Andy's Youtube Uploads - Post-Siskel & Ebert SNEAK PREVIEWS Archive Unearthed

[AndyDursin]

This will be a slow process but now that I have it figured out a little better, I'll attempt to re-up some of my Youtube videos from the days of yore.

Some classic Siskel & Ebert episodes will be a part of it -- here's one of the few "At The Movies" shows (syndicated) I have from '86, with the boys reviewing LEGEND, WISE GUYS, and AT CLOSE RANGE.

Original commercials intact also!

[Eric Paddon]

That's one of the last shows from the "At The Movies" format since they left that show later that year and then the syndicators brought in Rex Reed and Bill Harris.

I remember that Lay's spot. Ray Buktenica from the sitcom "House Calls" as the dork and in a tie-in to your "King Kong" 76 review he's in that film uncredited as the guy manning the radar on the Petrox Explorer!

[AndyDursin]

Ray Buktenica from the sitcom "House Calls" as the dork and in a tie-in to your "King Kong" 76 review he's in that film uncredited as the guy manning the radar on the Petrox Explorer!

I recognized him in KING KONG as "some guy I had seen before" via commercials, etc. and here he is!!

[Monterey Jack]

To this day, it baffles me that Ebert gave ***1/2 stars to Wise Guys...but only **1/2 to The Untouchables, despite being one of De Palma's staunchest advocates over the decades. Even people who hate De Palma tend to love The Untouchables.

[AndyDursin]

They were in the definite minority on WISE GUYS too. Movie was pretty much ravaged by everyone else.

[Monterey Jack]

They were in the definite minority on WISE GUYS. Movie was pretty much ravaged by everyone else.

And with good reason. For a filmmaker who was able to add effectively quirky dark humor to his suspense thrillers, whenever De Palma made an outright comedy, the results were deadly.

[Paul MacLean]

I can understand people reacting to the US cut of Legend as they did!

Ebert at least acknowledges the film’s visuals, but Siskel is so off there. Say what you like about the script and characters, but Legend was one of the most visually original movies ever made -- and still looks better than any fantasy movie made since (though Harry Potters 2-4 come close in places)

I often wonder how someone as visually un-inclined as Siskel ever got a job reviewing movies. Of course, many film critics — being writers — don't really review the actual movie. They review the screenplay. The visuals are lost on them.

[Monterey Jack]

You all know my thoughts on Legend...no matter the cut, no matter the musical score, it's a risible, embarrassing, incoherent, unintentionally funny movie. I distinctly remember watching the Tangerine Dream version on VHS at some point in the mid-90s with my mother, and walking out of the room with a disgusted "This is awful" tossed over my shoulder (and it's very rare I don't finish a movie, even a horrible one). I gave it another chance when the DVD with the European Jerry Goldsmith cut hit in the early 00's (it's one of Goldsmith's most beautiful, expressive scores, goofy "Synth Fart" embellishments and all), expecting it to make at least a little more sense with an extra half-hour of footage, and disliked it even more. It ranks with Hannibal as one of Ridley Scott's worst films, only kept mildly aloft by Goldsmith's music, the admittedly-impressive sets and cinematography and Rob Bottin's devil makeup on Tim Curry (oh, and Mia Sara is awfully purdy in it ).

[AndyDursin]

I'm converting some of my files to MKV for digital backup anyway (I have the discs in ISO format) and since I dont need to do any further conversions for uploading to Youtube (which also results in better audio/video transfers than before), this process is much easier than years ago so I'll keep going along over the next few weeks and months.

What's interesting is that 2 SNEAK PREVIEWS shows I uploaded last night were initially blocked from being visible because of clips from two movies: ENEMY MINE and LADYHAWKE.

The Youtube licensing software is so good, it actually created its own time stamps and edited the "offending" clips out seamlessly (if abruptly) so those episodes are there -- the clips from the movies are just gone. I didn't even need to re-edit them on my own.

Funny it's those two movies and just those episodes -- I wonder if the SNEAK PREVIEWS clips are more prone to that because the clips are much longer than the Siskel & Ebert shows, which break them up into smaller scenes? So far those are the only movies that were blocked because of content, and UNLIKE years ago, I didn't get a "copyright strike" and have my account removed/suspended...they seem to have figured that out better.

Either way here's a fun Medved/Lyons SNEAK PREVIEWS show from Christmas 85 with RUNAWAY TRAIN (Siskel & Ebert may have given it 4 stars, but Paul will agree with their review!), REVOLUTION (he won't agree here, though I think Medved was very fair and I agree with his assessment of the movie's problems), RAN, and ENEMY MINE (sans the clips) --

[Paul MacLean]

It ranks with Hannibal as one of Ridley Scott's worst films, only kept mildly aloft by Goldsmith's music, the admittedly-impressive sets and cinematography and Rob Bottin's devil makeup on Tim Curry (oh, and Mia Sara is awfully purdy in it ).

My point was not necessarily to defend Legend as high art, but to highlight Gene Siskel's almost total lack of perception when it comes to the visual elements of a movie.

I recall one of Siskel & Ebert's "Holiday Gift Guides" when Siskel was demonstrating a camcorder -- and turned it sideways to elongate the picture.

[Paul MacLean]

Either way here's a fun Medved/Lyons SNEAK PREVIEWS show from Christmas 85 with RUNAWAY TRAIN (Siskel & Ebert may have given it 4 stars, but Paul will agree with their review!), REVOLUTION (he won't agree here, though I think Medved was very fair and I agree with his assessment of the movie's problems), RAN, and ENEMY MINE (sans the clips) --

I do understand where they are coming from. It's probably fair to say High Hudson didn't invest the picture with strong a "point of view" -- which a film about the American Revolution ought to have had. Hudson seemed more interested in creating an "experience".

The production was also plagued with difficulties (a feud between Hudson and Pacino, Nastaja Kinski leaving the country when she had scenes to shoot, constant rain, a collapsed crane, etc., etc.) so it seems a miracle it was even completed.

In mitigation, Al Pacino was arguably miscast. Then again, Hudson's original choice was Sylvester Stallone! Revolution would probably have played better with someone like Harrison Ford or or Mel Gibson in the lead. (Gibson of course would eventually star in The Patriot -- whose script bore some striking similarities to Revolution). Donald Sutherland and the supporting cast (which included Dexter Fletcher, Joan Plowright, Robbie Coltrane, and Graham Greene) were terrific however.

I think Hugh Hudson was being very experimental, with the casting, the art direction and photography -- and even the score, by enlisting a classical composer. For many, I guess those experiments didn't pay-off. I don't dispute the film has flaws, but for me it also has many compelling moments and some impressive set pieces.

No discussion of the reputation of Hudson's film would be complete without mentioning the observations of Nick Redman (Heaven rest him). He asserted Revolution's failure was due to the mindset of the 1980s -- a time of "unchecked greed, avarice and colonial recklessness" which (he condended) accounted for the film's failure. Nick credited the more recent (and positive) re-evaluation of the picture as the by-product of a more enlightened era: "With the election of Barack Obama to the Presidency, the promise of Revolution has in certain ways been fulfilled".

[Monterey Jack]

I recall one of Siskel & Ebert's "Holiday Gift Guides" when Siskel was demonstrating a camcorder -- and turned it sideways to elongate the picture.

This is akin to people who stretch out widescreen movies on their sets so they won't have "Those annoying black bars".

[Johnmgm]

"With the election of Barack Obama to the Presidency, the promise of Revolution has in certain ways been fulfilled".

What a load of crap.

[Eric Paddon]

Amen to that. And no doubt the same kind of crap would come from a Kirgo commentary or write-up.

[AndyDursin]

That was cringe worthy, right at the height of Obama-mania. I remember that review of Abrams' STAR TREK in The Guardian or some UK paper where they extolled how "the movie celebrated achievement in the age of Obama."

I recall one of Siskel & Ebert's "Holiday Gift Guides" when Siskel was demonstrating a camcorder -- and turned it sideways to elongate the picture.

People do that all the time today when they shoot cell phone video vertically. Siskel was ahead of his time!!

On REVOLUTION, I certainly respect the effort. It's just such a muddled, disconnected movie. It doesn't feel real to me, all the dialogue is borderline incomprehensible, most all of it looped, so it sounds "canned". Pacino seems totally out of it. The UK shoot doesn't really evoke Colonial America to me. I think Medved nailed it when he said the movie is so downbeat and passionless, it's like there are no winners, which is I assume what Hudson's point was -- to kind of make a Vietnam allegory of sorts with the Revolution. Either way it didn't come off dramatically for me at all, and it's mostly a dreary slog. The shorter version addresses only some of the issues while magnifying others.