Heath Holland On...Rankin/Bass, The Hobbit and Finding Closure in Middle Earth

by Heath Holland

The Hobbit is to Rankin/Bass what Rankin/Bass is to Christmas.

When it comes to the holidays, Rankin/Bass owns me. The studio behind classic television specials like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman, as well as minor classics like Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town and even the Halloween-themed Mad Monster Party, are as much a part of my holiday viewing habits as Kevin McCallister and Buddy the Elf. It’s kind of amazing that one studio has such a hold on my traditions, or how easily I can be hardwired toward certain annual patterns. How do companies and studios work their way into our lives this way? Only two of the eight existing Star Wars movies have had December release dates so far, but I already associate Christmas with Star Wars. Thanks to the release dates of Peter Jackson’s six Middle-Earth movies and their multiple holiday-timed DVD Blu-ray releases, Christmas will also always be the time for Hobbits and quests over misty mountains. Maybe that’s what makes the combination of Rankin/Bass and their adaptation of The Hobbit such a perfect match for Christmas traditions.

A quick overview of the Rankin/Bass lifespan looks something like this: the 1960s were the golden age where they burned brightest and produced their best, most memorable material. The 1970s were still pretty good, but definitely a bit behind the times; they weren’t doing their best work. The 1980s were their supernova years when they pumped out scores of episodes for successful syndicated shows like Thundercats and Silver Hawks, and released their best-received theatrical film The Last Unicorn. Unfortunately, the party ended in 1987, when Rankin/Bass Productions shuttered its doors and fell silent.

It’s during those middling years of the 1970s that the studio produced their adaptation of The Hobbit, and it was a big deal. Ralph Bakshi had not yet mounted his ambitious rotoscope-animated telling of the first half of The Lord of the Rings, meaning that the Rankin/Bass movie was the first attempt by anyone to make a feature-length filmed version of J.R.R. Tolkien’s famous story. I’ll be upfront about the fact that it’s not necessarily a home run and is somewhat flawed. On the surface, The Hobbit seems made for animation; the lush and varied landscapes, the huge cast of characters, the fantastic creatures, and the ever-increasing epic scope of the story would have cost hundreds of millions of dollars to produce for a live-action film (as we would one day discover), while animation could convey every single odd beat of the story at a small fraction of that cost. The adventures of Bilbo, Gandalf, and the thirteen dwarves who make their way to the Lonely Mountain to confront Smaug the Dragon and reclaim the heritage that has been stolen from them does indeed seem to lend itself to animation over live-action. I think, for the most part, Rankin/Bass did a remarkable job with the film. The film was created for American television under the assumption that successful viewing figures would lead to a theatrical run (which apparently never happened, at least in America). Because of this high profile, no expense was spared, and its 3-million-dollar-budget was the highest of any TV animated film ever at the time. The animation is pretty great, completed by a Japanese studio called Topcraft, which would later morph into Studio Ghibli, one of the giants in the anime industry. The voice talent was of an equal pedigree. Orson Bean, John Hurt, Thurl Ravenscroft and Paul Frees (without both of whom Disneyland wouldn’t be the same), Otto Preminger, Richard Boone, and even Hans Conried, the man who voiced Captain Hook in Disney’s Peter Pan, lend their vocal talent. We are used to celebrity voice casting today, but this didn’t exist back in the 1970s; the cast for The Hobbit, while perhaps not instantly recognizable to a modern audience, is made up of very talented film and television actors from that era of entertainment.

Given that they had no roadmap other than the book itself and their track record for making entertainment that appealed to all ages, Rankin/Bass played it as safe as possible and used the original story as their map. There was no input from the Tolkien estate: Tolkien himself had passed away in 1973 and probably wouldn’t have been amenable toward the cartoon anyway. He despised Walt Disney Animation for being too cute and insubstantial (fun fact: Walt Disney considered adapting The Hobbit themselves, but decided it couldn’t be done without abandoning the light tone they were known for), and was very harsh in his demands that any film adaptation adhere stringently to his books. To their credit, Rankin/Bass seems to have tried very hard to create something that would have made the professor proud.

By nature and necessity, though, some changes had to be made in order to bring the story to life as a motion picture. Perhaps the most controversial of these was the decision to add musical narration in the form of singer/songwriter Glenn Yarbrough, a quaver-voiced folk singer who waxes on and on about “the greatest adventure” that Bilbo Baggins is about to begin. I like it, but I understand why others do not. Also working against the film, Tolkien fans are notoriously hard to please. The New York Times ran a piece on this animated movie on November 27th, 1977, the night the film premiered on NBC (during the holiday season, no less) and pointed out this fact and the gamble that Rankin/Bass were taking by investing so much in the adaptation. In general, the biggest complaint die-hards of the book have is that it condenses the story far too much and the characters themselves are too much of a caricature. However, the same New York Times article goes on to say that perhaps the then-new crop of fantasy movies like Star Wars owe their success to Tolkien in the first place and regards the animated film as an achievement.

For me personally, there’s something about the Rankin/Bass movie that draws me in and holds me captive. There’s a sort of wonderful melancholy that hangs over the whole story, like a distant memory of a happier, better time that is gone and isn’t coming back. This is present in Peter Jackson’s version of this story as well, but somehow gets buried under the weight of the many diversions, side quests, and amusement-park-ride sequences with which Jackson populates the films. And yet, the animated film doesn’t work like the book does; it lacks the length and depth of the source material.

This is where closure comes in. I’ve struggled for years now with my love of Tolkien’s world, his book The Hobbit, and my failure to completely connect to any of the adaptations of that book. I’ve been wanting the cinematic experience to replicate the feeling I get from reading the books. This is never going to happen, just as going to see the new movie with Spider-Man or The Avengers is never going to give me the same pure feeling I get from reading those characters in a comic book. If I’m being honest, most of the comic books aren’t that great, either. I’m chasing the magic of those few experiences that really impacted me and changed me, even though the rarity of the experience is what made it magical in the first place. When I watch these adaptations of things that I love, especially Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, I have to accept them for what they are and stop expecting them to give me the same feeling as reading that book so many years ago. Peter Jackson’s universe and the animated landscape of the Rankin/Bass film bring new ideas and visuals to the table, and that’s their strength. They make that world feel real. It doesn’t have to be a literal, word-for-word translation from page to screen to still have value, and it doesn’t have to be a great film. Most films are not great; I still watch and enjoy them. Such acceptance requires me to get out of my own way, which is definitely not an easy thing to do.

Revisiting a movie like Rankin/Bass’ The Hobbit is a tricky thing because I’m chasing an experience from long ago, living on the fumes of that magic. It becomes difficult to discern between the quality of the film and the feeling that the film gives me. Maybe fans of a thing are the most unreliable sources for objective opinions on that thing because they’re speaking from a place of passion. Still, I think there’s something special about this movie, just like I think there’s something special about the studio that produced it. Rankin/Bass still exist in a fragmented, corporate version of what they once were, but the production studio that made these classics is no more. Their failures far outweighed their successes, as is the way of all things, but it’s their successes that I remember, especially around this time of year when their holiday fare is ubiquitous. Unlike many of their biggest successes, The Hobbit doesn’t play constantly on cable and isn’t a beloved classic. I’m not even sure that it’s a GOOD movie. But I do know that I admire it for being peculiar and different, and for coming closer than any other movie to touching that place within me that Tolkien’s words created.

Heath Holland On...The Search for the Real Worst Christmas Movie

by Heath Holland

This week, Ho-Ho Heath gives his thoughts on Christmas movies that the internet says are the worst.

There’s something about Christmas that brings the hate out in people. Maybe it’s the fact that radio stations started playing Christmas tunes the day after Halloween. Maybe it’s the insane traffic, or the crowds, or the shopping nightmares. For whatever reason, you’ll find people grumpier at Christmas than any other time of the year. So when I start seeing lists pop up on the internet this time of year that warn against the “worst Christmas movies of all time,” I’m not surprised. After all, most of these lists are click-bait at best, and irresponsible, uninformed journalism at worst. Each December in the past, I’ve highlighted a single movie that I think is unfairly maligned by the internet movie community. This year I’m abandoning the idea of a single movie and am taking on a whole bunch of them to see if the most popular contenders for worst Christmas movie really are as horrible as their internet reputation would have us believe.

A movie that seems to be on almost all of these “worst” lists comes from 1996 and features a muscular tough guy in a tender-hearted role. Actually, there were two Christmas movies in 1996 that featured action stars in lead roles. On the successful side of things (speaking relatively), we got Arnold Schwarzenegger in Jingle all the Way. On the losing side, we got Hulk Hogan in Santa with Muscles, a flick that spent almost its entire pre-YouTube life gathering dust on VHS shelves. It makes sense that people chose to watch Arnold get a Turbo Man action figure for his kid instead of watching an amnesiac Hulk Hogan think he was Santa Claus, but this is frequently bandied about as one of the worst movies ever. I’m sorry, but that’s ridiculous. It’s not good, but even Hogan himself made far worse movies. He’s likable in the role, and the movie is aimed at kids of the 1990s who would have been familiar with Hulk Hogan and entertained by seeing him in a holiday movie. Besides, this one is worth watching just for the cast, which consists of Mila Kunis AND her future That ‘70s Show costar Don Stark, Robin Curtis (Saavik from Star Trek III and IV), SNL-alum Garrett Morris, Clint “Da Mutha Effin’ Man” Howard, and Ed Begley, Jr.

I think we all know the real reason this one tanked, and it’s not because it’s awful. Just a few months before this movie was released, Hulk Hogan turned on his buddy Macho Man Randy Savage at WCW’s Bash at the Beach, becoming a bad guy for the first time in his WWF/WCW professional wrestling career. Going by the name “Hollywood Hulk Hogan,” he proclaimed himself a movie star and the future of wrestling. Audiences must have been SO UPSET by his heel turn and his over-confidence in his mainstream appeal, they boycotted this movie out of pure principle. There’s just no other explanation, right? I actually feel really bad for Hogan, because he could have been the kind of star that The Rock and John Cena are today if he’d had the same kind of promotional machine behind him that those guys did and not the tonally-schizophrenic No Holds Barred. Too bad WWE Films wasn’t making the kinds of movies in the 1980s that they would later on. We’d have gotten Hulk Hogan in a 12 Rounds sequel where he takes on the bad guys as an army of one. Santa with Muscles isn’t a classic, but it’s far from the worst Christmas movie ever made. If anything, it’s just like every other mid-‘90s action/comedy made for families.

Ernest Saves Christmas is a movie I feel so strongly about that I gave it a column all to itself a few years ago. I really liked the movie as a kid, but turned my back on it when I got older. When I watched it with my own kid a few years ago, I was blown away by how earnest and sweet it was. I can understand if this isn’t someone’s cup of tea, and that’s fine. It’s goofy, clichéd, and the humor is pretty broad, missing as often as it hits. Having said that, I’m not sure how anyone could say this is one of the worst Christmas movies ever. I can think of 15 or 20 that are worse right now, and most of those hate themselves and they hate you too. Ernest Saves Christmas isn’t patronizing or cynical. If anything, it believes so strongly that each of us can make a difference by spreading the magic of Christmas that it actually challenges us to expose our own vulnerability. At the end of the day, you can’t really fault Jim Varney. When his regional comedy blossomed into national success and his most popular character, Ernest P. Worrell, achieved mainstream recognition, he could have steered into blue territory and garnered an even larger audience if he’d wanted to. Instead, he chose to focus on entertaining children and families, using his characters to hopefully inspire others to be better. Ernest Saves Christmas may not a great movie, but it has its place, and that place isn’t on the bottom of a trash pile.

The internet would have you believe that Silent Night, Deadly Night 1 and 2 are widely considered to be absolutely worthless. The first movie was so loathed by parent watchdog groups when it came out in the ‘80s that it was actually considered dangerous, and became the victim of censorship and a smear campaign. Looking back on it now, Silent Night, Deadly Night almost seems tame. You can see more graphic, subversive content any given evening on television. So we’re left with the question: when you take away all the subversive, controversial elements, are the movies themselves the worst of the bunch? I don’t think so. In fact, I’d say both of these are downright entertaining when watched in the right spirit. The first film is about an axe murderer at Christmas time and the sequel only serves to up the ante in all respects. If the sequel is worthy of any real criticism outside of the premise, it would be that it’s kind of lazy and uses a too many flashbacks from the first film. Still, the worst? Puh-leeze. These are worth watching just to piss off the people who think slasher movies turn people into serial killers.

With 1959’s fever-dream of a movie Santa Claus, we’re starting to get into territory where a case can actually made for true awfulness. This Mexican production finds Santa Claus battling the forces of darkness as he does locks horns with a demon sent by Satan himself to ruin Christmas. Along the way, Santa must enlist the help of MERLIN, (yeah, THAT Merlin), for some magical artifacts to help him combat the supernatural obstacles that he faces so he can bring Christmas to all the children of the world. Now…listen. LISTEN. Is this a great movie? Noooooo. But did you read that description? I mean, COME ON. If this movie commits a real sin, it’s that the above story is actually kind of boring, and no movie based on that premise should ever be boring. But honestly, how can you not give it ALL OF THE STARS for trying so hard? When we have a baker’s dozen Hallmark original movies each year that are about a feisty young lady and her on-again-off-again relationship with a boyfriend who is afraid of commitment but just might be able to give her real love for the holidays when he almost loses her, THIS ends up on everyone’s “worst” list? It’ not good, but at least it’s different and unique. If the saccharine schmaltz of typical holiday fare makes you want to throw up your egg nog, this is at least something you can’t see anywhere else.

It seems like all of these internet lists consistently crown one Christmas movie as the worst of all, and it’s 1964’s Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. In a shocking twist that I’m sure you NEVER saw coming, this is probably my favorite of all of the ones listed. Anyone who has actually watched this movie and still says that it’s the worst Christmas movie has only seen seven movies in their entire life. How can you not love it based on the title alone? Yes, it’s low-budget. Yes, it’s a little slow. But you know what? It has people in polar bear suits, ancient beings with mystical powers, people in green face paint and tights, and a ROBOT. People who don’t like Santa Claus Conquers the Martians probably don’t like Japanese monster movies or Kung Fu flicks either. Bruce Lee? HACK. Sonny Chiba? LOSER. I mean, seriously, what’s not to love? Bright, mid-sixties colors? Check. Catchy, swinging musical intro? Check. Thinly-veiled message about the dangers of too much television? Check. Look, I know this is one of those movies that Mystery Science Theater 3000 made infamous. I also get that MST3K is beloved for taking big Cleveland steamers on top of the movies that they feature. Question: since when did MST3K become the arbiter of what is good and what is not? I loved those guys as much as anyone during the ‘90s, but have you ever watched any of those movies without their commentary? The movies are pretty entertaining all by themselves. MST3K has a place, but they aren’t the last word in what is good and what isn’t. This movie is exactly what it wants to be. There is no colossal irony where the filmmakers of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians thought they were making a Bergman film and accidentally made a camp classic. No, they MEANT to make a camp classic. Racial violence was on the front page of the news every day. America was slipping deeper and deeper into the conflict in Vietnam and U.S. troops were getting killed for reasons no one could explain. This movie is a deliberate reaction against the horrible direction in which the sixties were quickly heading. Give the kids something to take their minds off of the horrors of reality. Give them Santa Claus, but for the atomic age!

Is Santa Claus Conquers the Martians a good movie? Well…no. But I’ll take its mid-century kitsch and deliberate optimism over another big-budget holiday movie full of commercial sentimentality that’s designed to cut straight to our emotional heartstrings. The fact is that we live in a time where everything is exactly the same. Most of our movies look the same. Every movie trailer sounds exactly the same. The mall in your city looks exactly like every other mall in the nation, and probably has all the same stores, too. If you want to eat out at a restaurant, you can dine at the same 25 restaurants no matter where you are. We should champion individuality and movies like these for being so weird and crazy, and for not being afraid to disrupt the status quo. So what if they aren’t all fantastic? I could probably count all the truly fantastic Christmas movies on two hands. That doesn’t make everything else “the worst.” So here you go, Internet Echo Chamber (not you guys reading this; you’re the best). Here’s an opinion from someone who actually watched the movies you said were the worst of the worst, and an explanation for why they aren’t.

Now as for the actual worst Christmas movie of all time…I think Adam Riske discovered it last year. 2014’s Saving Christmas, starring Kirk Cameron is the most insipid, uninspired “movie” I’ve ever seen in my entire life. My opinion of it doesn’t even have anything to do with its heavy-handed message, but rather the complete lack of tact, skill, and value that it offers to justify its own existence. All the other movies I wrote about in this installment have an honesty and earnestness behind them in that they want to tell a fun story. Saving Christmas is less concerned with those things and more interested in a false premise that I don’t think exists anyway. I suspect the entire project was made for free. It appears to have been shot on a cheap, HD digital camera, and I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone in it worked with no pay, including the editor and the “special effects” guy. Kirk Cameron knows better. He’s been an actor for decades, and he knows how to give a performance and how movies SHOULD be made. Even more offensive is that the director and co-star is Darren Doane, who used to direct punk music videos for the likes of Blink-182 and Pennywise. It breaks my heart that he’s traded in his rebellious spirit for pseudo-spiritual pap like this. The Christian movie market needs free-thinkers and a few punks to shake things up. Perhaps even more sad, I suspect that Doane thinks that he DID make a punk rock rebellious movie. He didn’t. Saving Christmas is less a movie and more an extended video sermon designed to be shown at churches during the holiday season in place of Sunday evening services. At no point does it feel like anyone gives a crap about making art or telling a story. Even the poster and cover art is entirely misleading. Shame on you, Saving Christmas. You make the 1959 Mexican Santa Claus look like Citizen Kane. I’ve never seen a lazier, joyless movie. Ever. Riske nailed it.

So it looks like we found a really awful Christmas movie after all, and the internet was right about this one. Steering clear of the last one, though, I think you’re fine to ignore those insufferable “worst” lists and give any of the other movies a shot, especially late at night when you’ve got a nog hangover and just need something goofy to watch while you chill out. They seem to play best when you’re in the place between sleep and awake. You know, the place that Santa Claus lives, with the Martians, the robots, and Merlin.

I hope you stuck with me through all that, but if you didn’t and decided it was TL; DR, let me wish you happy holidays and a tacky Christmas.

Heath Holland On...Bob Dylan: No Direction Home

by Heath Holland

Martin Scorsese’s essential documentary has recently been expanded, making it more impressive than ever.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a more elusive figure in pop culture than Bob Dylan. Once dubbed the mouthpiece of a generation, the music icon made headlines recently when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, but he’s made even bigger headlines by blowing off a shindig with the President of the United States at the White House as well as the Nobel Prize award ceremony in Stockholm. No one should really be surprised by Dylan’s aloof behavior; he’s been the exact same guy for the past fifty years. If you look up Bob Dylan in the dictionary, all you’ll see is a question mark next to his name followed by a few suggestions of who Bob Dylan MIGHT be. No one knows the real Bob Dylan, only that he’s a musical master of reinvention, a shape shifter, and a man who has spent his entire lifetime trying to separate himself from whatever WE think he is. He rarely gives interviews, and when he does, you have to question the truth of every word that comes out of his mouth.

All of these are reasons to celebrate and pay close attention to the recent “10th Anniversary Edition” of Martin Scorsese’s award-winning documentary Bob Dylan: No Direction Home. With a newly-expanded bevy of interviews and some insight from Scorsese himself, we can forgive that the film was actually released 11 years ago, or that the new features on the Blu-ray don’t offer any new insight from Dylan himself, but instead flesh out stories from some of the other people who contributed to this work. No Direction Home debuted on television in 2005 over two nights and quickly became the “official” Dylan documentary for having something that no other Dylan doc does: extensive interviews with Bob Dylan himself, shot just for this film, looking back on his career and his decisions.

Yet perhaps even more important than these interviews are the ones that are less vaunted and news-worthy. I’m speaking of interviews that were conducted with key members from Dylan’s early sixties inner circle. I say they’re more important than what Dylan has to say because Dylan himself is a master of self-mythologizing and creating his own story, regardless of if it’s true or not. When asked about his high school love life, he’s vague, saying that he wasn’t especially romantic but that he does remember the first few girls he went out with. The second girl he dated in high school was named Echo, he tells us. The second one was Echo? Really? Seems a little too cute to be true to me, but who knows. Anything Dylan says must be taken with a grain of salt. It becomes much more interesting to listen to those who have shared the spotlight with him for a time and who might have seen behind the veneer.

There are other documentaries on this subject that interview people with whom Dylan attended school or played with in a band, but No Direction Home is an embarrassment of riches when it comes to valuable contributors and genuine icons in their own right. Many of these interview subjects are worthy of a feature documentary themselves. We get Allen Ginsberg, one of the most famous writers of the Beat Generation and the subject of the film Howl. For many years, Dylan and Ginsberg were commensurate in their intellectual appreciation of each other, and Ginsberg was one of the few people that Dylan admired for longer than a cup of coffee. We get Dave Van Ronk, folk and blues icon of Greenwich Village, the so-called Mayor of MacDougal Street. If his name doesn’t ring a bell, you be more familiar with his story. His personal experiences and first-hand accounts of the early folk explosion in New York during the early 1960s served as the basis for Oscar Isaac’s character in the Coen Brothers film Inside Llewyn Davis. His 1964 breakthrough album was even called Inside Dave Van Ronk. It’s worth mentioning that neither Ginsberg nor Van Ronk would live long enough to see this documentary completed, which makes their contributions even more impactful. No one can tell the stories when the storytellers have all gone.

Last but certainly not least, the film features the involvement of Joan Baez, a folk icon in her own right and one of the few women who has shared a life and a bed with Bob Dylan and is able to see through his many masks, even if only in retrospect. Baez offers the most disarming and laugh-out-loud funny observations about Dylan’s personality, his muse, his ego, and his inability to stay in one place for very long. I watched this documentary back in 2005 and developed a huge respect for Baez, but watching her again for this 10th Anniversary package has me even more impressed with her ability to cut straight to the truth of a matter. Every interview, especially the lengthy ones that are presented uncut as bonus features, are like little gold mines. Forget Bob Dylan; the stories from Van Ronk, Ginsberg, Baez, even folkies like Pete Seeger, are evocative of a time and a place in American history that feels closer than it ever has. These poets and performers who poured their hearts out for a few dollars a night on the cold streets of New York speak about civil rights, fear of the future, and a disillusion with our political leaders like no time at all has passed. Maybe it hasn’t, and the lessons they learned the hard way are more valuable than we realize.

The film itself is full of footage that was scoured from the archives of Bob Dylan’s “offices,” whatever that means. We get to see lots of live footage of Dylan and witness his evolution from a naïve young folkie from Minnesota to politically-active spokesperson for a generation, and lastly to a jaded, burned-out, skeletal rocker who sneers his lyrics with sarcasm and threat while half the crowd boos and half the crowd watches in awe. We see his self-mythologizing in action from archival footage as he answers questions from radio show hosts and the press about where he is from (out west, the circus) while at the same time shrinking in horror from the attention that he seems to crave but doesn’t necessarily want. Scorsese does a marvelous job at showing the duality of the man and the performer.

With all the praise I’ve heaped onto this film, it’s weird to say that scope is one of its weaknesses. At well over three hours, there should be plenty of time to tell the story at hand. After all, Scorsese chooses to end the tale in 1966, the year many music fans consider to be Dylan’s peak, when he burned brightest and then disappeared from the public eye after an alleged motorcycle accident. When Dylan emerged from seclusion a year later, he was unrecognizable in both appearance and musical style. 1966 is a natural cap to the story, and yet the film seems to barely be able to cover all the information at hand. John, Paul, George, and Ringo had the benefit of The Beatles Anthology, which allotted about 10 hours to their story. With all the meat that this Dylan doc tries to chew (civil rights, the beat scene, folk music, emerging pop music, the birth of folk-rock), it’s just too much for the running time. One begs for an even further expanded version that offers another hour. One also begs for further films that serve as a continuation to the story, picking up after the motorcycle crash and bringing us closer to the present day. For all the ground this documentary covers, there’s just not enough of it to tell the story adequately.

This is not Scorsese’s fault. While he is the director, he didn’t spearhead the project form its inception. It appears to have been the brainchild of either Dylan’s “offices” (there’s that word again) or Dylan himself. This came out around the same time that Dylan’s “autobiography” Chronicles was released and topping the bestseller charts. I put “autobiography” in quotes because even that book seems to have been an artistic result of Dylan’s clever mind; it was later discovered that entire passages were lifted in homage from other works that must have influenced Dylan. You think you’re getting the truth but you’re really just getting more questions. This appears to have been something of a visual companion piece to his book, at least in conception. At any rate, by the time Scorsese was approached for this documentary, Dylan had filmed 10 hours of interviews with his manager Jeff Rosen, and I believe it was Rosen who interviewed most of the other contributors to the film. The benefit of this is that we get a Dylan who is loose and playful, though not necessarily baring his soul. The down side of this is that there is no Barbara Walters “Come to Jesus” moment where someone breaks down into tears over a realization or memory. Scorsese, in the supplemental interview on the disc, admits that the offer to direct this film and assemble the footage into a cohesive story was too much to refuse, even though he had other projects that were closer to him. You can tell that he has passion for the subject matter even though he didn’t necessarily conceive the film. You can usually spot a project that Scorsese really believes in. I can’t help but feel like he took the job of directing this because NOT taking it would mean that someone else got to do it.

If you want an honest, fly-on-the-wall look at who Bob Dylan was during this time, you’d be better served by D.A. Pennebaker’s 1967 documentary Don’t Look Back. Pennebaker followed Dylan on his 1965 tour of England and utilized tiny cameras to make himself unobtrusive, catching Dylan in candid moments of inspiration and drug hazes that reportedly made the musician feel completely exposed and horrified at how he was portrayed. As a result, Dylan put up walls that still haven’t come down, meaning no one will ever get as close to the real Dylan as Pennebaker did. Scorsese’s documentary offers something entirely different: Dylan looking back at his formative years with a twinkle in his eye and a wink at the camera, while a whole host of Dylan’s peers, influences, and mentors discuss their real feelings about a man they once knew who called himself Bob Dylan.

Heath Holland On...The Rock Paradox

by Heath Holland

I smell what The Rock is cookin’.

This past weekend saw the release of Moana, the latest Disney animated movie and also the newest cinematic vehicle to feature Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Oh, I know he dropped the wrestling moniker “The Rock” from his name years ago in pursuit of his acting career outside of the ring, but he’ll always be a pro “rassler” first and foremost to me and a Hollywood movie star second. His frequent returns to Vince McMahon’s WWE and annual Wrestlemania appearances don’t distance himself from his in-ring origin story, nor does the fact that, when you look him up on IMDB, it first says “Known For Monday Night Raw.” At any rate, I haven’t yet had the opportunity to watch Moana, but I’m sure I’ll enjoy it because Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is in it. It doesn’t matter if the movie turns out to be any good; I’ll enjoy it because of his involvement.

It’s kind of a weird thing to realize, that you are so smitten with a particular actor that it doesn’t really matter to you if their movies are any good or not. Yet I am with my affection for Mr. Johnson. If I’m being honest, I must confess that I think most of his movies fall a bit short of the mark, but this somehow doesn’t bother me. A quick glance at his Hollywood resume reveals that a staggering amount of his movies fail in terms of craft, story, production, you know, the kinds of things that we as movie fans value and champion above pretty much everything else. I DON’T CARE. This is The Rock Paradox. We have a man who makes multiple movies every year, usually starring in the lead, and usually being the best thing about the production. Mediocre movies, awesome star. The Rock Paradox.

I’m not much of a Black Friday guy. I’ve only gotten up in the middle of the night to visit stores for “doorbusters” a couple of times in my entire life and it was a miserable experience that I won’t soon repeat. Now that sales start on Thanksgiving afternoon, I still don’t go out, choosing turkey leftovers and another slice of pumpkin pie over a 60-inch TV at a reduced price. However, I did get out this year on the morning of Black Friday (after sleeping until 8 am) to hit my local Target with the specific goal of snagging a 6 dollar Blu-ray of Central Intelligence, starring Kevin Hart and THE MAN, Dwayne Johnson. That Blu-ray was literally the reason I got out of my PJs after breakfast to hit a retail store. Why did I do this? It’s a mediocre movie that even its biggest supporters can only summon the enthusiasm to call FINE, but I had to add it to my collection. WHY? Because of The Rock Paradox. Mr. Johnson makes some very good movies. I love the Fast and Furious series, and his presence has only made the last few installments even more entertaining and given them a higher pedigree. The Rundown is a fantastic mid-budget action movie in the style of the action flicks that I grew up with. I appreciate The Scorpion King for being a Conan-lite movie when we needed it the most. I like when he stretches himself, as in Be Cool and Southland Tales. But Dwayne Johnson also makes an awful lot of bad movies. Movies like Doom and Get Smart (I bet your forgot about that one) and the Race to Witch Mountain remake that no one asked for and even fewer people actually watched. He was the title character in Tooth Fairy a mere six years ago and was in the absolutely forgettable Empire State in 2013. I watched that movie and I can’t tell you a single thing about it. Movie fandom gave a collective sigh of apathy over G.I. Joe: Retaliation despite my insistence that it was a lot of fun. He even made an appearance in Jem and the Holograms! For every really good movie that stars Dwayne Johnson, there are at least two bad ones. And I still don’t care.

Why is this exactly? Maybe it’s because everyone he’s ever worked with says that he’s the hardest-working, most genuine person they’ve ever met. Maybe it’s because he treats everyone like they matter, whether they’re a co-star or the guy working the craft services table. Maybe it’s because he wakes up at 4 am every single day to start his workout and has been known to appear on a morning show in New York, then an awards show in Los Angeles later that same day. He’s tremendously disciplined and even has an IOS app called “The Rock Clock” to help everyone else do the same thing he does. It’s not a secret; it’s simply hard work. Just like Tom Cruise shows up for every movie that he’s cast in with visible determination (and *coughMADNESScough*) in his eyes, Dwayne Johnson seems to give every single project 100% of his effort, regardless of whether it’s a blatant cash grab or the next big thing. Unlike Tom Cruise, though, Dwayne Johnson seems to be far less discriminating when it comes to choosing roles, often appearing in three or even four movies in a single year. He’s supplemented his role discernment with passion and gusto (yes, I said gusto), and seems to have reaped the reward for his efforts. Maybe this is why I connect to him and find myself watching, appreciating, revisiting, and even owning movies that I otherwise wouldn’t deign to give my valuable time. It certainly has nothing to do with his ridiculous good looks and muscles that look like mountains. No, certainly not.

In a movie marketplace that’s populated by a whole lot of everymen, Dwayne Johnson is a rare creature. He’s someone that I’m not sure we’ve EVER seen the likes of (an imposing tractor trailer of a human being that’s hauling a load of charisma), and that’s what makes watching him so electric and so fun to watch, even in…ESPECIALLY IN…movies that just aren’t all that good. It’s The Rock Paradox. I can’t wait for 2017 so I can watch San Andreas 2 and Baywatch.

Heath Holland On...5 Reasons Transformers: The Movie Still Matters

by Heath Holland

It’s been thirty years since the ongoing war between the Autobots and the Decepticons first hit a movie screen and it still hasn’t been done better.

Despite tepid reviews from critics and the passionate Transformers fan base, the movie franchise that Michael Bay built looks like it’s going to be sticking around for at least the next few years, and probably even longer than that. Plans have even moved forward on a shared universe for Hasbro’s many properties a la the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so you’ll probably be hearing about Autobots and Decepticons when your 80, whether you like it or not. In fact, between all the various Transformers-related movies and cartoons that Hasbro continues to authorize, total market saturation seems to be their ultimate goal.

If you’ve been following along here for a while, you’ll know that I have a love/hate relationship with the giant robots and that I’m constantly wrestling with my feelings for the property even though the people in charge of it (particularly the movies) don’t seem to understand its potential and frequently take the laziest path in effort to get people to a theater. Like every kid who grew up during the 1980s, I loved the Transformers cartoon and toys during their heyday from 1984-1987, and like every kid in the 1980s, I was a victim of marketing brainwashing. In 1981, newly-elected president Ronald Reagan passed legislation that allowed corporations to market things specifically toward children. The ‘70s had been a tumultuous decade for children’s entertainment, with watchdog groups and child psychologists determining that kids couldn’t tell the difference between entertainment and advertising; therefore, laws were put into place to prevent this from happening. When Reagan deregulated children’s entertainment, what followed was a golden age of toys and cartoons that fed off of one another. Characters like He-Man and Rainbow Bright and Care Bears and the Thundercats only existed to sell us toys, but we didn’t care. It was an unprecedented era of creativity for us that allowed us to manifest our wildest dreams in action figure form on the playground. The cartoons served as the inspiration, the jumping-off points for our own adventures.

The downside of this was that most of the cartoons that sprung up during the 1980s were visually impressive and filled with great character designs (to sell toys, see), but a bit lacking in the plot department. As someone who will probably always be approximately 40% partially stuck in the 1980s, I can admit to you that, while I love these shows, there’s usually not a whole lot there as far as substance. That was fine given the times, and I’m okay with that now. However, I always thought the Transformers were different, and I still do. I still watch my DVDs of the classic cartoon series, and I get bored of hearing people my age saying things like “I can’t watch that show anymore. It doesn’t hold up.” If I had a nickel for every time someone has told me that, I’d have like…17 nickels. Which I guess isn’t that much. Sure, the stories tend to be repetitive, but I’ve always found things to appreciate when I look back on them with my adult eyes (these episodes were often written by middle-aged movie buffs, comic book nerds, and science fiction fans, after all), and I’ve always how much ground the series covered over its four-year-run. Maybe I’m making excuses so I don’t have to grow up. But maybe I’m not. Maybe Michael Bay and the filmmakers behind the new movies, even Hasbro themselves, have forgotten what made these characters resonate with kids 30 years ago.

For me and a whole bunch of nerds hovering around 40, the pinnacle of Transformers storytelling is the theatrical film that hit screens in 1986 because it changed everything. Newer movies may fare better in terms of complexity and characterization, but fans like myself will always hold this movie as the peak of awesomeness for the franchise. This is not simply nostalgia; I aim to back this up with examples. Here are my five reasons that Transformers: The Movie still matters (and is better than Michael Bay’s movies).

5) The Visual Style. The syndicated television series was the product of a collaboration between Sunbow Productions and Marvel Productions, a subsidiary of Marvel Comics (and the same people behind G.I. Joe, the sister show to The Transformers). Animation was largely done by the Japanese company Toei, with some work being picked up by a handful of other Japanese studios. For the movie, the budget was raised to six times that of a standard episode, and it really showed. Toei spearheaded the entire production of the movie; they would spend the 1990s as one of the leaders in the animation field with their work on Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball Z, but for a lot of us, this was our first exposure to what they were capable of creating. Unlike the television series, which took place primarily in the daytime under bright blue skies and the backgrounds of dry deserts and desolate canyons, Transformers: The Movie took place in the darker environment of wild space and strange, mechanical landscapes. Nothing at all was familiar about the battlegrounds of the movie, lending the film a tone that was unsettling. The animation itself was—and still is—jaw-dropping. The rounded, soft edges of the television series were gone. These robots looked and felt incredibly dangerous. What we didn’t know at the time is that many of us had just been given our first glimpse at true anime, and it was stunning.

4) The Music. The cute theme song from the series with the robot voice saying “more than meets the eye” was gone. In its place was a score from Vince DiCola that felt edgy and threatening. Also new were a bunch of hard rock songs, once again making the movie feel important and a little dangerous. The band Lion handles the title song, and I can’t begin to tell you what an impression it made at the time. I still love it and it’s still on my iPod. I listened to it today to get psyched up for writing this. Inspirational power rocker Stan Bush contributed two songs to the soundtrack with “The Touch” and “Dare.” The first was written for the Stallone movie Cobra, but didn’t make it into the film. While Boogie Nights probably used “The Touch” better and made it a pop culture meme, it was Transformers: The Movie where the song originally appeared and garnered a whole bunch of fans the first time around. There was also a “Weird Al” Yankovic called “Dare to Be Stupid,” and both this song and Stan Bush’s “The Touch” ended up on a single. The soundtrack to the film didn’t break any Billboard records, but it became a cult classic that endures to this day and has been reissued with the rest of Vince DiCola’s score. The music was a crucial element in the success of Transformers: The Movie and made it feel fresh and edgy for a wide audience. This factor can’t be underestimated.

3) The Voice Cast. While now probably relegated to the “who cares” department by everyone other than ‘80s buffs, the movie featured some notable celebrity actors in the vocal department for added credibility alongside the already-established stalwarts from the TV series. Judd Nelson was coming off the one-two punch of The Breakfast Club and St. Elmo’s Fire when he appeared as Hot Rod, a character of extreme importance to the expanding mythology (spoilers: he takes Optimus Prime’s place as the new leader). Robert Stack (The Untouchables) is Ultra Magnus, and Monty Python’s Eric Idle is Wreck-Gar (a character I still can’t stand). Leonard Nimoy is Galvatron, another extremely pivotal character for the story, cast no doubt for the credibility that he would have brought to the production. For a movie that is essentially very hard science fiction, Spock himself lends the role a weight and importance that would have resonated with the older viewers who had a history with Star Trek and hard science fiction. The most astonishing and strange casting choice is Orson Welles as Unicron, the Transformers version of Galactus, a planet-eating force of destruction. Fitting? Welles died just five days after he finished recording his lines for the animated movie, making this his final film performance. I’m sure his family was very proud. When you add these established Hollywood actors to the outstanding vocal work of series regulars Peter Cullen and Frank Welker (neither of whom get enough credit as actors), you have an incredibly strong set of performances that ground the story in the same kind of grave and important tone that the film sought and achieved.

2) Consequences. As in the kind of consequences that rocked an entire generation. Remember how I was talking about how tame and watered down everything was after the Reagan administration lifted the ban on marketing to children? While the syndicated Transformers cartoon had plot development and moved things forward, kids assumed that everything was going to be okay when the credits rolled. Our heroes would live to fight another day and the enemies would never win in the end. Cartoons from the 1980s are reliable in their commitment to the status quo because every episode could be someone’s first. Transformers: The Movie changed that forever. The amount of robot carnage that takes place in this movie was alarming and totally effed up. While the main legacy of this movie is that it killed Optimus Prime, it’s less talked about that this movie also kills a TON of main characters. The same robots that we had watched as kids every day after school escape with a witty comment are the same robots that we see completely obliterated in the most violent of ways. Heroes lay on the ground with smoke pouring from their mouths and eyes. What’s more, these characters STAYED DEAD. Starscream, a slimy character with mutinous aspirations of power, gets literally disintegrated BY A BIG GUN. We watch, almost in slow motion, and he freezes and slowly begins to fall apart in dead pieces. While some of these characters would return in later, newer versions of the TV show (or in the last handful of episodes of the television series a year later), their deaths were real. And they mattered. Ultimately this decision was made for the most soulless and corporate of reasons: the old line of toys needed to be retired so they could crank out a whole batch of new toys and make more money. The unintended message being sent to us kids, though, was that sometimes you can try your best and still not succeed. Good may ultimately win, but you might not be around to see it. Oh, and EVERYTHING DIES.

1) It Changed Everything. Piggybacking off the previous point, the changes that occurred in the movie weren’t just temporary events meant to invoke a sense of drama. Michael Bay’s Transformers films consistently and overtly copy the most important beats of Transformers: The Movie without seeming to understand why they mattered. Bay’s movies try to mimic the impact of certain character deaths, but they don’t understand that for us to really care about those deaths, there has to be a real loss and a real change. You can’t kill of a character and then bring them back in the same movie and have there be any real impact. Nothing has been lost. Transformers: The Movie, through total accident, made the deaths in the movie really matter. When Optimus Prime dies, he doesn’t return before the end of the movie. And when sad children gathered around their TV sets for new episodes of the syndicated show in the fall of 1986, they wouldn’t find him there, either. Optimus Prime was still dead, and so were all the characters who bit the big one in the movie. We had a new leader and a new group of Autobots waging the eternal war. Years had passed since the last episode. Characters we knew as children now had children of their own. Optimus Prime did eventually return at the very tail end of the third season in 1987, some nine months after his character died. Not coincidentally, his return basically marked the end of the series. I wonder what audiences would think of a Michael Bay movie where most of the heroes die and never come back and where the surviving ones look so different that they’re unrecognizable. What about if the action moved off Earth completely and instead took place in the future on a series of strange planets inhabited by creatures that weren’t remotely humanoid and there were no human actors?

Thirty years on, I still find new things to appreciate about Transformers: The Movie. It’s far from perfect and was birthed out of some pretty cynical and greedy circumstances, and yet it transcends those origins to become something truly special. It was created as nothing more than a 90 minute toy commercial designed to herald a new toy line, and yet it became something so much more. It was a perfect culmination of what had come before. May I blow your mind? Transformers should probably have stayed in the 1980s. It was so of its time and this was such a fitting cinematic outing for the robots in disguise, it’s almost a shame that it’s become so watered down in an attempt to wring every last bit of life out of it. Better to let it be a thing of nostalgia that can be looked back on fondly. That’s not going to happen, though, and these robots are here forever. Thankfully Shout! Factory has recently released this film on Blu-ray for the 30th Anniversary. This is a good thing, because demand for the movie has not waned and copies of the out-of-print previous edition of the DVD from 2006 (before the first Michael Bay movie even existed) were soaring up to around 100 dollars on the secondary market. Like the Autobots and Decepticons themselves, fandom for the Transformers never goes away, and as more new content is created around these characters, it becomes apparent that they’ve never been as relevant—or awesome, funny, cool, messed up, and disposable—as they were in 1986’s Transformers: The Movie.

Heath Holland On...Kurt Russell

by Heath Holland

Here are a few reasons why Kurt Russell has become my favorite actor.

You ever have one of those realizations about a movie or an actor that sneaks up on you? That happened to me not long ago when I became aware that I hold Kurt Russell in higher esteem than I do any other actor. I expressed this to my wife at some point recently and she said something along the lines of “Huh. You don’t talk about him, so I didn’t know you liked him so much.” I didn’t either, it turns out. I just woke up one day, got dressed, ate breakfast, and had a quiet little explosion in my head that left traces of Kurt Russell all over my gray matter. Part of this development stems from my watching almost nothing but live-action Disney movies from the 1960s and 1970s a couple of months ago and realizing that he’s ALWAYS been great. Part of it seems like it’s been there all along, I just wasn’t aware of the shrine I’d built in my head. While I recognize that he’s never been an “awards” actor and doesn’t have a credits list like De Niro used to have before his resume began to resemble the bottom of a birdcage, Kurt Russell has been quietly making awesome movies for SIX DECADES.

Kurt Russell is one of those guys who has had such a diversified career that he’s earned fans from completely different—often not overlapping—groups of movie enthusiasts. We’re just rolling off another successful Scary Movie Month, which means that a good portion of you guys might have watched Russell in John Carptenter’s The Thing during October. The horror fan also loves Kurt Russell for his involvement in other Carpenter films like Escape from New York and Big Trouble in Little China, even though these movies aren’t necessarily horror at all. They’re directed by one of horror’s great talents, though, and they star Russell in iconic roles. If you want an action hero, Kurt’s your man. He’s no stranger to genre films made by guys besides Carpenter, either. It’s fair to say that he’s both an action and a horror icon.

The music fan loves Kurt Russell because of his connection to Elvis. A very young Russell made an appearance in the 1963 Elvis film It Happened at the World’s Fair. Later, he would star as The King himself in a made-for-TV miniseries/film biopic directed in 1979 by the master, John Carpenter (see above). There’s a tip of the hat to Elvis by Russell in 1980’s Used Cars, and Russell would play an Elvis impersonator in the trashy-but-oh-so-watchable 3000 Miles to Graceland. It’s kind of crazy that one guy would have so many brushes with a single personality over his career, but Kurt Russell isn’t your average actor.

The western fan loves Kurt Russell because of his outstanding contributions to the genre. There have only been a small handful of them, but western nuts sing campfire songs about Kurt Russell for his role as Wyatt Earp in Tombstone. In a 2006 interview Russell gave to True West Magazine, he claims that he served as the functioning director of the film, which was a deeply troubled production. The actual director (on paper), George P. Cosmatos, Russell claimed, was brought in to be the public face of the film while Russell was secretly doing things like setting up shots and lining up the schedule each night before the next day’s filming began. He claims that it was such a secret that he had developed little pieces of sign language between himself and Cosmatos so they could communicate while filming in front of everyone else. The interview is fascinating (and can still be read here), and exemplifies something that western movie fans have come to appreciate about Russell: he really knows his history. He can look at a western story and tell when in time the story could have occurred, down to the year. He has a real passion for westerns and the western way of life, which is one of the things that makes him so good in them. You can watch Bone Tomahawk and The Hateful Eight for further evidence, as if any is necessary.

The Disney fan loves Kurt Russell because he’s forever linked to the famous studio’s legacy. Beginning in the 1960s, Russell was one of several young stars who Walt himself took a shine to, joining Hayley Mills, Tommy Kirk, and Annette Funicello as the company’s main teen players. People who were there at the time say that Walt Disney just felt a connection to this group of young actors and treated them with respect, which was not necessarily something the extremely-busy executive, who was often cold and impersonal while working (and he was always working), was known for. There’s been a long-lasting rumor that Walt Disney’s last words were, in fact, “Kurt Russell.” This has been debunked by Disney historian Jim Korkis through extensive and painstaking research, however; what we do know as fact is that after Walt died, a piece of paper in his office that had “Kurt Russell” hand-written by Walt was discovered during the cleanup of his personal effects. During a visit to the studio in Burbank, someone told Russell that they had found this piece of paper on Walt’s desk and took him up to the office to show it to him. So the truth is that no one knows what Walt Disney’s last words were, but he did write Kurt Russell’s name on a piece of paper in his office shortly before his passing--likely for a future project--which speaks to Walt’s appreciation for the young actor.

During the late 1960s and into the 1970s, Kurt Russell continued his tenure as a player for Walt Disney Studios, starring in The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes and its two sequels. He has positive things to say about his time working for the mouse, and seems to have built a good working relationship with the studio. He returned in 1981 to voice Copper, the titular hound of Disney’s too-sad-to-watch animated film The Fox and the Hound (no, really, don’t watch it) and it was Buena Vista (a Disney company) that distributed Tombstone. Russell even returned on screen for Disney in 2005’s Sky High. We don’t even need to bring up Captain Ron, though I guess I just did. I’m not sorry; it’s worth watching just to see how much fun Russell is having as a sleaze ball. While the casual Disney fan might not think much about Russell’s contributions, many Disney nerds (hi!) frequently and appreciatively credit Russell for being a notable and important part of Disney history in the tumultuous years after Walt’s passing.

One thing you won’t find when you look up Kurt Russell is scandal. While the occasional rumor pops up every now and again, he seems like he might actually be the nicest guy in Hollywood. His friends all have great things to say about him, including his pal Sly Stallone, co-star of Tango and Cash who, I’m sorry to say, is now my SECOND favorite actor…also, I’ve only just realized Tango and Cash stars my two favorite actors…ANYWAY, he’s been with the same woman (Goldie Hawn, co-star of Swing Shift and Overboard) for over thirty years in unwedded bliss. Goldie Hawn’s daughter Kate Hudson says he’s been the greatest dad ever, making her childhood safe and innocent and always putting family first no matter how busy he was with his career. During interviews with the actor for the press junkets around the release of The Hateful Eight, he said acting in the film was very difficult for him because his character was so rude and brash that it was hard for him to arrive at that place because it was so unnatural for him. Need one more piece of evidence that Kurt Russell is not only the best, but also the coolest as well? He auditioned for the roles of both Luke Skywalker AND Han Solo back in 1976 and then decided to take another job before any casting decisions had been made. Can you imagine what that movie would have been like with Kurt Russell? What if he’d been Luke? “But I was going into Tosche Station to pick up some power converters. And I’m still going, whether you like it or not. If you’ve got a problem with it, you can take it up with the barrel of my blaster rifle.” Pew pew!

It’s for all these reasons that I’ve developed such a high opinion of this dude. You could make a whole day out of watching his movies and end up with a full, varied experience (Patrick has made this easy to do and feels similarly about K.R.’s awesomeness). In a matter of months, a whole new generation of mainstream moviegoers will plop down in a seat for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and discover how awesome Kurt Russell is. People will be talking about his performances and how consistent his work has been for years. People who don’t even know who he is will be encouraged to search on Netflix or Hulu and watch a Kurt Russell movie they’ve probably never even heard of. When they do this, they’ll discover what I didn’t know that I knew all along: Kurt Russell is absolutely the greatest, and he has been for a very, very long time.