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

[AndyDursin]

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.

That's the difference between us and what we appreciate about movies. I won't pretend LEGEND is a brilliant piece of cinema, but it certainly has amazing elements that are brilliant for someone who appreciates film music, cinematography, make-up and art direction would savor. The ability to watch a film with a physical production like this is very rare, and I think Ebert nailed it when he spoke about that.

And only HANNIBAL? LOL. I could name a dozen Ridley Scott movies (especially his mostly dull section of "serious dramas") that are worse than LEGEND. 1492, ROBIN HOOD, MATCHSTICK MEN, THE COUNSELOR (one of the worst movies ever made IMO), SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME, EXODUS, ALIEN COVENANT, A GOOD YEAR, BODY OF LIES, the boring AMERICAN GANGSTER and ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD-- I'd take LEGEND over any of those too. In a nanosecond. Not even a contest.

The story may not be "engaging" but its a fairy tale. It's what it is. There's no Tarantino snarkiness there, it's not SHREK -- it's serious and you may not like it, but I dont understand what's "incoherent" about it. Plenty of people didn't care for it either, but you think it's like THE WORST MOVIE EVER FREAKING MADE and that's just incoherent to me. We clearly have different standards of "bad".

[Monterey Jack]

I don't think Legend is one of the worst movies ever made, just one of the worst movies Ridley Scott has ever made. Believe me, I have tried to watch it in the right frame of mind, but it's just so twee. Back in his Boston Phoenix days in the 80s, Owen Gleiberman referred to Tm Cruise's presence in the film as being akin to "...a football jock stuck in a high school production of A Midsummer Night's Dream". He's beyond wrong for this type of movie (even in a better-made film, like Interview With A Vampire, he was gravely miscast. Some actors should NEVER do period or fantasy movies, ever). For me, Legend is like someone took the fantasy doodles on a 12-year-old girl's mid-80s Trapper Keeper and transcribed them into a screenplay. Yes, thanks to Scott, it's a pretty collection of stock characterizations and paper-thin clichés, but it's still a bad movie, when there were so many better fantasy films of the period to sit through, like Ladyhawke or The Dark Crystal or The Secret Of NIMH. At least the Euro cut has Goldsmith's exceptional score acting as a soothing balm to distract from all of the tacky glitter and bubbles(!) floating through every shot.

[AndyDursin]

And yet one frame of LEGEND is ten times more interesting than every one of those Scott dogs I mentioned. I think he is a brilliant visualist but that's kind of it. He's not a great storyteller per se. He doesn't write any of his own work. He has never ever been known as an "actor's director" more the opposite. So a movie like LEGEND even if it's not up with his best work is still in his comfort zone for me, and far more interesting than so many of his "straight" dramas which frankly mostly bored me to tears. Is anyone out there still talking about BODY OF LIES? I forgot he even made that movie!

I just don't see what's funny about the movie. It's a fairy tale. There's a hero. There's a princess. There's a bad guy. It's pretty simple. I don't think any of it is even close to being "unintentionally funny"...ok except for a little of Cruise's stiff performance. I will admit that

[Paul MacLean]

Back in his Boston Phoenix days in the 80s, Owen Gleiberman referred to Tm Cruise's presence in the film as being akin to "...a football jock stuck in a high school production of A Midsummer Night's Dream".

Interesting he should say that, as Scott was very much influenced by the 1935 production of A Midsummer Night's Dream (and German expressionism overall)...

For me, Legend is like someone took the fantasy doodles on a 12-year-old girl's mid-80s Trapper Keeper and transcribed them into a screenplay.

You may actually be onto something here. I believe that, intentionally or not, Legend is really a chick flick. Many -- maybe even most -- of the Legend fans I've met have been women. They all seem to fall for the romantic angle of the film, and find Tim Curry both scary and erotically alluring.

At least the Euro cut has Goldsmith's exceptional score acting as a soothing balm to distract from all of the tacky glitter and bubbles(!) floating through every shot.

Actually, the bubbles only appear in a total of two scenes.

In any case, whether the film appeals to one or not, Legend's visual style has been extremely influential -- you can see it in Jim Henson's The StoryTeller, Lord of the Rings, a slew of music videos, and commercials -- right up to this very day...



Gee, where have I seen him before?

[AndyDursin]

I believe that, intentionally or not, Legend is really a chick flick. Many -- maybe even most -- of the Legend fans I've met have been women. They all seem to fall for the romantic angle of the film, and find Tim Curry both scary and erotically alluring.

Romantic fairy tales typically do appeal to women. Cruise isn't good in the movie, he's barely serviceable, but again, who cares...it's a fairy tale, and his casting did appeal to women coming at that point in time especially.

In fact, LEGEND is probably just a rung below the likes of ALIEN, BLADE RUNNER, and GLADIATOR on Scott's filmography as a whole in terms of enduring popularity. Arrow is doing LEGEND because a lot of people like it and it has a cult following. Virtually NONE of the boring dramas Scott has made in the last 20-30 years, save BLACK HAWK DOWN, THELMA and GLADAITOR, anyone cares about. Nobody is talking about BODY OF LIES or even AMERICAN GANGSTER now, those are all long forgotten. Special edition of MATCHSTICK MEN? Nope.

[AndyDursin]

Here's a 1987 "Guilty Pleasures" show I uploaded -- have to admit I own most of these! Lots of good titles here, including SUMMER LOVERS, THE ENTITY, THE LAST STARFIGHTER, Tobe Hooper's THE FUNHOUSE, PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE, even Roger extolling the virtues of TARZAN THE APE MAN with Bo Derek

[Eric Paddon]

Well.....watching Bo is always a guilty pleasure. (if only she wore the costume in the poster!)

[AndyDursin]

Gene & Roger's Thanksgiving appearance with Bob Costas spilled over to another episode. Both I spliced together here -- with original commercials!

[AndyDursin]

...and a Best of the 80s special, which includes a disagreement over MISSISSIPPI BURNING, which somehow made Roger's 10 best of the decade.

[jkholm]

I had the day off today and spent some time watching several of the Siskel and Ebert episodes. Thanks for uploading, Andy.

The "What's Wrong with Home Video" episode seems like it would be horribly dated but was actually still relevant. Proper subtitling of foreign movies isn't a problem any more and widescreen TV's have (mostly) eliminated the need for letterboxing but now we have the opposite problem of shows never meant to be wide being artificially stretched out to fill modern TV screens.

Then there's the issue Ebert and Siskel had with calling local video stores to find "off-beat" movies such as Fingers and UFOria. The stores they called only had the hits and the critics worried that was creating a hit driven model for success. Video stores may be gone but they have been replaced by streaming services. Just as you used to have to pay membership fees to join a video store (at least in the early days) you have to pay for each individual streaming service. And just like how you might have to go to several stores to find the movie you wanted to rent, now you have to search through multiple services that may or may not have your desired title "in stock." The more things change...

[AndyDursin]

and just like how you might have to go to several stores to find the movie you wanted to rent, now you have to search through multiple services that may or may not have your desired title "in stock." The more things change...

This is such a great point John, and it's all too true. Those of us with large libraries of physical or digital content don't have this problem, but it's stunning to me to read the occasional story "Netflix is Losing ROCKY IV This Month" or something along those lines every now and then, like it's some kind of big deal. There apparently are a great many "casual viewers" who will just go with the flow of whatever is being served up to them by the streaming services they subscribe to, and much like a traveling circus, this product will migrate from, say, Netflix to Amazon Prime to Hulu or whatever and back again, so people will have access to -- and then lose that access -- if they're just hanging around the same service(s).

But that content is also, to connect back to what S&E talked about in that show, very much limited to popular catalog titles, so the content is nearly always the same....just a different package of titles that migrates around. People want to see ROCKY IV. They want to see THE GOONIES, etc. The small little gem or lesser known movie isn't being embraced by those services. You can sometimes buy those and track them down, but you need to specifically find and buy them individually on something like Vudu. You won't be exposed to the obscure so much, and you'll miss out if you're just taking in what the service provides you.

Like you said, that angle in the episode is still relevant now -- surprisingly so -- just with streaming services having become the de facto video stores of today. And you're right -- I remember when I was really young my folks paying a VERY hefty annual fee to belong to a local video store...I can't recall specifically but could've it been somewhere between $50-$100 annually? That was a hell of a lot of money back in the early '80s.

This particular 1988 episode was also noteworthy because it was one of the first exposures everyday viewers may have had to letterboxing, a subject S&E would tackle many times over the following years. I must've been 13-14 at the time so it kind of blew my mind (and also made me hugely envious of someone who could afford a laserdisc player! My parents eventually bought me one in high school).

It also shows how both Spielberg and Woody Allen were able to get mainstream releases of THE COLOR PURPLE and MANHATTAN through on home video even back in the dreaded "pan and scan" era.

Glad you are enjoying these uploads! I seem to be getting a great deal of positive response on the Youtube comments, and since only some minor edits need to be made on a few of the shows in terms of copyright (even though I still don't know why the clips arent designated as fair use), I will keep going through my own recordings.

[Paul MacLean]

Like you said, that angle in the episode is still relevant now -- surprisingly so -- just with streaming services having become the de facto video stores of today. And you're right -- I remember when I was really young my folks paying a VERY hefty annual fee to belong to a local video store...I can't recall specifically but could've it been somewhere between $50-$100 annually? That was a hell of a lot of money back in the early '80s.

Wow! We only had to pay a buck to belong to "Video Ithaca", the go-to rental place where I grew-up (and later attended college). Ithaca was kind of a snobby, pretentious town, but the upside of that was Video Ithaca had a healthy selection of foreign / "art" films.

That said, I remember renting the VHS of Kwaidan, and turning it off because the transfer was the worst I'd ever seen. Apart from the fact it was a pan & scan transfer of a 2.4:1 movie, it was blurry and practically impossible to see what was happening on screen!

[AndyDursin]

If that's all they charged in the early 80s they were one of a kind!

This was very, very early -- probably somewhere between 80-82 -- but I remember not just the one store we joined but another that was about 15 minutes away also had a hefty membership fee. Somewhere between $50-$100 I'm fairly sure; might've been for a "lifetime" membership but I don't remember. Probably to cover the cost of one of the tapes if you broke it (and dang they were "priced for rental" back in that era too! Like MSRP of $99 for that reason).

Apparently this was common place back in the era --
https://www.techspot.com/trivia/45-how- ... first-vhs/

Here's a fun Entertainment Tonight clip on the early days of home video I found on Youtube with original host Ron Hendren -- it's followed by a RAIDERS TV spot with the SUPERMAN voice over guy ("this time is going to be the best time!")

His $750 didn't go very far back in '81!

[Paul MacLean]

Here's a fun Entertainment Tonight clip on the early days of home video I found on Youtube with original host Ron Hendren -- it's followed by a RAIDERS TV spot with the SUPERMAN voice over guy ("this time is going to be the best time!")

His $750 didn't go very far back in '81!

Ha-ha! The CED machine -- a format that actually had grooves read by a stylus (like an LP) so each play contributed to the deterioration of the actual disc.

As far as tape, my family decided to go with Beta -- which was higher-quality than VHS. Unfortunately it was not always reliable. Tracking static was an occasional problem (more so than with VHS, which we eventually adopted). Plus, sometimes -- with pre-recored tapes anyway -- if you hit stop and went back to finish watching a tape later, it would not display a picture -- just a black screen. Sometimes it would not play the tape at all (just the black screen), and this was expensive Sony machine too!

I remember one day I popped-in a cassette on a lark to see if it would play, and played just fine. I seized this rare opportunity and gave-up my afternoon to watch the whole movie in one go -- since there was no guarantee I could stop and re-start it later that night!

[AndyDursin]

LOL that's crazy!

I never had any experience with Beta, just heard from you and others that the quality was better. But your experience is matched with that clip where Hendren even mentions "people say VHS is more reliable". For the money associated with Beta as format and Sony's technical expertise it surprises me they had more technical issues with the format they didn't iron out...was it something with the tapes or more the machines themselves?