Those Damn DirecTV Movie Tie-In Ads - Offensive To Film Buffs?

To cut to the chase - yes. Those commercials (most running for 30 seconds) that re-create a scene from a well known movie oft played on cable with an actor re-outfitted in their old characters duds and mugging to the camera about the better picture quality benefits of DirecTV have been irking me for some time now. Let's take a look at a few of them shall we? :

The first of these that I have seen wasn't too bad - it had Christopher Lloyd dressed and made up to look like his 1985 Doc Brown character from BACK TO THE FUTURE (Dir. Robert Zemeckis) in this ad designed to make you feel like you're coming back from commercials to a movie you forgot you were watching. Lloyd hams it up saying "I forgot to tell Marty when he gets back to the future he needs to get DirecTV HD!" As Wikipedia notes "Marty would not actually be able to get DirecTV once he got back to the future as it did not exist in 1985 and the Doc of 1955 would obviously have no way of knowing about it. However, this blatant illogic can be regarded simply as a joke." Uh - okay!

You can't really fault Charlie Sheen for turning a fast buck revisiting his MAJOR LEAGUE (Dir. David S. Ward, 1989) role of Rick 'Wild Thing' Vaughn. It's a movie that seems to always playing on some cable channel (mostly TBS) and he was likable in it which is seriously unlike just about all of his other films so he and DirecTV are in the clear here. Major points would have been added if Dennis Haysbert (who played Voodoo practicing Cuban defector Pedro Cerrano in the 1989 film and its sequels) did some add-on shot (he's probably too busy doing AllState ads) - but I'll still put this in the acceptable pile.

Now those were somewhat cute - if you stick to mainstream movies and B or C-list celebrities popping up in mock scenes from their movies sure we can look the other way but Sigourney Weaver resurrecting her female-empowering alien-ass-kicking heroine Ellen Ripley in this ALIENS ad attrocity that just starting airing recently really gets my goat! To see this classic character who was named by the American Film Institute as the #8 greatest hero in American cinema history shilling for DirecTV is just depressing. Maybe we can tell ourselves that it's one of Ripley's clones from ALIEN RESURRECTION - no, it's still sad.


I mean it makes some kind of marketing sense to have Jessica Simpson break the 4th wall from her role as Daisy Duke in the apocalypse-warning signpost that was THE DUKES OF HAZZARD (Dir. Jay Chandrasekhar, 2005) and chastize her leering viewers by taunting them by saying "Hey - 253 straight days at the gym to keep this body and you're not going to watch me on DirecTV HD? You're just not going to get the best picture out of some fancy big screen TV without DirecTV." Though incredibly eye-rolling inducing it makes some kind of sense because it's a completely disposable commercial movie and nobody will care if a character steps away from that kind of cinematic enterprise to do a sales pitch for a company. Speaking of stepping away from the Enterprise ...

"Settling for cable would be illogical" Captain Kirk (William Shatner) says to Spock's (Leonard Nimoy) grimace. Shatner is surrounded from footage from STAR TREK VI mind you in this commercial. Not the first time he's acted reacting to nothing and it won't be the last. This one is understandable because Shatner with his Priceline.com pitches, MCI, and the UK Kellogg's All-Bran cereal ads has been a commercial spokesman * almost more than he's been an straight actor, no wait he's never really been a straight actor. Still, I get a bit pissed off watching his laconic walk-through in this ad I'm reminded by comedian Patton Oswalt's put down from Shatner's Comedy Central Roast -when he held up a paper bag and dared Shatner - "Could you act your way out of this?"

* To see the hilarious origins of Shatner as a commercial spokesman checkout this hilarious Commodore Vic20 Ad.

I just feel like we're one step away from having Ralph Fiennes popping up as his evil Nazi personage Amon Goeth in a mock scene from SCHINDLER'S LIST looking right at the camera and saying "don't you want to see me personally execute masses of Jews in the crystal clear clarity of DirecTV? Don't you?!!?"

Okay, maybe that was a bit over the top - none of the ads so far have been from serious dramas or Oscar-caliber prestige pictures but I think these ads are bad for the film community. Okay, maybe just the online film community. Okay, maybe just me. Now this one with Pamela Anderson playing her iconic character C.J. from the television show Baywatch is just about right - hear that DirecTV! Stick to TV shows and low-brow comedies that were cheesy to begin with and all is forgiven. Okay?

Postscript : I know I haven't covered all of those damn ads - Leslie Nielsen revisited his 1980 Dr. Rumack performance in a AIRPLANE! one, Ben Stein again asked "Bueller? Bueller? ..." for a FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF throw-back, Bill Paxton once again chased a tornado in a TWISTER take, and shortly before his death in Pat Morita brought back Miyagi from THE KARATE KID ('86). If there are any others that irk you or that you actually like - send 'em on in to :

boopbloop7@gmail.com

Oh yeah - I read somewhere that Bill Murray was all set to re-Carlize himself for a spot from CADDYSHACK ('80) but he was either out of the country working on a film or he came down with a case of integrity...

More later...

BROKEN FLOWERS And More Random Babble

 

 

The most recent movie I’ve seen in the theaters was BROKEN FLOWERS, the new Bill Murray flick directed by Jim Jarmusch. It seems to be another entry in the minimalist phase of Murray's career. In earlier work like MEATBALLS, STRIPES, or GHOSTBUSTERS, Murray’s wise cracking persona worked every angle. Now he appears to be so jaded and too tired to even approach any angle.



Murray even has to be cajoled into this slight premise - revisiting past loves because of an unsigned letter saying he may have a 20 year old son- by an over-eager neighbor (Jeffery Wright). As much as I was amused by certain moments (Jessica Lange’s bit as an animal communicator particularly) I thought the movie was just okay. Not especially involving as Murray's character and a lot of the movie seemed underwritten.



Scenes made out of shots, like the one above, of Murray sitting inactive in his house seem artsy for artsiness sake, and the whole project feels like its piggy-backing on Sophia Coppola’s LOST IN TRANSLATION, which featured a much more nuanced performance by the same former SNL cast member.

Anyway, apart from plowing through the 4th season of Six Feet Under this last week, I also watched Igmar Bergman’s SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE (1973). Because of a recent episode of Ebert and Roeper that told me about Bergman’s last film, SARABAND, updates the story of SCENES’ central characters played by Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson, I decided that I had to put it in my Netflix queue. 

SCENES was originally broadcast as a 6-part TV series in Sweden in the early ‘70s, but Bergman also edited the episodes together into a theatrical version that was released worldwide. The theatrical version, clocking in at 2 hours and 40-something minutes long, is what I chose to watch. I was struck about how close Woody Allen’s HUSBANDS AND WIVES (1995) was to it. I mean I knew Allen was a Bergman disciple but damn! SCENES’s documentary like set-up, the long involved and tortured conversational break-downs, and the probing close-ups are all used to great effect in HUSBANDS.

Film historian and supposed Bergman scholar Peter Cowie told me in the Criterion Collection edition’s sole special feature that it was best to watch in segments. But I watched it all in one sitting because I wanted to take it all in, then promptly return it so I could get more Six Feet Under discs.

However, I found that there was no way to rush a viewing of this pristine movie and found myself going back to re-watch various segments. I got wrapped up in the emotional turmoil surrounding the relationship of Josephson and Ullman’s Johann and Marriane so much that I decided that Six Feet Under could wait.

Now I feel like I should put the longer TV version in my queue. Damn my completist minded film addiction! Or actually, thank the Heavens for it. Not sure what I'd do with these random hours otherwise. Now with hope, Bergman’s 2003 follow-up SARABAND will come to my area.

More later...

The Top 50 Sequels That Should Have Never Been Made

Making this list made me realize how much of my life was wasted watching: 



THE TOP 50 SEQUELS THAT SHOULD HAVE NEVER BEEN MADE 



There was a Simpsons episode where Bart was trapped in a room with multiple doors labeled with roman numerals. At first he wasn't able to read them as numbers but suddenly his knowledge of Rocky films kicked in and he was able to identify the numerals correctly, and pick the right door in which to make his exit. 



That might be the only practical purpose for most movie sequels. 



I mean sure there's a few good to excellent sequels - GODFATHER PART II comes immediately to mind. I mean that one even won the best picture Academy Award! 



But for every good sequel like say THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK or SUPERMAN II there are literally hundreds of awful unnecessary money-grubbing retreads. 



Here's the cream of the crap: 100 bad sequels, well actually more than that considering I use one entry for multiple movies out of or including a whole series at times. 



Lastly many would argue that in some cases the original movie shouldn't have been made either but that's a whole 'nuther list!

Read them and weep.

1. THE GODFATHER: PART III



PART II pretty much summed it up didn't it? PART III is a unnecessary and pointless sequel, but considering at one point in the '80s Stallone came close to fronting an entry in the GODFATHER series it could have been a lot worse. 



Many blame Sophia Coppola's acting or lack of acting but in my book the project was doomed the second Robert Duvall passed. They replaced him with George Hamilton. George Hamilton for Christ's sake!



2. STAR WARS: EPISODE I - THE PHANTOM MENACE 



"Prequel? More like Nyquil" - David Letterman



3. THE TWO JAKES (the Jack Nicholson-directed sequel to CHINATOWN)



4. MORE AMERICAN GRAFFITI: The post-script to the original movie said what the fates of the characters were - so why do we need this unfunny, stiff, and visually bombastic mess? I can't think of a reason.



5. CADDYSHACK II



6. BLUES BROTHERS 2000: Or course if you're reading this list you know that sequels mostly always suck but if one of the major players from the first film is dead they are destined for the Hall of Suck. Aykroyd's misguided attempt to revive the Blues Brothers' film career replacing the great John Belushi with John Goodman is a embarrassment and almost as much of an insult to Belushi's legacy as Bob Woodward's tawdry bio Wired.



7. BACK TO THE FUTURE PART II (III wasn't great either)



8. AIRPLANE 2: THE SEQUEL: Probably one of the worst offenders of the re-treading of the entire first film with no shame. In the commentary for the AIRPLANE! DVD the Zucker brothers and Jim Abrahams stress that they had nothing to do with the sequel and that to this day neither of them has seen it. Good decision. Wish I had made it too.



9. JAWS 2 (ditto for the rest of them too)

10. STAR TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER (You know, the one that Shatner directed)



11. TEXASVILLE (THE LAST PICTURE SHOW sequel)



12. THE MATRIX RELOADED (same goes for REVOLUTIONS)



13. OH, GOD! BOOK II



14. THE NAKED GUN 2½: THE SMELL OF FEAR (the third one, 33⅓: THE FINAL INSULT was better, but not much)




15. FLETCH LIVES



16. GHOSTBUSTERS II



17. ROBOCOP 2 (never saw any of the others after this)



18. SUPERMAN III (IV sucked too)



19. STAYING ALIVE (Sylvester Stallone-directed sequel to SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER)



20. DIE HARD 2



21. DUMB AND DUMBERER: WHEN HARRY MET LLOYD



22. MEN IN BLACK II 



23. SCARY MOVIE 2 The poster campaign for the original Scary Movie said "No shame, no mercy, no sequel." For breaking that promise alone, this makes the list.



24. ESCAPE FROM L.A. (ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK sequel, duh!)     



25. BATMAN & ROBIN (Don't think I saw BATMAN FOREVER, don't remember it anyway)



26. THE JEWEL OF THE NILE (ROMANCING THE STONE follow-up)



27. BABE: PIG IN THE CITY



28. TEEN WOLF TOO



29. TRAIL OF THE PINK PANTHER (any of the PINK PANTHER movies made after Peter Sellers death could make this list)



30. ROCKY V



31. MAJOR LEAGUE II



32. THE EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC



33. JURASSIC PARK III



34. BOOK OF SHADOWS: BLAIR WITCH 2 



35. HIGHLANDER II: THE QUICKENING



36. THE STING II



37. BATTLE FOR PLANET OF THE APES



38. AUSTIN POWERS IN GOLDMEMBER



39. THE FLY II



40. RAMBO III (Man, Stallone is popping up quite a bit on this list!)

41. ANALYZE THAT (Though part of me wants them to make a third one so that they can call it: GO ANALYZE YOURSELF, ALREADY!)



42. THE KARATE KID, PART II (Never saw PART III)



43. HALLOWEEN II (and III, and IV, and so on)



44. YOUNG GUNS II



45. GREASE 2



46. SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT II (The inconsistently titled PART 3 was worse, but nobody was paying attention anymore)



47. WAYNE'S WORLD 2



48. BIG TOP PEE-WEE



49. POLTERGEIST II: THE OTHER SIDE (Again, I never saw the third one)



50. FRIGHT NIGHT PART 2



Whew! That's quite a list of failed follow-ups. Since scheduled upcoming films include STAR WARS: EPISODE III, THE RING 2, a new PINK PANTHER movie, as well as a bunch of sure to be sucky sequels, I'm sure this will be a much lengthier list in the future.



More later...