#Jim Metzler

[memorymeblog]

#tex #matt dillion #emilio estevez #meg tilly #jim metzler #old school

[theactioneer]

Plughead Rewired: Circuitry Man II (Steven & Robert Lovy, 1994)

#vernon wells #90s movies #sci fi #jim metzler #gif

[clemsfilmdiary]

Hot to Trot (1988, Michael Dinner)

1/5/23

#Hot to Trot #Bobcat Goldthwait #Dabney Coleman #John Candy #Virginia Madsen #Cindy Pickett #Jim Metzler #Tim Kazurinsky #Mary Gross #Lonny Price #80s #comedy #horses #talking animals #stock market #yuppies #inheritance #interspecies #jockeys #horse racing #rags to riches #dreadful #unfunny #animal cruelty

[cpw-nyc]

Election at 20: assessing the high school satire's brutal politics

Charles Bramesco Tue 23 Apr 2019

There’s a big M Night Shyamalan twist in the final minutes of Election, Alexander Payne’s searing 1999 high school satire. Tracy Flick, the irritating overachiever indelibly played by a breakout Reese Witherspoon, is a Republican.

Throughout the film, Payne prefers to think about politics in the abstract, as an illusory choice between interchangeable versions of the same bullshit. Odious civics teacher Jim McAllister (Matthew Broderick) explains democracy as having the option to select either an apple or an orange, represented with two identical circles on his chalkboard. The closest thing that this comedy of bad morals has to a hero is Tammy Metzler (Jessica Campbell), who galvanizes the student body with a promise to dissolve the school government in toto if elected class president.

Payne narrows his blanket contempt for the two-party system in only one moment, just short of the credits. After McAllister has torpedoed his professional and romantic lives by sabotaging Tracy’s campaign for office at Carver high, after the scandal’s dust has died down, he engineers a second act for himself in New York City as a museum guide. He encounters Tracy years later in Washington DC, where he glimpses her getting into a limo as a staffer to the fictitious Representative Mike Geiger, identified as a Nebraska Republican. A minor detail, perhaps, but for a character as invested in the trajectory of her own future as Tracy, it’s a significant one. Payne doesn’t like picking sides, he’d rather withdraw in disgust, so it stands out that he picks one for her.

In her school days, Tracy Flick is “political” in the same holistic, imprecise sense that Burning Man attendees can be “spiritual” without subscribing to any formal religion. She’s invigorated by the nuts and bolts of the voting process, and as is the case with all of her numerous extracurriculars, she throws her entire self into running for class president. But the dirty secret about résumé-padders like Tracy is that their only real commitment is to the act of staying involved. It’s not like dictating lunch block policy requires a nuanced platform, and still her stump speech goes heavy on upbeat vagaries over substance. She imitates the habits of studied politicians, hitting her cadences and singling out her working-class constituents to score pathos points.

Which makes it all the more curious that posterity has cast Tracy Flick as an avatar for liberalism. At the time of the original release in 1999, audiences already knew to read Tracy as a stand-in for Hillary Clinton; Witherspoon herself has reinforced the comparison, claiming just last year that she would never portray Clinton in a movie because she already had. Clinton herself has told the star that even 20 years out, people still ask her about Election all the time. These details were foregrounded in essays around the 2016 lead-up to the Presidential vote, pieces with titles like The Very Uncomfortable Experience of Rewatching Election in 2016 and Hillary Clinton, Tracy Flick, and the Reclaiming of Female Ambition.

These articles identified Tracy Flick as a vessel for a determination and self-sufficiency that frightens men when not actively offending them, a reading more than borne out by the film’s active interest in exposing the ugliest, pettiest sides of the adults undermining and taking advantage of her. (She’s introduced mid-affair with a lecherous married teacher; later, McAllister fetishizes her severity during sex with his own wife.) Tracy’s been wronged, the argument goes, devolving into a cudgel that male commentators can use to trivialize preparedness and perfectionism in distaff candidates. Tracy’s only sin, by the ethical calculus of this reappraisal? “She cares, about her own interests and those of everybody else, so insistently, and so aggressively – indeed, so ambitiously – as to blur the line between the two.”

That’s a generous assessment of a character who thinks to herself: “Now that I have more life experience, I feel sorry for Mr McAllister. I mean, anyone who’s stuck in the same little room, wearing the same stupid clothes, saying the exact same things year after year for all of his life, while his students go on to good colleges and move to big cities and do great things and make loads of money – he’s gotta be at least a little jealous. It’s like my mom says, the weak are always trying to sabotage the strong.” She’s smug and annoying and surprisingly entitled for someone resentful of the upper class, and yet she has the upper hand by not being a serially dishonest pedophile. Tracy doesn’t have to be good for the men around her to be worse.

That’s the disillusioned soul of the film, entrenching it within the cynicism of the 90s and estranging it from the hopeful revisionism of modern discourse. Election hones itself into a war of attrition between an actively terrible person and one who is just obnoxious enough to keep an audience at arm’s length. A foil for Tracy arrived in the form of Parks and Recreation’s Leslie Knope, another irrepressible go-getter with an eye for climbing the governmental ladder. Except that her always-on energy and tireless devotion to work earned her lots of friends as it boosted her up the chain of command, a fittingly optimistic rework for the hope-fueled Obama administration and Clinton candidacy. What makes Election special, and thoroughly alien to entertainment in 2019, is its refusal to give Tracy any leeway. If she’s going to gain the political foothold she so desperately craves, she will have to shack up with the neocons to do so. Bleak, sure, but at least Payne’s honest.

Office Space at 20: how the comedy spoke to an anxious workplace

Read more

#Election #Cinema #Tracy Flick

[simplylove101]

2023 Horror Challenge: [29/?]

↳“Once you've been to hell, everything else pales in comparison!“ 976-EVIL (1988) dir. Robert Englund

Plot: People who dial 976-EVIL receive supernatural powers and turn into satanic killers. When Spike dialed 976-EVIL, he knew it was an expensive toll call, but he didn't know that he'd have to pay for it with his soul.

Starring: Stephen Geoffreys, Patrick O'Bryan, Jim Metzler, Maria Rubell & Sandy Dennis

Getting near of being caught up with the reviews but still plenty more to write up. I feel for anyone who follows me on here. I promise I don't mean to spam your dash with these things but I really was so behind. lol Anyway, finally delving into some 80's horror again, too bad this one was a dud. I kinda had a feeling it would be but I was curious about horror icon Robert Englund's directorial debut. I feel like there was plenty of potential for this one to be a classic since it does seem that Robert had a good eye for things but the story just kinda goes off the rails. Basically it's silly. But I do think Stephen Geoffreys did his best with what he had. Not much more to say but that it just wasn't that good despite a good concept.

#976 evil #horrorchallenge2023

[byneddiedingo]

River's Edge (Tim Hunter, 1986)

Cast: Crispin Glover, Keanu Reeves, Ione Skye, Daniel Roebuck, Dennis Hopper, Joshua John Miller, Roxana Zal, Josh Richman, Phillip Brock, Tom Bower, Constance Forsland, Leo Rossi, Jim Metzler. Screenplay: Neal Jimenez. Cinematography: Frederick Elmes. Production design: John Muto. Film editing: Howard E. Smith, Sonya Sones. Music: Jürgen Knieper. I'm a faithful watcher of credits, even though today they're sometimes as long as the movie itself. I think if those people devoted their time to making the movie, they deserve a little of my time watching their names scroll by. Oh, okay, not really. The actual reason for watching the credits is that sometimes they reveal tidbits of fascinating information, such as this one for River's Edge: "trainer: Mr. Glover." I have to wonder what Crispin Glover's trainer did: It's not a particularly challenging role physically, so I have to assume it had something to do with keeping the actor from going further over the top than he does in his mannered and eccentric performance as Layne, an adolescent pothead who gets caught up in the aftermath of the murder of a teenage girl. River's Edge was something of a shocker in its day, variously interpreted as an indictment of American society's failure to provide a clear direction for bored and alienated youth, or as a critique of parenting or the school system, or just as a horror story masked as a true crime movie. The screenplay by Neal Jimenez has its roots in two news stories about teenagers in different parts of California who knew about the murder of one of their schoolmates but covered it up. It's not just the teens who get their share of blame: The adults include negligent parents, a half-crazed loner, an ineffective teacher, bullying cops, and the usual gaggle of reporters. That the half-crazed loner is played by Dennis Hopper links River's Edge with another and more celebrated movie of 1986: David Lynch's Blue Velvet. There are moments in Tim Hunter's film, especially when Hopper's character is clinging to his beloved inflatable sex doll, that rival Lynch's. Lynch, however, would probably not have been so tender as Jimenez and Hunter are to the lovers played by Keanu Reeves and Ione Skye, who lend a romantic John Hughes note to the film that dulls its edge.

#River's Edge #Tim Hunter

[codycawdren]

976-Evil (1988)

Director: Robert Englund Starring: Stephen Geoffreys, Patrick O’Bryan, Jim Metzler People who dial 976-EVIL receive supernatural powers and turn into satanic killers. When Spike dialed 976-EVIL, he knew it was an expensive toll call, but he didn’t know that he’d have to pay for it with his soul. I must be honest, I initially had a difficult time understanding what the movie was about. The…

View On WordPress

[saturdaynightmatinee]

CALIFICACIÓN PERSONAL: 6 / 10

Título Original: Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat

Año: 1989

Duración: 104 min.

País: Estados Unidos  

Dirección: Anthony Hickox

Guion: Anthony Hickox. Historia: John Burgess

Música: Richard Stone

Fotografía: Levie Isaacks

Reparto: David Carradine, Morgan Brittany, Bruce Campbell, Jim Metzler, Maxwell Caulfield, Deborah Foreman, M. Emmet Walsh, John Ireland, Dana Ashbrook

Productora: Vestron Pictures

Género: Horror; Comedy; Western

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098412/

TRAILER:

[felicereviews]

Four Friends

Directed by Arthur Penn and released in theaters in 1981.

I love this movie.  I was a little worried because I had watched it a lot one summer when it was on HBO.  I must have been 14?  I don’t know why it was on HBO so much.  That was before streaming so you watched what was on.  Some people watched The Breakfast Club 10 million times - I watched Four Friends.  I was a little worried because I never really heard about this movie other than that summer and no one I know is familiar with it - so I thought maybe it would be bad.  But it’s great.  It’s great and subtle and funny and sad.

The friends from the same small town all love the same girl, Georgia.  She first comes on the screen with an unlit cigarette and says ‘good evening kiddos’ with a smile that could stop time.  

And that’s it.  They love her.  It’s the 60′s.  One goes to war, one stays to run his father’s business, and one goes to college.  And Georgia - she just goes.  And comes back.

I love this movie.  And I still want to be Georgia - just a little bit.

#four friends #1981 movies #arthur penn #jodi thelen #craig wasson #michael huddleston #jim metzler

[kwebtv]

The cast of “The Best Times”

Janet Eilber

Beth Ehlers

Jim Metzler

Jay Baker

Liane Alexandra Curtis

Darren Dalton

LaSaundra Hall

Tammy Lauren

David Packer

K.C. Martel

Melora Hardin

#The Best Times #TV #Janet Eilber #Jim Metzler #Beth Ehlers

[erstwhile-punk-guerito]

#one false move #bill paxton #cynda williams #billy bob thornton #michael beach #earl billings #jim metzler #carl franklin #1992

[ferretfyre]

#one false move #film #review #criterion channel #carl franklin #bill paxton #cynda williams #billy bob thornton #michael beach #earl billings #jim metzler

[ruleof3bobby]

RIVER’S EDGE (1986) Grade: C-

You could see what they wanted to do here, it might have worked in '86, but a lot will change in this script if made now. 

#River's Edge #1986 #C #Crime Films #High School #Tim Hunter #Drama Films #Murder #Crispin Glover #Keanu Reeves #Ione Skye #Daniel Roebuck #Dennis Hopper #Joshua John Miller #Roxana Zal #Phillip Brock #Tom Bower #Constance Forslund #Leo Rossi #Jim Metzler #Danyi Deats #Friends

[cpw-nyc]

Reese Witherspoon to return as Tracy Flick in Election sequel

Benjamin Lee Thu 8 Dec 2022

Reese Witherspoon is set to reunite with director Alexander Payne for an Election sequel.

The film will be an adaptation of Tom Perrotta’s Tracy Flick Can’t Win, his 2022 novel that follows the character of Tracy Flick as she battles to become the principal of a suburban high school. “She hasn’t fulfilled her dreams of a political career,” Perrotta said of Tracy in the book. “And she’s looking back and starting to realize that she wasn’t as extraordinary an individual as she believed. That she was a kind of representative woman rather than a unique superhero.”

Perrotta’s novel was released to acclaim this June with the New York Times’s Molly Young calling it “exquisitely drawn”.

Tracy Flick Can’t Win will be released on streaming platform Paramount+. Witherspoon will also produce while Payne will again write the screenplay with Jim Taylor.

The 1999 original was a breakout success, netting Payne and Taylor an Oscar nomination for best adapted screenplay and Witherspoon a Golden Globe nod for best actress in a musical or comedy. The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw called it “a devastatingly clever and funny black comedy”.

Witherspoon has since gone on to win an Oscar for her role in Walk the Line and has most recently been seen in Apple TV’s drama series The Morning Show. She will next lead Netflix romantic comedy Your Place or Mine alongside Ashton Kutcher and Legally Blonde 3, co-written by Mindy Kaling.

In a USA Today interview from this summer, Witherspoon teased that out of the “dozen projects in various stages of development” she is handling, there was one that she “can’t really talk about”. She said she would be “reprising a character I played a long time ago”.

Payne’s last film was 2017’s high-concept satire Downsizing starring Matt Damon. The film received mixed reviews and was a commercial misfire. His next film The Holdovers stars Paul Giamatti was recently purchased by Focus Features for a worldwide deal that is estimated to be worth $30m and is expected to be released in 2023.

Tracy Flick Can’t Win is one of many projects heading to Paramount’s streaming network based on pre-existing studio property. Next year sees a TV remake of Fatal Attraction starring Joshua Jackson and Lizzy Caplan and a Grease prequel.

Election at 20: assessing the high school satire's brutal politics

Charles Bramesco Tue 23 Apr 2019

There’s a big M Night Shyamalan twist in the final minutes of Election, Alexander Payne’s searing 1999 high school satire. Tracy Flick, the irritating overachiever indelibly played by a breakout Reese Witherspoon, is a Republican.

Throughout the film, Payne prefers to think about politics in the abstract, as an illusory choice between interchangeable versions of the same bullshit. Odious civics teacher Jim McAllister (Matthew Broderick) explains democracy as having the option to select either an apple or an orange, represented with two identical circles on his chalkboard. The closest thing that this comedy of bad morals has to a hero is Tammy Metzler (Jessica Campbell), who galvanizes the student body with a promise to dissolve the school government in toto if elected class president.

Office Space at 20: how the comedy spoke to an anxious workplace

Read more

Payne narrows his blanket contempt for the two-party system in only one moment, just short of the credits. After McAllister has torpedoed his professional and romantic lives by sabotaging Tracy’s campaign for office at Carver high, after the scandal’s dust has died down, he engineers a second act for himself in New York City as a museum guide. He encounters Tracy years later in Washington DC, where he glimpses her getting into a limo as a staffer to the fictitious Representative Mike Geiger, identified as a Nebraska Republican. A minor detail, perhaps, but for a character as invested in the trajectory of her own future as Tracy, it’s a significant one. Payne doesn’t like picking sides, he’d rather withdraw in disgust, so it stands out that he picks one for her.

In her school days, Tracy Flick is “political” in the same holistic, imprecise sense that Burning Man attendees can be “spiritual” without subscribing to any formal religion. She’s invigorated by the nuts and bolts of the voting process, and as is the case with all of her numerous extracurriculars, she throws her entire self into running for class president. But the dirty secret about résumé-padders like Tracy is that their only real commitment is to the act of staying involved. It’s not like dictating lunch block policy requires a nuanced platform, and still her stump speech goes heavy on upbeat vagaries over substance. She imitates the habits of studied politicians, hitting her cadences and singling out her working-class constituents to score pathos points.

Which makes it all the more curious that posterity has cast Tracy Flick as an avatar for liberalism. At the time of the original release in 1999, audiences already knew to read Tracy as a stand-in for Hillary Clinton; Witherspoon herself has reinforced the comparison, claiming just last year that she would never portray Clinton in a movie because she already had. Clinton herself has told the star that even 20 years out, people still ask her about Election all the time. These details were foregrounded in essays around the 2016 lead-up to the Presidential vote, pieces with titles like The Very Uncomfortable Experience of Rewatching Election in 2016 and Hillary Clinton, Tracy Flick, and the Reclaiming of Female Ambition.

These articles identified Tracy Flick as a vessel for a determination and self-sufficiency that frightens men when not actively offending them, a reading more than borne out by the film’s active interest in exposing the ugliest, pettiest sides of the adults undermining and taking advantage of her. (She’s introduced mid-affair with a lecherous married teacher; later, McAllister fetishizes her severity during sex with his own wife.) Tracy’s been wronged, the argument goes, devolving into a cudgel that male commentators can use to trivialize preparedness and perfectionism in distaff candidates. Tracy’s only sin, by the ethical calculus of this reappraisal? “She cares, about her own interests and those of everybody else, so insistently, and so aggressively – indeed, so ambitiously – as to blur the line between the two.”

That’s a generous assessment of a character who thinks to herself: “Now that I have more life experience, I feel sorry for Mr McAllister. I mean, anyone who’s stuck in the same little room, wearing the same stupid clothes, saying the exact same things year after year for all of his life, while his students go on to good colleges and move to big cities and do great things and make loads of money – he’s gotta be at least a little jealous. It’s like my mom says, the weak are always trying to sabotage the strong.” She’s smug and annoying and surprisingly entitled for someone resentful of the upper class, and yet she has the upper hand by not being a serially dishonest pedophile. Tracy doesn’t have to be good for the men around her to be worse.

That’s the disillusioned soul of the film, entrenching it within the cynicism of the 90s and estranging it from the hopeful revisionism of modern discourse. Election hones itself into a war of attrition between an actively terrible person and one who is just obnoxious enough to keep an audience at arm’s length. A foil for Tracy arrived in the form of Parks and Recreation’s Leslie Knope, another irrepressible go-getter with an eye for climbing the governmental ladder. Except that her always-on energy and tireless devotion to work earned her lots of friends as it boosted her up the chain of command, a fittingly optimistic rework for the hope-fueled Obama administration and Clinton candidacy. What makes Election special, and thoroughly alien to entertainment in 2019, is its refusal to give Tracy any leeway. If she’s going to gain the political foothold she so desperately craves, she will have to shack up with the neocons to do so. Bleak, sure, but at least Payne’s honest.

#Tracy Flick #Election

[justfilms]

Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat

#Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat #Anthony Hickox #Bruce Campbell #David Carradine #Morgan Brittany #Jim Metzler #Poster #Vestron Pictures

[clemsfilmdiary]

Murder by Night (1989, Paul Lynch)

8/18/19

#80s #Murder by Night #Robert Urich #Kay Lenz #Jim Metzler #Michael Ironside #TV movie #thriller #mystery #murder #witnesses #paranoia #serial killers #amnesia #police #psychoanalysis #detective #Canadian #investigation #rich people #identity theft #neighbors #Toronto #nightmares #art