Posts by Gino Sassani

"I was walking under the overpass as primly dressed secretaries and weary window washers march onwards and upwards to start their days. The cold winter wind whipped in my face, and a card caught my eye. I flipped it over to find joker. Joker, joker, joker. All things in life are rarely here to stay. The good and the bad. So worry not, me. I smile at the cards I'm dealt. Just like the snow, it shall melt. What are you hearing, Indianapolis? It is Tuesday, February 8th. The time is 8:45 and 55 seconds. I'm DJ Fred Temple. And this is Deodato."

That's an important date and time both for our movie and in history. It was on that date that a frustrated man named Tony Kiritsis took a man  and both kidnapped and held him hostage for days with a shotgun wired to his head, the titular dead man's wire. The story has been told both in a memoir written by the man held hostage and a 2018 documentary. But this is a story we've seen before in cinema, from Denzel Washington's desperate father in John Q. to the mad-as-hell-and-he's-not-going-to-take-it-anymore frustrated news anchor in Network. But Gus Van Sant's Dead Man's Wire offers more of a callback to Dog Day Afternoon than anything like those other films.

"So come up to the lab and see what's on the slab."

It was 1975. Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa goes missing. South Vietnam falls. The Superdome opens in New Orleans. Elizabeth Seton becomes the first American saint. Patty Hearst ends her fugitive run. George Carlin hosts the first episode of Saturday Night Live. Phil Collins replaces Peter Gabriel as the lead in Genesis. And The Rocky Horror Picture Show opens to absolutely terrible box office numbers. Under normal circumstances the Rocky Horror story should have ended there. Thirty-five years later, it should have been just one of thousands of films that came and went with hardly a whimper or notice. Today, that most assuredly would have been the case. But things were just a little bit different in 1975. When a film finished its first run, there were plenty of theaters that ran dollar matinees and midnight showings of these movies. There wasn't a home-video industry at the time. The next step for these films, particularly the big losers, was a run in these "second run" venues where the studios provided them inexpensively in an attempt to recoup some of their money. It was no different for Rocky Horror.

"This is your captain speaking ... Prepare for impact."

It's been 50 years since Steven Spielberg made his bones on a hot summer movie called Jaws. Based on a Peter Benchley bestseller, the film made millions of people all over the world think twice before dipping their toes into the wild environment of their local beach. We all think about it. We go anyway, but Spielberg made us think about it for the rest of our lives. The trend spawned a flurry of 1970's nature-attacks films from bees to grizzly bears. When cable came about, we got Shark Week every year for decades. There's just something about that 1975 film that continues to impact our entertainment. Now we have the "shark" movie as a genre, and for all of those 50 years everyone has been chasing that one movie's atmosphere and excitement. It should be rather easy when you think about it. Spielberg bit off more than he could chew by taking on the film.

"We try to walk that line between high-tech thriller and workplace comedy."

It all started so long ago that many of you reading this were likely not even a thought in your parents' brain. JAG appeared way back in 1995. It was created by Donald P. Bellisario, and it took us behind the scenes of the United States Navy's prosecution of crimes under their military jurisdiction according to the Navy's Service Code. The series lasted 10 years, and toward the end of that run a new character was introduced. He was Leroy Gibbs, played by Mark Harmon. The episode served as a backdoor pilot for a new franchise called NCIS. You could say that NCIS is the Order to JAG’s Law. The NCIS is a real government agency that deals with criminal activity inside or involving the US Navy or Marine Corps, but now for the investigation and catching of the bad guys. The show has proven even more popular than its parent series.

"And that's the way it happened. Give or take a lie or two."

That oft-used phrase in the film Sunset is a pretty good way to describe the entire production. Blake Edwards  had a pretty good run with his Pink Panther franchise until Peter Sellers died and the franchise became somewhat of a spoof of itself after his death. That might have worked, except the franchise was already pretty much a spoof. But Blake Edwards has also had some luck with more serious subjects, and Sunset is likely the best example of such an attempt. That doesn't mean the film doesn't deliver plenty of humor and light moments. But for Blake Edwards, this was as serious as it gets. He bought the rights to an unpublished novel by Rod Amateau, who had mostly written for television. The film was set to star James Garner as Wyatt Earp and Robert Duvall as Tom Mix. The production budget couldn't handle the demands of both stars, and Garner was retained while Edwards would pass on Duvall.

On and on goes the debate. Is Die Hard a Christmas movie? I have always come down on the no side. It appears like such an odd thing, but there have literally been books about the subject, and Bruce Willis himself has gone from no to yes over the years. If that kind of debate is of interest to you, then you should enjoy playing the same game with Cold Steel. It's a bloody action movie that also takes place at that jolly time of the year. Of course, not so jolly for the characters in the film. The original story for Cold Steel was developed and written by Dorothy Ann Puzo. You might not recognize her, but I'm sure you are familiar with the last name. Her father is the celebrated author and screenwriter for The Godfather movies. And if the Godfather movies have taught me anything (I mean, beyond not letting anyone outside the family know what you're thinking), it's that daughters don't necessarily inherit the abilities of the father.The casting of Sofia Coppola by her father in that franchise's third film made that very point. But Dorothy Ann Puzo isn't quite the dramatic drop in talent that Coppola was, and the film certainly has its moments. Coppola also directs, and this is her first and last feature film as either writer or director, so I think we can safely say this film didn't set any box office records, and this is actually the first time I've seen it.