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25 Years ago today: The Godfather is released

So, where's the special 25th Anniversary Edition? 25 years ago to the day, The Godfather had it's world premiere in New York, where a lucky audience could see for the very first time the movie that is still at the top of the IMDB top 250 of Best Movies. Lead actor Marlon Brando wasn't too happy to do publicity at the time the movie was released, as he realised a deal that he made with producer Robert Evans would cost him dearly. Brando had signed on to do the picture for 50.000 dollars, as well as a percentage of the gross, but some time before the movie was released he sold back his rights to the percentage, as he needed the money to clear up some 'woman problems'. Right before the movie was released, Brando started to realise the error of his ways, as the movie was gearing up to be a huge hit, and Brando would miss out on what was probably his biggest paycheck. Angry, Brando decided not to do any publicity for the film, and also decided not to do the sequel. Of course, in 1990, he would parody his own role in the movie The Freshman, where he plays a character so much like his character in The Godfather, that Matthew Broderick's young hero is afraid that he is actually the real thing.

15 Years ago today: Memoirs of an Invisible Man

It was supposed to have been the movie to propel Chevy Chase's career to new heights, taking him from him usual comedy movies into the realm of more serious actors. However, as you can see from Chase's most recent movies (Zoom, Goose on the Loose, The Karate Dog), this didn't really happen. Still, Memoirs of an Invisible Man really isn't that bad. It features Chase as a yuppie involved in a freak accident, who finds out that he has become invisible. Which is cool for ten minutes, but when the novelty of being invisible has worn off, Chase soon realises he is in deep trouble. A CIA-man is on his trail and has evil plans for him, and Chase finds himself running for his life. Luckily, Darryl Hannah is running with him, which makes things a bit more bearable for him.
The movie was high profile, with John Carpenter directing and a massive advertising campaign backing it up, but it was to no avail. Critics were unimpressed, as Chase wasn't really able to break away fully from the mugging persona we enjoy so much in his National Lampoon movies, and audiences didn't buy it either. Still, if you ever run into this movie and haven't seen it yet, the 90 minutes you can spend with it won't be wasted.

65 Years ago today: Captain Midnight

How can you resist a movie that has the following tagling: "Tracking down spies...cracking down on killers...the airwaves' great fighter zooms to glory!" February 15 1942 saw the release of the first episode in the Captain Midnight serial, which was brought to movie theaters by Columbia Pictures. The movies were based on an immensely popular radio serial, which had started in 1938 and ran on through 1949. The series was about a World War 1 pilot who headed the so-called Secret Squadron, an aviation-oriented paramilitary organization fighting sabotage and espionage. The series spoke to everybody, old and young, men and women, as it featured female characters who were the equals of the male characters, which was not that common at the time. Heroine Joyce Ryan went on dogfights and missions herself, while Fury Shark was one of the major villains tempting Captain Midnight and his squad.
The movie serial ran for 15 episodes and starred Dave O'Brien in the title role. While it wasn't as successful as the radio serial, it was able to ride the massive hype surrounding the series and attracted it's own group of fans. It's easy to see Captain Midnight as the inspiration for something like Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and according to critics it was actually the last time Columbia made a serial that was this good.

Read more at Wikipedia

15 Years Ago Today: Juice

15 years ago, the genre of the hiphop movie was still a relatively new one. These movies were mostly more interesting because of their soundtrack than because of the actual movie itself, although hiphop fans anxious to see their heroes on the big screen didn't care too much, making several of these movies into small successes. Being a fan of hiphop myself, I can remember the hubbub surrounding the movie Juice. This picture, directed by Ernest Dickerson and starring Omar Epps and Tupac Shakur, had a soundtrack that was probably the best hiphop soundtrack at that time, and which still holds up even now. Several videoclips aired on Yo MTV Raps very regularly, and I was very interested in seeing the movie. It never came out in Holland though (at least not to my knowledge), and I regret to tell you that I still haven't seen it. The soundtrack has been burning in my CD-player many times though.

Click the link to read the rest of the post, where you can see several videos from the movie, namely Know the Ledge by Eric B. and Rakim, and Nuff Respect by Big Daddy Kane.

15 years Ago today: Kuffs was released

Okay, you are now probably wondering why I am dedicating a column with the intention of bringing back memories of memorable days to a movie that hardly anybody remembers anymore, or that anybody has even seen. You could say that looking back at Kuffs is looking a little bit at something that could have been. You see, at the time Kuffs was released, Christian Slater was one of the rising stars of Hollywood. He had been in some great smaller movies, Heathers and Pump up the Volume, and he was on the verge of a breakthrough to real superstar status. His first shot at this, mob-movie Mobsters, didn't do as well as people had hoped (which meant more or less the end for co-stars Richard Grieco and Costas Mandylor, and severly hindered the career growth of Patrick Dempsey), but Slater was to get another shot at becoming a big star with Kuffs.
The movie was specifically written for Slater, with a franchise in mind, and stars him as a good-for-nothing who inherits his brother's police protection business after he is murdered. The movie is a cross between comedy and action, a bit in the style of movies like Beverly Hills Cop, but failed to charm audiences and critics alike. It goes too far to say that this movie killed Slater's chances at becoming a megastar, but if Kuffs would have been the hit that the people behind this movie expected it to be, Slater would now probably not be making his money starring in Uwe Boll-movies.