Movies

More Black And White

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So, yesterday I watched Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, AKA Star Wars Episodes 2 & 3, again in black and white. First up was Attack of the Clones with its sappy romance between two actors with zero chemistry with each other and the sheer amount of screen-filling, fast-paced CGI just because they could. The lack of color did not help at all. After a dinner break I waded into Revenge of the Sith, where we get to watch the creation of big bad Darth Vader. Here is where Hayden Christensen did have chemistry; he really nails the angsty teen, pissed at the universe, persona. Still way too much excessive use of CGI to the point of distraction.

This afternoon I went ahead and cued up The Empire Strikes Back in B&W (remember I watched the OG Star Wars very recently). Stopped a little more than an hour into Episode five because the Red Sox game was starting. I’ll finish it after the game.

I wonder if I like this black and white thing because we didn’t get a color TV at home until I was almost thirteen?

I Thought About It

I’m a sci-fi guy, and all this talk and the media blitz for Project Hail Mary made me actually think about going to see the movie. In the end I gave up the idea for two reasons: it is 2-1/2 hours long and my bladder isn’t that big, plus watching at home will have no one talking or looking at their phone. So maybe I’ll watch another movie based on an Andy Weir book, The Martian. I have a copy of it so I can hit pause if I need to go to the bathroom or want to look at my phone.

This triggered a memory of me blogging about how much I like that movie. I should add it to my list of when I’ll rewatch a movie or a TV show or episode on a certain day each year, i.e., Jesus Christ Superstar on Good Friday or Elf at Christmastime. The post is from 2 years ago, and through some fuzzy Googling, I determined that I should be watching it on a Tuesday in March. Well, today is Tuesday, March 24th. Guess what movie I’ll be viewing tonight?

This Is Not Spinal Tap

After dinner I decided to watch one of the 100 or so movies I own while waiting on the dishwasher to finish. I opened up Plex and went to the movie page. As I looked at the first couple of rows of movie posters, I tried to decide what kind of movie I was in for. Really couldn’t. I’ve said this before in that I’ll see the title or the poster and I’ll be able to sort of speed watch the whole movie. And once I’ve done that, I literally don’t need to watch it … I’ve just seen it.

One nice thing about Plex is that there is a shuffle button at the top and if you click it a random movie will start. I’ve used it a few times with limited success, maybe twice out of the five I got something that I would be in the mood to see. Attempt number six was a win, Plex had selected This Is Spinal Tap. I hadn’t seen it in ages and just running the movie through in my head made me want to watch it again. I didn’t recognize the background image at start up, but there were our 3 main guys looking like they’d been dipped in gold, so the movie was right (the image was for the movie’s 41st golden anniversary.)

The movie was not right. First clue was the first image you see, the logo of the production company A24, that studio was way too new to be from the 1980s. Wait a minute, Rashida Jones and Marlon Wayans getting married, I watched the trailer for this movie a way back and put the movie in my Apple TV+ queue. I did start to watch it back then too, but gave up about 20 minutes in.

Weird. I exited Plex, got back in, drilled down through the movie posters, found and clicked on This Is Spinal Tap again. It started up right where I just left off, 3 minutes into On The Rocks. What the heck, I’ll watch it again and see if I can at least get to the part where National Treasure Bill Murray shows up. I ended up watching the whole thing. It had very strong Lost in Translation vibes and with good reason, it too was directed by Sofia Coppola.

After watching the movie, I went over to the PC where the Plex sever runs on, found the .MKV file, opened it in a media player and it was the real “This Is Spinal Tap.” What the heck was going on. I scrolled back up in the directory and there was an .MKV video file for “On The Rocks” too. The file was dated in November of 2023. Did I download a copy of the movie less than 2 years ago and forget about it? I stopped pirating stuff way back in the twenty teens. Plus, I wouldn’t think so based on earlier this year’s starting and stopping watching it part way. Has someone hacked into Plex somehow on stored a copy of there? I mean I have it set up to allow me access to my movies while traveling…

I’ve deleted all the “On The Rocks” files and rescanned the library, but now when I got try and play “This Is Spinal Tap” Plex can’t seem to find it. I guess tomorrow I’ll try and uninstall Plex, clean up the registry, reboot and reinstall. Now, I really want to watch Spinal Tap.

Addendum (8/15/25): Nothing I did would let me play “This is Spinal Tap” on the PC using Plex. It wouldn’t play on on the laptop either, but it will play on either TV running Plex via the Roku box. “?” Side note, I just now stumbled on that there is a sequel, Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, coming out next month. This is where that gold image came from and since the movie came out in 1984 it also explains the 41st anniversary thing.

It Was 50 Years Ago This Weekend

Donna and I had been paling around for a few months, watching movies at the base theater, going out for meals, etc. But for the Fourth of July weekend we planned a getaway trip to Pennsylvania to stay with Bob Brown, my old Class Leader at ‘B’ School, back in Millington, TN who was then stationed at Willow Grove. Bob and his wife Joanne had two teenaged daughters, so I slept on the couch and Donna bunked in with the girls.

I want to say it was on Saturday that all of us went out to see a movie. They have theorized that if you want to put your arm around a girl you would like to get closer to, just take her to a scary movie. That theorem proved true that day, because the movie we saw was Jaws. When Richard Dreyfuss’ character went down underwater to check on the boat he and Roy Scheider find and that dead guy’s head popped out, BINGO, she grabbed my hand.

We both credit seeing this movie with cementing what was to become an almost 50 year long love affair. We might have watched it a couple of times over the years, but it never was an annual thing. So today, it being the 50th anniversary and all, I rewatched it. I did kind of miss that hand though.

Oh, on a side note, a dozen years later we both ended up working at the place that supplied the solenoid valves that operated the shark’s jaws, Automatic Switch Co.

Well, It Is Friday Over There


Ah gentlemen, you know why we are here, we’ve not much time, and quite a problem here.

I started my Easter celebration a bit early this year. I sat down this evening and watched my favorite rock opera, Jesus Christ Superstar. It is only Thursday, but it is early morning Friday, Good Friday, in Jerusalem. Maybe tomorrow night I’ll watch the live stage version that John Legend did in 2018.

Stuck In The 70s

What brought on this fascination with the 70s? Because my formative years between 15 to 25 were spent in that decade? Because I will be turning 70 this year and that is around the time when a DNA segment mutates causing you to be nostalgic for those formative years? So, I guess, life?

Last Sunday I mentioned watching something called The Story of Film: An Odyssey. Today I watched the nineth episode in that series and it just fed the ‘stuck in the seventies’ rut, its title, “American Cinema of the 70s.”

A few years ago, probably COVID time, I decided that I would get rid of all my physical media, I ripped all 500 of my CDs to MP3s and most all my DVDs to MKVs. I only did the DVDs that I’d probably watch again and ended up with 158. Of that total, there were 12 movies from the 70s and 3 of those got coverage in that episode of The Story of Film. Here is my list of 12 with their release dates and I italicized those three:

M*A*S*H – March 18, 1970
Woodstock – March 26, 1970
The Andromeda Strain – March 12, 1971
Le Mans – June 23, 1971
American Graffiti – August 11, 1973
Jesus Christ Superstar – August 15, 1973
Chinatown – June 20, 1974
Jaws – June 20, 1975
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – November 19, 1975
Star Wars – May 25, 1977
Close Encounters of the Third Kind – November 25, 1977
Alien – May 25, 1979

Can I Have “70s Movies” For 1,000,000 Alex?

A cool million was the ransom demanded by Mr. Blue for the safe return of the seventeen hostages in the front car of a New York subway train.

After the last couple of 70’s movies, I fell into a fog of nostalgia and started thinking of other movies of that period that I have enjoyed enough to revisit, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three bubbled right to the surface. I’m sure I saw it in theaters, rented it on VHS from Blockbuster and possibly caught on TV too. Checking IMDB I found that it was available on MGM+ and for $6.99 a month. So, I signed up and after watching this movie possibly find some others that might be worth a look.

It starred Walter Matthau, but the movie was packed full of 70s stars. First up was Mr. Blue, Robert Shaw (Quint of Jaws), he’s the leader of the gang of 4 who hijack the train. His accomplices included Martin Balsam (Juror #1 of 12 Angry Men) as Mr. Green who is the only survivor of the baddies in the end. I just looked at his IMDB page and he was credited with 179 roles in movies and TV from 1949 to 1997, with 51 credits in the 70s alone. Other recognizable names included Hector Elizondo, Jerry Stiller and Doris Roberts.

Turns out, there are 2 other versions of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. The first was a TV movie in 1998 which I knew about and a theatrical release in 2008 that I didn’t. Coincidentally, both movies were available on MGM+.

I remembered being excited for the TV version, but was so disappointed in it that I shut it off after about 30 minutes. It didn’t hold a candle to the original even though it was chock-a-block full of stars of the day, Edward James Olmos, Vincent D’Onofrio, Donnie Wahlberg and Richard Schiff. Also, Mr. Olmos’s was Lorraine Bracco, Tony Soprano’s shrink, Dr. Jennifer Melfi. I tried to watch it again this afternoon, but failed. Partially because it still paled in comparison, but also its aspect ratio was off, it seemed a version that was tweaked for High Def TV after being filmed in standard definition. I did watch as far as the initial hijack of the car and then fast forwarded to the end to see if they kept the perfect ending (they did.)

Because of today’s windy, rainy, 40-degree temp weather, I was inside with time to kill, so I looked at the third version. Wow, what a hot mess. I repeated the previous procedure and watch the initial hijack and zipped to the end for the finish which was, well, WTF. It too, had some big stars and some other big-name folks too, including James Gandolfini, the afore mentioned Tony Soprano.

After scrolling thru the movies available on MGM+ I realized there was only a couple things besides The Taking of Pelham One Two Three worth spending money on, luckily when I signed I up I’m entitled to the first week free, so after watching the next couple things, both music documentaries, in my queue I’ll just cancel. First up is San Francisco Sounds: A Place In Time about the music that came from Haight Ashbury in the 60s and 70s. The other covers basically the same time frame, but its Los Angeles based, called Laurel Canyon: A Place In Time.