Movie-A-Day #26: Major League (1989).
Bob Uecker may not have made a big splash in the major leagues, but he did in “Major League.” The broadcaster/actor/former athlete/national treasure has had his health problems recently, but luckily he’s still with us. And he turns 75 today. He’s memorable for plenty of TV commercials, acting gigs and public appearances – not to mention for also being a play-by-play announcer for the Milwaukee Brewers – but it’s for “Major League” that he’s best remembered. And rightly so.
Movie-A-Day #25: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966).
Virginia Woolf was one of the literary giants of the 20th century. But like a lot of modern authors, her body of work has made much of a dent on the big screen. So to mark her birthday today, we turn not to Nicole Kidman and her fake nose, but to something Woolf had nothing to do with beyond the appropriation of her name – Mike Nichols’ scathing adaptation of Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, the hottest celebrity couple of the time, dropped the glamor for their emotionally terrifying work here. Could you imagine Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt doing the same?
Movie-A-Day #24: Caligula (1979).
Oh, Caligula. He’s become the poster child of Roman excess, having reportedly had sex with three of his sisters (and pimping them out as well), condemned whole sections of the crowd thrown to the lions in the arena because he was bored, tried to make his horse a senator, and declared himself a god. The historical accuracy of some of these claims is suspect, but they sure do make good stories to tell. Regardless of the truth, he was a bad enough emperor to be the subject of several assassination attempts. A group of his personal guards finally succeeded in killing him on this date in 41 A.D. Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione and writer Gore Vidal brought all this no-holds-barred perversity to the screen in “Caligula.” With plenty of explicit sex and violence, the film ran into all sorts of censorship problems, although the full version is now available on DVD. Today’s the day to finally check out the insanity first hand.
Movie-A-Day #23: The Pillow Book (1996).
Jan. 23 is National Handwriting Day in the United States. That’s all well and good, but Japan is where the art of penmanship has really developed. There, calligraphy is not just a pretty way to communicate but a fully-realized artform all its own, full of beauty and sensuality. It’s this sensual side that Peter Greenaway highlights in “The Pillow Book,” his adaptation of the Sei Shonagon novel about a woman who seeks erotic release through using the body as a medium for calligraphy. It’s a beautiful and sexually charged film – and, yes, this is where you need to go if you want to see full frontal nudity from Ewan McGregor.
Movie-A-Day #22: The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle (1980).
Malcolm McLaren, who would have been 65 today, was a visionary, an entrepreneur, a shyster and a hack. Not only was he the svengali behind the Sex Pistols and Bow Wow Wow, he also (along with legendary designer Vivienne Westwood) shaped the look and feel of the punk movement and turned it into big business. He helped bring fetishism and S&M into the mainstream and even had a hit single with the song “Buffalo Gals,” which was instrumental in introducing American hip hop culture to Europe. But as important as he was in shaping late 20th century pop culture and in commodifying underground social movements, he was also a swindler to cheated and lied to his artists, his business partners and his friends. He was a brilliant tangle of contradictions, and those contradictions are out in full force in “The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle.” It started out as a film project for the Sex Pistols, to be directed by cult filmmaker Russ Meyer from a script by Roger Ebert. But after the Pistols famously flamed out, it evolved into a rambling pseudo-documentary in which McLaren gives his highly biased version of the demise of the band and discusses his business philosophies with a dwarf. The title isn’t a lie – the film is a bit of a swindle itself, but a fascinating and charming one.
Desuko Movie Spot. 