Spider's Slant on Film
Another
Way of Looking at the World of Film
Copyright ©1997-2007 by John
Cawley III. This document may be freely copied, distributed and archived
provided it is copied entire and unmodified and this copyright statement
remains intact.
Last updated: 2010.32.20.Wed. The current version of this document
is available at http://www.Thistlehaven.net/J3. Email comments and questions about
this document to j3@pobox.com.
Contents
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Beauty: memorable beauty
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Charismatic
Evil: these guys
make it hard to root for the hero -- they look like they're having so much
fun that you want to join their side
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Conaway Descent / Plateau / Am I
Conaway: sometimes
grade A actors dabble in grade Z films; don't get me wrong -- there's
absolutely nothing wrong with low grade sex/horror films and the art form
they comprise -- it's just that these guys are spending a noticable amount of
time there
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Conaway
Descent: still
indulging
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Conaway
Plateau: levelled
out
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Am
I Conaway?: film
grade personality crises
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Cult
Movies: old friends
-- shows you don't mind seeing for the dozenth time
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Episode Archetypes: there are episode types that nearly every series, for
better or worse, eventually gets around to including
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Fleshcrawl: sometimes a character (or an actor
themselves) truly gives you the creeps
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Heroes: Call these guys charismatic evil
without the evil, or at least with a low-grade case of evil. I want to be
like these guys when I grow up.
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Musings: Miscellaneous musings from the
oracle at Arachnia.
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Transcensions / Art / Discordant
Casting: some
things, by the grace of the gods of film, are better than they have any right
to be
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Transcensions: sometimes an actor just transcends
himself/herself, as though the gods of film simply decreed, "This must
be"
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Art: sometimes a scene transcends
itself
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Discordant Casting: the opposite of Transcension -- the actor is in the
wrong movie, in the wrong role
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Voices and Other Sounds
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Voices: Notable voices
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Accents: Notable accents
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Intros: Notable series intros
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Music: Notable series music
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Speeches: Notable speeches
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Thanks: thanks to folks that have helped
with this page
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Beauty
Top of the scale. 'Nuff said.
- Alex Meneses
(Here's the scoop on the Hot Line DVDs. Volume 2, which claims to have
the episode "Payback" starring Alex Meneses does not;
Volume 1, which claims to have another episode does contain
"Payback")
- Brinke Stevens
- Marina Sirtis
(she is much prettier out of costume than as Troi on ST:TNG, though)
- Vanity
(Denise Katrina Smith Matthews)
- Gina Gershon
(does anyone remember her from an episode of the 1985-88 Twilight
Zone?)
- Mish Michaels(of
The Weather Channel)
- Joan Severance
- Loni Sanders
- Joanna Whalley-Kilmer
Nines:
- Halle Berry
- Susan Blakely
- Sandra Bullock
- Caitlin Clarke
- Roma Downey
- Fran Drescher
(if you get past the voice, she has very pretty eyes)
- Lucy Gutteridge
- Khrystyne Haje
- Finola Hughes
- Patricia MacPherson
- Helen Mirren
- Tara Morice
- Joanna Pacula
- Nancy Paul
- Riley Steiner
- Rita Wilson
- Illeana Douglass
- Yasmeen Ghauri
- Anastasia Sakelaris
- Mish Michaels
Charismatic Evil
These guys make it hard to
root for the hero -- they look like they're having so much fun that you want to
join their side.
- Aladdin:
Jafar (Jonathan Freedman)
- America's Most Wanted: host (John Walsh) (imagine he's a psychopathic
serial killer that changed sides and is now helping the police -- see what
I mean?)
- American Gothic:
Sheriff Lucas Buck (Gary Cole)
- Beauty and the Beast:
Gaston (Richard White)
- Bestseller:
Cleve (James Woods)
- Bladerunner:
Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer)
- Cold Sweat:
the whole movie -- they all "get away with it"
- Crow, The:
Top Dollar (Michael Wincott)
- Day by Day:
Eileen Swift (Julia Louis-Dreyfus)
- Demon Knight:
the Collector (Billy Zane)
- Die Hard with a Vengeance: Simon Gruber (Jeremy Irons)
- Die Hard:
Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman)
- Duet:
Linda Phillips (Alison La Placa)
- Flesh and Blood:
Martin (Rutger Hauer)
- Fright Night:
Jerry Dandrige (Chris Sarandon)
- G Gordon Liddy:
the man's life (or should he be listed under the hero category?)
- Golden Child:
Sardo Numspa (Charles Dance)
- Hercules:
Ares (Kevin Smith)
- Highlander:
the Kurgan (Clancy Brown)
- Highway to Hell:
Beezel (Patrick Bergen)
- Highway to Hell:
- Kelly's Heroes:
the whole movie -- they all "get away with it"
- Last of the Mohicans:
Magua (Wes Studi)
- Lonesome Dove, the Series: Clay Mosby (Eric McCormack)
- Mulan:
Shan-Yu (Miguel Ferrer)
- Money Pit, The:
Max Breissart (Alexander Gudenov)
- No Escape:
Marek (Stuart Wilson)
- Oblivion:
Lash (Musetta Vander)
- Pass the Ammo:
Rev Ray Porter (Tim Curry)
- Passenger 57:
Charles Rane (Bruce Payne)
- Phantom, The:
Sala (Catherine Zeta-Jones)
- Planet of the Apes:
General Thade (Tim Roth)
- Profit:
Jim Profit (Adrian Pasdar)
- Prophecy:
Gabrielle (Christopher Walken) (provisional status)
- Silence of the Lambs:
Dr Hannibal Lector (Anthony Hopkins)
- Spin City:
Stuart Bondek (Alan Ruck)
- Stand, The:
Randall Flagg (Jamie Sheridan)
- Star Trek V:
Sybok (Lawrence Luckinbill)
- Warlock:
Warlock (Julian Sands)
- Waxwork II: Lost in Time: Scarabis (Alexander Gudenov)
- Wizards and Warriors:
Dirk Blackpool (Duncan Regehr) (see here for a great Wizards and Warriors
page)
- Xena:
Callisto (Hudson Leick)
Conaway Descent
Sometimes grade A actors dabble
in grade Z films. Don't get me wrong -- there's absolutely nothing wrong with
low grade sex/horror films and the art form they comprise -- it's just that
these guys are spending a great deal of time there.
That said, the namesake for
this category, Jeff Conaway (who seemed like he would be much more successful
than his Taxi costar Tony Danza until he wasn't) has reversed and begun a Zack
ascent with his character in Babylon 5.
- Bernson, Corbin
- Carradine, David
- Conaway, Jeff
- Crosby, Mary
- Foster, Meg
- Grey, Erin
- Griffith, Melanie
- Hauer, Rutger
- Hamill, Mark
- Katt, William
- Lewis, Charlotte
- Mancuso, Nick
- Roberts, Tanya
- Vincent, Jan Michael
Conaway Plateau
They were on the Conaway
Descent, then kind of leveled off.
- Albert Jr, Eddie
- Crosby, Denise
- Danning, Sybill
- Hemmingway, Mariel
- Lynch, Richard
- Singer, Marc
Am I Conaway?
These
folks do a wild carousel ride between grade A and grade Z movies, never sure
where they want to stay.
- Bates, Kathy
- Elizondo, Hector
- Goldburg, Whoopie
- Macy, William H
- Roberts, Eric
- Young, Sean
Cult Movies
Old friends -- shows you
don't mind seeing for the dozenth time.
I open myself up to
everyone's two cents if I'm not careful here. These are the films I consider
cult. If you have your own, publicize your list too.
OK, I realize the ordinal
"-th" suffix shouldn't be attached to a cardinal quantity like
"dozen", but, hey, it's my page.
- Aliens
- Army of Darkness
- Beauty and the Beast
- Big Trouble in Little China
- Bladerunner
- Buckaroo Bonzai
- Crimes of Passion
- Demon Knight
- Down Twisted
- Highlander
- Highway to Hell
- House 2
- Hysterical
- Immortals, The
(provisional status)
- Last of the Mohicans
- Lion King, The
- Lord of Illusions
- Lost Boys
- Man From Snowy River, The
- Pass The Ammo
- Pirate King, The
- Princess Bride, The
- Prophecy
- Rob Roy
- Runestone
- Rustler's Rhapsody
- Scarface
- Striptease
- They Live
- Thunderheart
- Tremors:
- True Lies
- Wagons East
- Waxwork
Episode
Archetypes
There are episode types that
nearly every series, for better or worse, eventually gets around to including.
- All Dead on Stage episode: this is usually more of a movie or play ending (cf
Andy Warhol's Frankenstein) than an episode, but special honors for
courage go to the 1998 Halloween episode of Two Guys a Girl And a Pizza
Place, where a psychopathic Berg lookalike kills the whole cast ("and
now scenes from next week's episode" ... twenty seconds of an empty
set).
- Clip episode:
an episode comprised of clips from past episodes, usually with a small
amount of new episode "glue" (eg fond reminiscing) to hold them
together; the best clip episode of all time is Hercules the Legendary
Journeys episode "Yes, Virginia, There is a Hercules",
rating a 9.5 without even considering the fact that it's a freaking clip
episode!
- Evil Twin episode:
hero meets his evil twin; 'nuff said
- Fungal episode:
our heroes get down and dirty, gunk in their hair, fungus between their
toes, and they start to smell; this is less common than the other episode
archetypes and reveals great courage on the part of the actors; the best
I've seen are Xena, Warrior Princess episode "In Sickness
and in Hell" (kudos to Lucy Lawless and Renee OConner) and Hercules
the Legendary Journeys episode "One Fowl Day" (kudos
to Bruce Campbell and Michael Hurst).
- Jump the Shark episode: credit goes to the folks at Jump
the Shark; in
their words, "It's a moment. A defining moment when you know that
your favorite television program has reached its peak. That instant that
you know from now on...it's all downhill. Some call it the climax. We call
it 'Jumping the Shark.' From that moment on, the program will simply never
be the same."; it refers to a Happy Days episode where the
Fonz jumped his motorcycle over a pool containing a shark.
- 'Nam episode:
our heroes go back to Viet Nam to rescue their buddies that have been
there ten years and bring them home; this eplisode class had a surge of
popularity in the mid to late 80's; the best were probably on Magnum PI.
- On da Rock episode:
our hero is imprisoned in/on/at "The Rock", where the warden
vows that they will never escape; usually they fight a few fellow cons,
then wind up getting off da Rock.
- Shower episode:
sometimes series realize they have been walking over thin ice, and now it
is cracking beneath and they really, really wish the previous arc of
episodes never happened; so they undo them; the namesake is Dallas
where Pam woke to find Bobby washing the previous episodes down the drain
in the shower; these episodes are usually quite unplanned (if the writers
know ahead of time that they don't want to go there, they usually don't),
but a planned example is Hercules the Legendary Journeys episode "Somewhere
Over the Rainbow Bridge" .
Fleshcrawl
Sometimes a character (or an
actor) truly gives you the creeps. It goes without saying that this is totally
subjective and reflects more on the viewer than on the actor. That disclaimer
given, here we go.
- Adventures of Brisco County Jr, The: John Bly (Billy Drago)
- Best of the Best 2:
Weldon (Wayne Newton) ("Figs with Wigs")
- Best of the Best 2:
Brakus (Ralph Moeller)
- Cape Fear:
Max Cady (Robert de Niro)
- Clearcut:
Arther (Graham Greene) (Wow!)
- Dragonheart:
King Einon (David Thewlis)
- Fright Night:
Billy Cole (Jonathan Stark) (Billy Cole was the first
"Fleshcrawl" and the namesake for this category; Jonathan Stark
has since appeared in other movies without exuding "the creeps",
so this is really a testament to his acting ability)
- Lionheart:
Cynthia (Deborah Rennard)
- Matrix, The:
Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving)
- Rock, The:
Captain Darrow (Tony Todd)
- Rock, The:
Captain Frye (Gregory Sporleder)
- Silver Bullet:
Reverend Lowe / Werewolf (Everett McGill)
- Vanishing, The:
Barney (Jeff Bridges) (Wow!)
- Werewolf:
Nicholas Remy (Brian Thompson) ("Thickneck")
- etc:
Sandra Bernhard
- etc:
Robert Davi
- etc:
Brigitte Nielsen
- etc:
Mickey Rourke
- etc:
Ron Silver
- etc:
James Spader
- etc:
Sylvester Stallone
- etc:
Sigourney Weaver
The following folks have
provisional status in this category.
- etc:
Jim Carrey
- etc:
Billy Crystal
- etc:
Jamie Lee Curtis
- etc:
Anthony Edwards
- etc:
Helen Hunt
- etc:
Madonna
- etc:
Tim Matheson
- etc:
Paul Reiser
- etc:
Meg Ryan
Creepy heroes:
- American Gothic:
Dr Portis Fields (Michael Genevie)
- American Gothic:
Dr Billy Peale (John Mese)
- V:
Kyle Bates (Jeff Yagher)
- V:
Mike Donovan (Marc Singer)
Heroes
Call these folks charismatic
evil without the evil, or at least with a low-grade case of evil.
I want to be like these guys
when I grow up.
- Aliens:
Private Hudson (Bill Paxton)
- Army of Darkness:
Ash (Bruce Campbell)
- Big Trouble in Little China: Jack Burton (Kurt Russel)
- Drop Dead Fred:
Fred (Rik Mayall)
- Highlander:
Ramirez (Sean Connery)
- Rob Roy:
Rob Roy (Liam Neeson) (it's been said before, and it's worth saying
again -- this has the most realistic swordfight in any movie ever)
- Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves: Azeem (Morgan Freeman)
- Striptease:
Shad (Ving Rhamer)
- Tremors:
Earl Bass (Fred Ward)
Musings
Miscellaneous musings from
the oracle at Arachnia.
- Tremors:
just rewatched this again, and you have to hand it to this movie for
breaking all kinds of boundaries:
- it gave us
a new "heroic white trash" category in entertainment (Earl
Bassett / Fred Ward and Valentine McKee / Kevin Bacon)
- it gave
credence to survivalists (Burt Gummer / Michael Gross and Heather Gummer
/ Reba McEntire)
- it gave us
a precambrian villain (the graboids)
- it had an
intelligent horror heroine (Rhonda LeBeck / Finn Carter)
- and it
stressed the importance of having a plan, all on a shoestring budget!
- If you can't trust the angels, who can you trust: 1995's The Prophecy has to be
the most "on our own and by ourselves"-themed film; a band of
angels is intent on wiping out mankind, and the character in the film most
able to be called a "good guy" is Eric Stoltz's Simon, who hides
the soul of a monster inside this 8-year-old girl, making her deathly ill
until she is exorcised, to keep it out of the hands of even more evil
angels; talk about morally ambivalent (the sequel manages to keep this
ambivalence too)
- Pam Anderson:
my theory is that Pamela Anderson is a 3-1/2 foot cigar-smoking male
midget (think Billy Barty) hidden within an inflatable female sex doll
(this doll is what we usually unknowingly refer to as "Pam");
let's see more of non-Barbie, non-stuffed ladies like Brinke Stevens, Alex
Meneses, Marina Sirtis, etc
- Swordfights:
the final fight scene of Rob Roy, with Liam Neesom wielding the claymore
and Tim Roth wielding the rapier is simply the most realistic and best
sword fighting scene ever filmed
- Tonya Harding:
disregard all the pooh-poohing and chastizing frowns from "officials"
of the sport about Tonya Harding; this woman single-handedly roused ice
skating from silent oblivion and put it on the map for most of America
- Very special episodes: "And tonight ... on a very special episode
..."; I generally make it a very special point to avoid all very
special episodes; 'nuff said
- Kathy Lee Gifford:
the only way for America's sweetheart to have kept her respectability was
to have stormed out on Frank and immediately jumped in bed with Howard
Stern! Alas ...
Transcensions /
Art / Discordant Casting
Some things, by the grace of the gods of film, are better
than they have any right to be.
Transcensions
Sometimes an actor just
transcends himself/herself, as though the gods of film simply decreed,
"This must be."
- American Gothic:
Lucas Buck (Gary Cole)
- Brady Bunch Movie, The: Mike Brady (Gary Cole) (if you've seen this, try
to tell me that Gary Cole did not channel the soul of Robert Reed)
- In the Line of Duty: Ambush in Waco: David Koresh (Tim Daly) (Tim
Daly out-Koresh'ed Koresh)
- Profit:
Jim Profit (Adrian Pasdar)
Art
Sometimes a scene transcends
itself.
- Applebees commercial:
"Each year, the salmon begin their run upstream; this is what they're
running from (cuts to salmon grilling at Applebees)" (This much is
cute; the "Flight of the Valkyries" playing in the background
moves it into Art)
- Simpsons, remote control: Homer is lying on the couch, flicking between
channels and comes across a documentary on zoos; "What a boring
life," he says, "to lay around all day doing nothing in a
zoo"; (This much is ironic and humorous; Homer has his hand with
the remote control laying on the ground as he changes channels, too lazy
to even point the remote as he clicks it -- this moves it into Art)
- Simpsons, undead:
during a Halloween Treehouse of Horror special, Bart and Lisa start a
Night of the Living Dead scenario; worried, they run to Homer, screaming,
"Homer, Homer, something awful has happened!"; "You wrecked
the car?!" Homer squawks; "No, no!" the tell him; "You
raised the undead?" he asks, a little calmer; "Yes, yes!";
"But the car's okay?" (Art -- 'nuff said)
Discordant
Casting
The opposite of Transcension
-- the actor is in the wrong movie, in the wrong role. I won't take easy shots
here, like listing every movie where Sylvester Stallone played a hero.
- V:
Mike Donovan (Marc Singer) (Marc Singer has a reptilian look to him --
he properly should have been one of the aliens)
Voices and Other
Sounds
Voices
- Airplane:
Elaine Dickinson (Julie Hagerty) (also cf The Survivors, Doreen (Annie
McEnroe)
- Aladdin:
Iago (Gilbert Gottfried) (hey, what list of voices could omit Gilbert
Gottfried?)
- Keep, The:
Alexandru (William Morgan Sheppard) (like gravel in a wood box)
- Ned Blessing:
Wren (Brenda Bakke)
Accents
- Big Easy, The:
Remy McSwain (Dennis Quaid), Cajun accent
- Breed Apart, A:
Amy Rollings (Jayne Bentzen), southern accent
- Cry in the Dark, A:
Lindy Chamberlain (Meryl Streep), Australian accent
- Netherworld:
Diane Palmer (Holly Floria), southern accent
- Pass the Ammo:
Claire (Linda Kozlowski), Arkansas accent
Intros
- Evening Shade
(the first season with the violin music and old photographs)
- Friends
- Get a Life
- Star Trek Voyager
Music
- Evening Shade
- Ned Blessing
- Tequilla and Bonetti
- Lonesome Dove, the Series
Speeches
- Gettysburg: Col Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (Jeff Daniels)
- Independence Day:
President Thomas J Whitmore (Bill Pullman)
- Keep, The:
Dr Theodore Cuza (Ian McKellen), " You prove yourself
to me ..."
- Last of the Mohicans:
Hawkey (Daniel Day-Lewis), "I will find you ..."
Thanks
These are thanks to the folks
that have helped with this page.
Thanks
to Dori Cawley for
good ideas in general
to Anna M.C. for Jerry Dandrige and Charismatic Evil