Robben Ford Discussion

[BlueRunner]

I just knew that putting a suggested "just one" rule in place would drive Daved nuts. Fortunately, I got a look at his top-20 list before he de-posted it, and hope a lot of other folks did as well.

From the various posts, it's pretty clear that we're a bit of an "off center" group. The blockbusters that have so impressed so many people I know are taking a back seat ('tho still a comfortable and honorable one) to a ton of great "little" films. One in Daved's un-posted list was the wonderful "Repo Man." Not only a great movie, but also if you have someone at work who's forever pestering you about the latest great blockbuster or grade-B "weekend winner" featuring Jennifer(s) Anniston or Lopez, loan him or her a copy of "Repo Man." Things will be peaceful and quiet for a long time after that.

We've recently rented a couple of films we really liked. "Never On Sunday," from around 1962. I saw it as a teenager. Wow, and even better film now. Another two we highly recommend from the current list: "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada," and "Dear Frankie." Re the latter, the Scottish accents were so thick that we had to keep the English subtitles on the whole time.

And while "Casablanca" was my no. 1 all-time best film, I'll have to confess that I've worn deeper groves into my copy of "Field Of Dreams."

Keep those singular nominations coming!
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- BlueRunner

[PierreL]

Well, that's almost impossible to answer such a question.
However, if I try hard, I think that "Fight Club" might be it...but as soon as I will have finished typing I will think of another movie just as obvious to me

[PierreL]

Damn, here they are...

Alien
Saving Private Ryan
Blade Runner
Jaws
The 1st Indiana Jones
...

That's a difficult game, too many to think about !

[Red Suede]

Daved are you kidding??????? You dated her???????? Her stage name at least for that movie was Joy Harmon. You're my new hero!!!!!!!! Your story of meeting her on that bus later reminded me of the song "Taxi" by Harry Chapin. What a life, dude!!!

[BlueRunner]

Oh yeah, and maybe my #2: "Buckaroo Banzai." Always filed in the "cult" section at your local video rental. Peter Weller at his very best.

And my real hero of the flick: Reed player Jerry Peterson, who was (and still is) in Billy Vera's Beaters, chosen by the director to play the part of Buckaroo's Hong Kong Kavaliers in the club scene. Peterson so cracked up the director that they wrote him in as a speaking character in another scene. He's one of the Rugsuckers in the attack at Yo-Yo-Dyne's factory.

For a number of years Jerry has been backing up Teresa James. About a year ago I had a chance to talk to him between sets at one of her local appearances, and he loved telling stories about his brief movie-star time.

Of course, as fans of the movie know, it ends with one of the all-time greatest teases, the credit line, "Watch for the next episode, 'Buckaroo Banzai and the World Crime League'." We've now been waiting for almost 30 years.
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- BlueRunner

[JohnnyZ]

The Thanksgiving Holiday wouldn't be the same for me if I don't watch Planes, Trains, and Automobiles...

Ditto Christmas and The Christmas Story...

[telefunk1]

Too many to list, but here are few to ponder...

Big Lebowski – for one of the all time classic movie lines “I hate the f***ing Eagles!” (Could not agree more!)

War movies – Patton, Kelly’s Heroes (WW2 as seen through a stoned out lens of the late 1960s, very weird)

Horror – Night of the Lepus (giant killer bunnies, oh my!) and Day of the Dead, the best shopping mall with zombie movie ever. Tremors is up there, too (but my 10 year old son likes Tremors 3 better – because the monsters are called “ass blasters” – too cool to a 10 year old boy!)

The Thin Man with Myrna Low and William Powell (the first and best of the series)

Third Man – story by Graham Greene, with Orson Welles and a creepy post-war Vienna in wonderful B&W. I have an autographed 45 of the zither theme by the zitherist (?) that did the soundtrack.

Clambake – Elvis, Shelley Fabares, Bill Bixby – music, speedboats, girls, more girls.

[munichmaedchen]

[quote="BlueRunner"]

What is your favorite motion picture of all time?

[/quote]

That's a hard one because I have a lot of favorites:
Best American drama: Casablanca, ditto
Best German drama: Das Boot starring my favorite German singer, Herbert Groenemeyer

Best European comedy: L'Auberge Espagnole
Best German comedy: Maenner by Doris Doerrie
Best American comedy: Ms. Doubtfire
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[telefunk1]

'What we have here is a failure to communicate..."

Sorry - it is supposed to be Dawn of the Dead (the mall-zombie movie). And the 1978 version, too, not the recent re-make. Day of the Dead was the next one George Romero did (with Bub, the domesticated zombie).

Another movie question: What is your favorite music or concert movie (or musical). I would throw out "Elvis: That's the Way it Is" as one of mine.

[Red Suede]

" The Last Waltz".

[munichmaedchen]

[quote="telefunk1"]'

Another movie question: What is your favorite music or concert movie (or musical). I would throw out "Elvis: That's the Way it Is" as one of mine.[/quote]

I know you guys suspect me to say "Sound of Music" but I HATE It :-) I also hate beer, and that's why they let me move from Munich to CA.
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[FatTeleTom]

+1 for Buckaroo Banzai. Have we really been waiting that long for a sequel??? Well, it looks like only 22 years, so not quite so bad. But what a film--I picked it up on DVD a while back. One of your more quotable movies, and the best John Lithgow performance ever!

And another +1 for the Thin Man. We recently watched the whole series (6 movies I think) via Netflix, and they are all good. But the first one is a stone classic.

[Daved]

Since so many are posting lists of their faves, here is a list of some of my personal favorites:

1 ) The Loved One - Satire on the funeral business, in which a young British poet goes to work at a Hollywood cemetery. Tagline: "The motion picture with something to offend everyone."
2 ) Shoes Of The Fisherman - Starring Anthony Quinn, Laurence Olivier, Oskar Werner, John Gielgud, David Janssen, and Leo McKern, nominated for two Academy Awards and winning a Golden Globe Award for Alex North's score in 1968, clocking in at around 2 hours and 45 minutes, dazzling and huge... it is a powerful epic of geopolitical intrigue set against an in-depth and engrossing behind-the-scenes look at Vatican procedure.
The very near future... the world is on-the-brink as China globally pleads for help and threatens war in an effort to solve the starvation of its overly populated masses.
And while a newly freed Russian political prisoner is elected Pope... the world watches.
The themes are still very relevent and thought provoking today, nearly 40 years later.
3 ) On The Beach - Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire, and Anthony Perkins - The residents of Australia after a global nuclear war must come to terms with the fact that all life will be destroyed in a matter of months.
4 ) Young Frankenstein - Possibly one of the funniest movie satires of all time
5 ) 2001: Space Odyssey and 2010: Contact
6 ) Arsenic & Old Lace - Cary Grant is brilliantly comic in this masterpiece. Confirmed bachelor, Mortimer Bruster, has just gotten married and makes a quick trip home to tell his two maiden aunts. While trying to break the news, he finds out his aunts' hobby; killing lonely old men and burying them in the cellar. It gets worse.
7 ) A Hard Day's Night and Help
8 ) Slaughterhouse 5 (Or The Children's Crusade) - a wonderful film adaptation of the novel, approved by Kurt Vonnegut, it's author.
Director George Hill faithfully renders for the screen Vonnegut's obsessive story of Pilgrim, who survives the 1945 firebombing of Dresden, then lives simultaneously in his past as a young American POW, in the future as a well-cared-for resident of a zoo on the planet Tralfamadore, and in the present as a middle-aged optometrist in Ilium, N.Y.
9 ) Being There - again, a brilliant adaptation of the Jerzy Kozinsky novel. An extraordinary, delicately balanced performance by Peter Sellers, in his last film, portraying the innocent, simple-minded, middle-aged gardener, Chance, who, after a lifetime of seclusion and safety in a Washington, D.C. townhouse, his only knowledge of the world coming from the TV programs he watches, gets his first exposure to reality beyond the walls of his sheltered existence.
10 ) The Sean Connery James Bond flicks - As the tag stated..."Sean Connery IS James Bond!"
11 ) Brazil - Pitting the imagination of a common man against the oppressive storm troopers of the Ministry of Information, this bitter parable for the Information Age is more relevant than ever. One of director Terry Gilliam's finest, I recommend watching the 3-disc Criterion set with both the dark original director's cut and the 'Happy' version recut for TV.
12 ) Charade! - Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn - Romance and suspense in Paris, as a woman is pursued by several men who want a fortune her murdered husband had stolen. Who can she trust?
13) 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea - The coolest submarine of all time!
14 ) Psycho - Welcome to the Bates motel.
15 ) Fail-Safe - The serious side of the Dr. Strangelove scenario. The ending is stunning and provocative. Could YOU make the necessary decision that is shouldered by Henry Fonda as the President?
16 ) The Graduate
17 ) The Good, The Bad & The Ugly
18 ) Harold & Maude - A love story like no other - Young, rich, and obsessed with death, Harold finds himself changed forever when he meets lively septuagenarian Maude at a funeral.
19 ) The Harry Palmer series, particularly The Ipcress File - In the spy-crazed film world of the 1960s, Len Deighton's antihero Harry Palmer burst onto the scene as an antidote to the James Bond films. Here was a British spy who had a working-class accent and horn-rimmed glasses and above all really didn't want to be a spy in the first place. As portrayed by Michael Caine, Palmer was the perfect antithesis to Sean Connery's 007.
20 ) It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World - The dying words of a thief spark a madcap cross-country rush to find some treasure. Stanley Kramer's sprawling 1963 comedy about a search for buried treasure by at least a dozen people--all played by well-known entertainers of their day--is the kind of mass comedy that Hollywood hasn't made in many years.
21 ) My Fair Lady
22 ) West Side Story
23 ) One Flew Over The Cukoo's Nest
24 ) Penn & Teller Get Killed - and they do.
25 ) The Pink Panther flicks, especially A Shot In The Dark
26 ) Dial M For Murder - One of my favorite Hitchcock flicks, originally filmed in 3-D, wherein an ex-tennis pro carries out a plot to murder his wife. When things go wrong, he improvises a brilliant plan B.
27 ) Barbarella - Jane Fonda as you've never seen her since. Based on a French comic strip, In the far future, a highly sexual woman is tasked with finding and stopping the evil Duran-Duran.
28 ) Rocky Horror Picture Show - "Eddie is such a tender subject."
29 ) Rustler's Rhapsody - "Whoops! Root's kicking in!" - A hilarious send up of classic western films and spoofs what these films would be like if they were made today.
30 ) All 4 Christopher Guest mockumentaries beginning with This Is Spinal Tap... of course
31 ) Dark Star - "Bomb, return to the bay!" - Story of four astronauts in deep space, whose mission is to destroy unstable planets in star systems which are to be colonised. As their mission nears completion, they must cope with a runaway alien which resembles a beach-ball, faulty computer systems, and a "smart bomb" who thinks it is God.
32 ) A Boy & His Dog - man's best friend - Closely adapted from the acclaimed novella by Harlan Ellison, this postapocalyptic black comedy has emerged as a cult favorite since its release in 1975, when Don Johnson was a relative unknown.
33 ) The Silver Streak - In this wild comedy adventure, rail passenger George Caldwell (Gene Wilder) finds that a romantic escapade with a sultry secretary (Jill Clayburgh) puts him in the middle of a Hitchcockian murder plot leading to an awesome trainwreck scene at the end. Gene and Richard Pryor make a great comic team.
34 ) The Pawnbroker - This was one of the first film's to deal with the affects of Nazi Germany's concentration camps on their survivors. It is, in my humble opinion, one of Rod Steiger's finest dramatic performances.
35 ) The Little Prince ("each day we'll get closer and closer, and closer all the time, until one day, we're gonna touch" - Gene Wilder as the Fox) Based on the story by Antoine deSaint-Exupery, this magical musical fable begins as a pilot (Richard Kiley) makes a forced landing on the barren Sahara Desert. He is befriended by a "little" prince from the planet Asteroid B-612. It isn't until he comes to Earth that the Little Prince learns the secrets of the importance of life from a Fox (Gene Wilder), a Snake (Bob Fosse), and the pilot. I defy you to keep a dry eye at the end.
36 ) A Clockwork Orange - Being the adventures of a young man ... who couldn't resist pretty girls ... or a bit of the old ultra-violence ... went to jail, was re-conditioned ... and came out a different young man ... or was he ? Stanley Kubrick's striking visual interpretation of Anthony Burgess's famous novel is a masterpiece.
37 ) A.I. - Artificial Intelligence - A highly advanced robotic boy longs to become "real" so that he can regain the love of his human mother. History will place an asterisk next to A.I. as the film Stanley Kubrick might have directed. But let the record also show that Kubrick--after developing this project for some 15 years--wanted Steven Spielberg to helm this astonishing sci-fi rendition of Pinocchio.
38 ) Lisztomania - Often scorned by critics for director Ken Russell's metaphoric interpretation of Liszt's life (in lieu of a more literal one), Lisztomania plays like a trip through a fun house and contains enough symbolism to appease any film buff. Tagline: The erotic, exotic electrifying rock fantasy... It out-Tommy's TOMMY.
39 ) Elephant Parts - a reminder that Michael Nesmith was also a pioneer in music and long-form videos. Produced in 1981, the same year MTV made its debut, the hourlong program consists of 41 comedy bits and videos for Nesmith tunes. Featuring several of the Michael Nesmith music video's which broke ground, "Elephant Parts" was the beginning of the video age, spawning M-TV and its subsidiaries, VH-1 and CMT and GAC and all the rest of them. It was also the first video Grammy winner.
40 ) O' Lucky Man - An outrageous slice-of-life flick about Malcolm McDowell getting lucky, then unlucky, then lucky, then unlucky, etc, set to the music of original Animals keyboardist, Alan Price (Playing and performing as himself thruout the movie). This sprawling, surrealist musical serves as an allegory for the pitfalls of capitalism, as it follows the adventures of a young coffee salesman in Europe. Many actors play multiple roles.
41 ) Walkabout - Nicolas Roeg's mystical masterpiece chronicles the physical, spiritual, and emotional journey of a sister and brother abandoned in the harsh Australian outback. Joining an Aborigine boy on his walkabout-a tribal initiation into manhood-these modern children pass from innocence into experience as they are thrust from the comforts of civilization into the savagery of the natural world.
42 ) Vanishing Point - Thrills, spills and a handful of pills. It all adds up to one of the most spectacular car chases in motion picture history! Barry Newman stars as Kowalski, the last American hero, who set out to prove that he can drive from Denver to San Francisco in just fifteen hours.
43 ) The Gods Must Be Crazy - A Sho in the Kalahari desert encounters technology for the first time--in the shape of a Coke bottle. He takes it back to his people, and they use it for many tasks. The people start to fight over it, so he decides to return it to the God--where he thinks it came from.
44 ) Dirty Rotten Scoundrals - Steve Martin & Michael Caine - Tagline: Nice guys finish last. Meet the winners.
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B C-ing U!
( }:-Daved
"This boy's diseased with rhythm!" -Bing Crosby (Road To Rio, '49)

[telefunk1]

Red- -which part of Last Waltz is your favorite? I kind view it as two movies in one: the concert footage and the "artsty" (for lack of a better word) stuff. I love the track with Emmylou at the end, but seeing Butterfield sing and play gives me chills everytime. Such a powerful presence. And the shot of Clapton losing is strap is always good for a chuckle.

Daved - could not agree more on Brazil. What an incredible statement of our times. And even though Gilliam's Adventures of Baron von Munchausen was not well received it is incredibly stunning visually. Has anyone seen the older B&W German version of the tale? Very randy and saucy version.

[Red Suede]

telefunk, I just liked it all, but if I had to pick a part, it's when they are discussing their time in New York.

Daved, I'm still delirious over the fact you dated one of my alltime favorite sirens of all time, Joy Harmon. Whenever I see that movie I can't wait for that scene. That must have been scary seeing her grow up.