The Greats: Westerns, Samurai & Kung-fu

For a long time, I’ve had the idea that Kung-Fu movies, Westerns and Samurai movies were all essentially the same thing just for different cultures. Each dated back to the beginning of filmmaking, each looked back to a Golden Age that might never have really existed, and each fell out of favor for a long time only to see a resurgence in recent years. As a result, I decided to cast a wide net and get one great from each of the areas that these movies exist in. Since this is the last day, we’re going to have three from each genre.

The Greats: Sci-Fi

We all like Science Fiction, right? Maybe? A little? Well, you should, and here are the ten movies from that genre that you should see.

Cartoon Review: Rugrats “The Turkey Who Came to Dinner”

Okay, just an update on what’s going on. I appear to have been kidnapped. I seem to be in a small cell with a computer and limited access. So far I’ve been beaten a few times, mainly because I balked when told that I’ll be doing holiday reviews again. This worries me slightly, because I’m kind of getting the idea that these won’t be good specials. Every time I ask what I’ll be reviewing, they just sort of laugh. What I really balked at (I like the word balked) is that I’m supposed to review commercials as well. So, yeah, sort of worried. Let’s see what they’ve assigned me to watch today…

Rugrats: “The Turkey Who Came to Dinner” (First Broadcast 21 November 1997 Nickelodeon Dir. Rick Bugental & Jim Duffy)

Hey! Rugrats, who doesn’t like Rugrats? Okay, don’t answer that one. Some people really don’t like this cartoon, which I can sort of understand I suppose. I like it though, and as such, I’m going to review the Thanksgiving episode. Over packed November schedule be damned! Let’s do one more thing so December will seem like slim pickings by comparison! This is an episode from ’97, so it’s back from before the show jumped the shark by including new babies. Before that though, I actually liked Rugrats. You must remember, when the show was new, so was the idea of winking at the adults with jokes that would go over the kid’s heads. Everyone does it now, but this was one of the first places I can remember it happening. So, yeah, I liked the show. Let’s se how this Thanksgiving special stacks up.

The Greats: Crime Pictures

Holy crap! Someone stole the intro for this piece. Darn them thieves.

The Greats: Historical Movies

Pretty much, movies that take place before the time that the movie was shot in. That’s a historical piece and that’s all the criteria I used for picking these.

TV Review: Beverly Hillbillies Thanksgiving (Pain Box)

The Beverly Hillbillies: Turkey Day (1963 CBS Dir. Richard Whorf)

The Beverly Hillbillies is to the south what a Minstrel show is to blacks. It’s nasty, ugly, and carries a lot of very offensive jokes that just are not funny. This episode is in black and white, and it’s hard to think of a time when this was on in prime time, instead of weekday afternoons. Actually, in this day and age it’s hard to imagine this hateful crap was on screen at all. There can be no mystery as to why so many people in America think people from the south are stupid when watching this. This is practically a cavalcade of bigotry, and I hate every moment of it. However, I bought the thing and I need to have a review for this slot so I guess I’d better get to it.

An Epic Marathon

You know what would make for an extremely long feeling movie marathon? Epics! I just had the idea that if you showed only Historical Epics, you could get away with maybe 6 movies in a whole day. I decided to see what I had in my collection and how much time it would eat up if I watched them all. I’m giving a slightly loose definition of epic, but I’m adamant about a 180 minute (3 hour) minimum run time. I’m going by the times on my particular DVD boxes, because the times vary from website to website. I’m leaving out things I don’t own and I’m leaving out Braveheart because screw Mel Gibson.

Seven Samurai
Criterion Collection Edition, 2 DVDs 207 minutes (3 hours, 27 minutes)

Ben Hur
1959 version, 2 DVDs, 212 minutes (3 hours, 32 minutes)

The Ten Commandments
1956 version, 2 DVDs, 220 minutes (3 hours 40 minutes)

Lord of The Rings Trilogy
Extended editions (each movie is over the 180 mark), 6 DVDs, 682 minutes (11 hours, 22 minutes)

The Last Emperor
TV Cut, 1 DVD, 218 minutes (Three hours, 38 minutes)

Godfather Triolgy*
4 DVDs or 3 Blu-Ray, 549 minutes (9 hours, 9 minutes)

Kingdom of Heaven
Director's Cut, 2 DVDs, 194 minutes (3 hours, 14 minutes)

Spartacus
Criterion Edition 1 DVD, 196 minutes (3 hours 16 minutes)

Amadeus
Directors Cut, 2 DVDs, 180 minutes (3 hours)

Hamlet
Branagh Version, 2 DVDs, 242 minutes (4 hours 2 minutes)

Schindler's List
2 DVDs, 196 Minutes (3 hours, 16 minutes)

Once Upon a Time in America
Diector's Cut, 2 DVDs, 229 minutes (3 Hours 49 minutes)

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
There are two main editions, this one and the Special Extended cut. 1 DVD, 177 or 179 minutes (Because I feel bad about it missing by a minute or two. By the time you get through the menus and the warnings, it gets to 3 hours)

Casino
2 DVDs, 179 minutes (Another one I felt bad about missing the 3 hour mark by 1 minute)


Total:
18 Movies
3683 Minutes (About 62 hours, which would put you into the third day of solid watching.)
30 discs (So you'd pretty much end up swapping discs as many times as you would without the epics.)

If you start on Thanksgiving, and go all the way to Sunday, you could do it. You'd have to park it for about 16 hours a day and really be into very long movies, but if you've got no other plans for next weekend, give it a whirl.



* Yes, yes, Parts 1 and 3 are only 170 minutes each, but who cares? It would feel strange just watching Part 2, wouldn't it? Tell you what, take some minutes from Braveheart, which we aren't watching anyway and give them to the Godfather movies. I guess you could watch both halves of Red Cliff or Kill Bill instead if you really want, but those are both cheats as the theatrical releases were split into 2 movies each.

The Greats: Fantasy

I fantasize about a world where I can get an intern to write intros for me.
I’m trying to cast a wide net with these selections, but this week I failed. Most of these were made within a few years of each other. I put it down to the fact that my formative years coincided quite nicely with a renaissance in fantasy filmmaking. A couple of obvious things like The Empire Strikes Back and Raiders of The Lost Ark aren’t here because they’ve already been addressed in last week’s entry.

Cartoon Review: This is America, Charlie Brown “The Mayflower Voyagers”

See there? That’s “Real” America.

This is America, Charlie Brown:The Mayflower Voyagers" (October 21, 1988 Dir. Evert Brown)

I have no joke for this one.

I’ve been holding back on this one for years, and I was wondering whether or not I should do it this year. After all, when you take into account how much I’m posting for The Greats and reposting some specials on new blogs and writing a couple of new reviews… I could have waited. This is going to be a very full November for us. I could set the two new reviews off and wait until next year, but then what fun would that be? Besides, I’ve had a bad time this year, and last year, and 2008 wasn’t so hot either if you want the truth. So I decided to calm my nerves by watching something that would send me into a nice relaxing screaming fit. I’m going to also throw every ounce of honest truth at this thing. I’m warning you now, don’t read this thing if you want to keep your stupid, factually deficient lies about the so called pilgrims. I intend to shine the light down on this thing and watch it run like a pack of roaches.

Cartoon Review: A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving

A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (1973 Dir. Bill Melendez)

From his dopey, drugged out look I have to suggest he was watching "I love the 80s" on VH1

When this review was first written, this was the only other Thanksgiving special I could find in my collection. Someone told me that there are some more, but I'd have to watch TV shows I hate to find them so never mind. Using the two I've seen, I will now make sweeping generalizations about any and all Thanksgiving specials. They are heavily padded to make up for short scripts, they involve lots of costume changes, grandmothers not being up to the normal ideal of granmotherlyness, they all have jazz soundtracks, alternate menus for thanksgiving feature heavily as do the difficulties in food preparation and Drew Barrymore was hot in the 90s. That's not actually part of the show, but this picture just popped up as my wallpaper and it sort of stopped me for a moment. Nothing serious but it did give me a second of “Whoa, she was hot there” and I thought I would share that moment with you as it might be the last enjoyable moment we ever share. After looking her up out of curiosity, she still looks really good actually. Enough of this tangent though! Let's start the cartoon, shall we?

The Greats: Horror

I’m too scared to write a proper into. Horror movies are scary!

Cartoon Review: Garfield's Thanksgiving

Garfield's Thanksgiving (1989 Dir. Phil Roman)

You know what? I've discovered recently, I hate Garfield. It's really sad when the best part of your cartoon is that Lou Rawls sings the song over your credit sequence. It's doubly sad because I always sort of saw that as an attempt to copy the Peanuts Specials with their use of Vince Guaraldi's jazz music. Of course since Garfield was a cynical and calculated attempt to cash in on what had gone before, it pretty much measures up. I hate to be really nasty, but it is true that Garfield hasn't been funny in 20 years and these specials pinpoint that fact. There is a joke in here that shows up in all three of the specials on this DVD, pretty much at the same time in each one too. It's pretty sad to see how little effort went into each of these cartoons.

The Greats: Great Series

If you want to know whether or not you should listen to a critic, you should hear what they think The Greats are. So here are my suggestions for you to peruse. We’ll start with movie series that I think are great.

I’m posting this first to avoid people thinking that I forgot to mention some of the movies that won’t be turning up. I’d hate to hear that it’s no big deal, but how could I forget to add that one movie to the list? That surely I couldn’t have thought it inferior, could I? Well, no of course not. What happened was I couldn’t decide which movie from a particular series to add to the list. You can’t go around naming every movie from a series, because then you’re just padding the list out to make ten. No, instead you’ve either got to name the group as a whole, or write a list made up entirely of series. I did the later. Here we have the ten film series that I think are essential to informed movie watching.