montreal has a new baseball team.
Twelve-year-old Martin and his friends all love the game and the spanking new Expos.
With all of his passion toward the game pushing him forward, Martin tries out for his neighbourhood team.
When he is cut, when he and all of his friends are cut, Martin's usually distant father starts up a separate team for them,... all of those kids who need to find another route to the big league.
A route that features kids playing baseball in hockey sweaters.
And since it is 1969, A NOT HIT NO RUN SUMMER also features man walking on the moon and Woodstock, in addition to Les Expos...so it has baseball, music and space travel!!
For me, this film had everything!
No, it isn't perfect, because at times there are too many stories being told, but I still loved it, and I highly recommend it!!
At it's core A NOT HIT NO RUN SUMMER is about the loss of childhood innocence and the transition into adulthood, but it isn't one that rushes that transition. This is a great little movie that looks back at a time and place where possibilities seemed endless.
A time and place where The Expos would be in Montreal forever, for as one or Martin's friends tells him - "A baseball team is for life."
A NO-HIT NO-RUN SUMMER was shot in Montreal in July and August of 2007 and it was made for $4 million.
By comparison, THE DARK KNIGHT was filmed in London, Hong Kong and Chicago last year, and it's budget was an estimated $185 million.
To date this second Batman film from Christopher Nolan has brought in over $530 million and is now the second highest grossing film of all-time, behind only TITANIC.
I loved A NO HIT NO RUN SUMMER and THE DARK KNIGHT, but if I was picking my favourite film of 2008, let me tell you that I choose THE DARK KNIGHT.
It is my belief that even people who don't consider themselves to be fans of comics and comic books, usually still have a favourite comic book character.
Whether it is "Garfield", "Peanuts", "Spider-man", "Andy Capp","Foxtrot", "House Of M", "New Avengers" or "Dennis The Menace", I think we all have a favourite comic book character.
I love "The Far Side" and "Calvin And Hobbes", "Underdog" and "Bugs Bunny", but my favourite all-time cartoon character is still "Batman."
Throughout the years I have been able to enjoy Batman in comic books, television shows, and movies, especially the movies lately, thanks to what Christopher Nolan has acheived with 2005's BATMAN BEGINS and now this year's THE DARK KNIGHT!!
This film, like almost all of the Batman movies over the years - except for the abysmal 1997 film BATMAN & ROBIN, directed by Joel Shumacher - sees batman as a dark character who walks a very fine tightrope between hero and vigilante.
Christian Bale is back as the caped crusader and THE DARK KNIGHT is primarily about how Batman - and his alter ego Bruce Wayne - District Attorney Harvey Dent, Assistant D.A. Rachel Dawes, and Police Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) struggle to find way to keep Gotham safe from The Joker.
The late Heath Ledger is absolutely spectacular in the film, and Nolan keep us guessing by never giving us the character's back story.
It is a bold move that pays off, and when Ledger gets an Academy Award nomination, to follow up his Golden Globe nod, don't be surprised!!
Yes, if you were to say you saw THE DARK KNIGHT and you found it a bit too long, or you thought that Bale's Batman voice sounded too forced when he had the mask on, I could be convinced to agree with you on those points, but I still maintain that the film is the most entertaining and engaging cinematic thrill ride of 2008, and it has some great drama too.
I obvioulsy recommend it, unapologetically, and think that it has something to offer almost everyone and so, and you can quote me on this, "THE DARK KNIGHT is my favourite film of 2008!!"
Now, if the thought of watching a man dressed up as a bat strung up on digitally removed wires doesn't appeal to you...how about a documentary about a man ON a wire.
A man walking on a wire from one of the World Trade Centre Towers in New York, to the other one?
Well, on the morning of Aug. 7, 1974, after months of preparation and years of dreaming, a French daredevil named Philippe Petit stepped into the sky above Lower Manhattan.
For almost 45 minutes he walked back and forth on a metal cable strung between the towers of the World Trade Center.
MAN ON WIRE uses some footage that was shot while Petit and his team were working on the stunt and combines that with some great recreations and spectacular photographs.
The combination of those elements, and new interviews with Petit and his crew, has resulted in a film that is very interesting, good-natured, very funny, and it even features a really nice love story.
But the best thing about this movie is what it does not mention. We all know what happened to those World Trade Center towers, and so MAN ON WIRE doesn't need to mention it.
Instead, we get to relive their glory, through the act of one man with a dream.
This is a superb film!!
MAN ON WIRE is a truly fascinating documentary, and I enjoyed it!!
Truth be told, I was also able to enjoy THE COMPLETE FOURTH SEASON of the television show LOST...and I wasn't sure I would, since most of SEASON THREE was not very good, but luckily the show is back on track!
LOST is the once again very interesting and entertaining show about the survivors of a plane crash on a mysterious tropical island somewhere in the South Pacific.
Each episode usually features a storyline from the island, and as a secondary storyline from another point in a character's life. Prior to SEASON FOUR they were flashbacks, but this season we were given flash-forwards as well!
SEASON FOUR of LOST is a 5-DVD set with 14 episodes, and two discs of Bonus Features.
This season focuses on the survivors dealing with the arrival of a team of people who may or may not be there to save them.
Yes, luckily LOST is back on track, and I am personally looking forward to the premiere of SEASON FIVE on Wednesday, January 21st!!
But for now, enjoy LOST - THE COMPLETE FOURTH SEASON...I sure did!!
Alright, it is time now for this week's Blu-ray Beacon!!
If you are wondering why the newest home entertainment viewing method is called Blu-ray, well it is because a blue laser beam is used to read data from discs, rather than the red laser that is used for standard DVDs.
A blue laser can be focused more tightly, so disc makers can pack more data on a disc the same size as a DVD. Blu-ray Discs can hold up to 50 gigabytes, compared to a DVD, which holds less than 10 GB.
That added capacity can hold video up to six times the resolution of DVD, plus more bonus features and improved surround soundtracks.
And this week, that resolution and improved soundtrack allowed me to see one of my favourite movies of all time looking better than ever...even though the film is 66 years old.
Yes, this week the BLU RAY BEACON shines the spotlight on the ULTIMATE COLLECTOR'S EDITION of CASABLANCA.
The 1942 film CASABLANCA starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman is a classic film full of unforgettable lines and on Blu-ray it looks better than it ever has before!
Bogart is a man who must choose between his love for a woman and doing the right thing, and if you have never seen this film, well, the ULTIMATE COLLECTOR'S EDITION of CASABLANCA is a great version to start with, as it features a wealth of special features and collector's items.
But mostly, it features one of the greatest films ever made, looking - and sounding - better than ever!!
This week's Blu-ray Beacon is pointed straight at CASABLANCA and the BLU-RAY ULTIMATE COLLECTOR'S EDITION box set!
It is available now on Blu-ray and DVD, along with the DVD Box Set for THE COMPLETE FOURTH SEASON of LOST, the superb documentary MAN ON WIRE, the blockbuster THE DARK KNIGHT, which is also my favourite film of 2008, and the made-in-Montreal film A NO-HIT NO-RUN SUMMER, which I also highly recommend.
Coming up next Saturday AND Sunday on The Couch Potato Report
Yes, I will have two Reports for you next weeek that feature a combination of last minute gift ideas, and great DVDs to watch on a cold winters night.
On Saturday, THE BORDER, THE MUMMY - TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR, BURN AFTER READING and HAMLET 2.
And next Sunday, I will tell you about a wide array of DVD Box Sets including a 10-Disc set about the EDMONTON OILERS and a 4-Disc MUHAMMAD ALI package that will take you RINGSIDE.
I'm Dan Reynish. I'll have more on those, and some other releases, in seven AND EIGHT days.
For now, that's this week's COUCH POTATO REPORT.
Enjoy the movies and I'll see you back here next time on The Couch!
New KISS album in '09
Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons are planning to record a new album next year, which will be the first KISS release since 1998's "Psycho Circus."
In a recent interview with askmen.com, Stanley, who will produce the album, said the new release will be "very much a vintage, classic, '70s KISS album without much regard to what's happening since then; it's back to the roots."
Simmons was not quoted in the askmen.com piece. However, last year, he told Billboard that he wasn't interested in recording new music. "The record industry is in such a mess," Simmons said. "There is nothing in me that wants to go in there and do new music. How are you going to deliver it? How are you going to get paid for it if people can just get it for free?"
There is no word regarding label affiliation or an alternate distribution method for the album, which will feature guitarist Tommy Thayer and drummer Eric Singer alongside original members Stanley and Simmons. "Psycho Circus," was released by Mercury Records.
KISS also is expected to tour North America at some point in the coming year.
Actor Van Johnson, '40s heartthrob, dies at 92
NEW YORK – Van Johnson, whose boy-next-door wholesomeness made him a popular Hollywood star in the '40s and '50s with such films as "30 Seconds over Tokyo," "A Guy Named Joe" and "The Caine Mutiny," died Friday of natural causes. He was 92.
Johnson died at Tappan Zee Manor, an assisted living center in Nyack, N.Y., said Wendy Bleisweiss, a close friend.
With his tall, athletic build, handsome, freckled face and sunny personality, the red-haired Johnson starred opposite Esther Williams, June Allyson, Elizabeth Taylor and others during his two decades under contract to MGM.
He proved to be a versatile actor, equally at home with comedies ("The Bride Goes Wild," "Too Young to Kiss"), war movies ("Go for Broke," "Command Decision"), musicals ("Thrill of a Romance," "Brigadoon") and dramas ("State of the Union," "Madame Curie").
During the height of his popularity, Johnson was cast most often as the all-American boy. He played a real-life flier who lost a leg in a crash after the bombing of Japan in "30 Seconds Over Tokyo." He was a writer in love with a wealthy American girl (Taylor) in "The Last Time I Saw Paris." He appeared as a post-Civil War farmer in "The Romance of Rosy Ridge."
More recently, he had a small role in 1985 as a movie actor in Woody Allen's "The Purple Rose of Cairo."
A heartthrob with bobbysoxers — he was called "the non-singing Sinatra" — Johnson married only once. In 1947 at the height of his career, he eloped to Juarez, Mexico, to marry Eve Wynn, who had divorced Johnson's good friend Keenan Wynn four hours before.
The marriage produced a daughter, Schuyler, and ended bitterly 13 years later. "She wiped me out in the ugliest divorce in Hollywood history," Johnson told reporters.
As a young actor, Johnson had a brief run with Warner Bros. and then got a screen test and a contract with MGM with the help of his friend Lucille Ball.
After a bit in "The War Against Mrs. Hadley," Johnson appeared with Lionel Barrymore as "Dr. Gillespie's New Assistant," as Mickey Rooney's friend in "The Human Comedy" and as a Navy pilot in "Pilot No. 5."
His big break, with Irene Dunne and Spencer Tracy in the wartime fantasy "A Guy Named Joe," was almost wiped out by tragedy.
On April 1, 1943, his DeSoto convertible was struck head-on by another car. "They tell me I was almost decapitated, but I never lost consciousness," he remembered. "I spent four months in the hospital after they sewed the top of my head back on. I still have a disc of bone in my forehead five inches long."
"A Guy Named Joe" was postponed for his recovery, and the forehead scar went unnoticed in his resulting popularity. MGM cashed in on his stardom with three or four films a year. Among them: "The White Cliffs of Dover," "Two Girls and a Sailor," "Weekend at the Waldorf." "High Barbaree," "Mother Is a Freshman," "No Leave No Love" and "Three Guys Named Mike."
Though he hadn't lost his boyish looks, Johnson's vogue faded by the mid-'50s, and the film roles became sparse, though he did have a "comeback" movie with Janet Leigh in 1963, "Wives and Lovers."
Also in the 1960s he returned to the theater, playing "Damn Yankees" in summer theaters at $7,500 a week. Then he accepted a two-year contract to star in "The Music Man" in London.
He explained why in an interview: "Because the phone didn't ring. Because the film scripts were getting crummier and crummier. Because I sat beside my pool in Palm Springs one day and told myself: `Van, you'll be 45 this year. If you don't start doing something now, you never will.'"
For three decades he was one of the busiest stars in regional and dinner theaters, traveling throughout the country from his New York base. In the 1980s, Johnson appeared on Broadway in "La Cage aux Folles," late in the run of the popular Jerry Herman msuical.
"The white-haired ladies who come to matinees are the people who put me on top," he said in a 1992 interview in Michigan, where he was appearing at a suburban Detroit theater. "I'm still grateful to them."
Television provided some gigs ("The Love Boat," "Fantasy Island" and "McMillan & Wife"), and he also became a painter, his canvases selling as high as $10,000. In a 1988 interview, he told of an important art lesson:
"I was on the Onassis yacht with Winston Churchill. He got his canvas out and so did I. He was working away, and he growled at me, `Don't just sit there and stare! Get some paint and splash it on!'"
He was born Charles Van Dell Johnson on Aug. 25, 1916, in Newport, R.I., where his father was a real estate salesman. From his earliest years he was fascinated by the touring companies that played in Newport theaters, and after high school he announced his intention to try his luck in New York. He arrived in 1934 with $5 and his belongings packed in a straw suitcase.
Johnson's tour of casting offices landed him nothing but chorus jobs. He went to Hollywood for a bit in the movie of "Too Many Girls," then was signed to a Warner Bros. contract.
"First the zenith, then the nadir," Johnson recalled. "Warner Bros. dropped me after `Murder in the Big House.'"
The discouraged young actor was about to return to New York when Ball, whom he knew on "Too Many Girls," invited him to dinner at Chasen's restaurant.
"Lucille tried to cheer me up, but I just couldn't seem to laugh," he said in a 1963 interview. "Suddenly she said to me, `There's Billy Grady over there; he's MGM's casting director. I'm going to introduce you, and at least you're going to act like you're the star I think you will be.'"
Hugh Jackman to host new-look Oscars
LOS ANGELES – Hugh Jackman will host the 81st annual Oscars, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences confirmed Friday.
The 40-year-old Australian actor, recently named People magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive," won an Emmy in 2005 for hosting the 59th annual Tony Awards in 2004. He was also nominated as host of the 2005 Tonys.
Jackman, who first claimed fame as Wolverine in the "X-Men" movie franchise, recently starred in Baz Luhrmann's romantic adventure film "Australia" with Nicole Kidman. He was out of the country Friday for a world promotional tour for the film and was not immediately available for comment, his representative Alan Nierob said.
He's never been an Oscar nominee, but was nominated for a Golden Globe for his role in 2001's romantic film "Kate & Leopold." His other movie credits include 2006's "The Prestige" and 2004's "Van Helsing."
With new producers, a new set director and even a new music director, the Academy has been hinting at an all new look and feel for this year's Oscars telecast on Feb. 22.
Jackman's selection is a departure from the Academy's standard of big-name comedians. Jon Stewart, host of "The Daily Show," hosted the ceremony in 2008 and 2006; Ellen DeGeneres was the 2007 host. Chris Rock, Steve Martin, Billy Crystal and Whoopi Goldberg have also hosted the show in recent years.
Bettie Page, 1950s pin-up queen, dies in L.A.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Bettie Page, one of America's most photographed pin-up girls during the 1950s, died in Los Angeles on Thursday from pneumonia, her agent said. She was 85.
Page was a ubiquitous sight during the 1950s, propelled to stardom when she posed for Playboy as Miss January 1955. Soon her image was gracing playing cards, record albums and bedroom posters across the country.
She stopped modeling in 1957, retreated from the public spotlight and turned to religion. She enjoyed a renaissance of sorts in the 1980s, as a new generation of fans became obsessed with her legacy.
Her agent, Mark Roesler, said Page was admitted to a Los Angeles-area hospital four weeks ago. She never regained consciousness after suffering a heart attack earlier this month.
With her dark bangs, alluring blue-gray eyes and wide smile, Page cultivated an innocent girl-next-door persona. The one-time school teacher was nice, but clearly also naughty. Some of her photos featured spanking and bondage.
"Bettie Page embodied the stereotypical wholesomeness of the Fifties and the hidden sexuality straining beneath the surface," authors Karen Essex and James L. Swanson wrote in their 1996 book "Bettie Page: The Life of a Pin-Up Legend."
Page professed to be mystified by all the attention, saying she never felt particularly attractive and had to wear a lot of makeup to cover up her large pores. After she found God, she was initially ashamed of having posed nude.
"(B)ut now most of the money I've got is because I posed in the nude," she told Playboy last year. "So I'm not ashamed of it now, but I still don't understand it."
Bettie Mae Page was born on April 22, 1923, in Nashville, one of six children. She and two sisters were sent to an orphanage after her father went to jail and her mother could not cope on her own. Page later described her father as "a sex fiend" who started sexually molesting her when she was 13.
Page, armed with an arts degree with Peabody College in Nashville, did her first modeling work in the 1940s after moving to San Francisco with the first of her three husbands. After they divorced in 1947, she pursued modeling in New York. Photos from a shoot with Miami photographer Bunny Yeager ended up in the pages of Playboy.
The layout featured Page winking at the camera wearing only a Santa hat as she decorated a Christmas tree. Playboy founder Hugh Hefner described it as "a milestone in the history of the magazine," which he had founded less than two years earlier.
Later in life, Page was furious that Yeager made a fortune from the photos and never compensated her.
Some American lawmakers were not as impressed with her modeling abilities. Page was served with a subpoena to appear before U.S. Senate investigators trying to discover a link between juvenile delinquency and pornography. Page never appeared. Soon after, she completely disappeared from the scene.
After two other brief marriages failed, Page battled acute schizophrenia beginning in the early 1970s. Her comeback gathered momentum with the 1991 movie "The Rocketeer," based on a comic book where the hero's girlfriend was Page. Fan clubs and websites proliferated, and Page made a good living signing memorabilia at conventions. On the rare occasions that she gave interviews, she insisted that she not be photographed.
Page had no children. There was no immediate information about funeral plans.