[ 
Mood: Angry ]
[ 
Currently: Listening to Fire, Inc. ]
It’s something we can’t avoid as long as we allow ourselves to be spectators in various aspects of the game of life: watching, unable to vary the outcome, as a bad ending inexorably forces its drudging self upon us.
It happens in every genre we know and love.
Science fiction: The "Huh? Wha-?" ending to Tim Burton’s barely-watchable, otherwise-mockable, ‘reimagining’ of "Planet of the Apes."
This movie stripped Mark Wahlberg of almost every ounce of cred he got from me after I saw this scene in "Boogie Nights." The 5:35 mark is where the magic happens.
Yes, I will likely use this link until it falls dead from YouTube. I LOVE that scene.
But Tim Burton’s big ape turd? I forgot everything that happened in that ‘movie’ about ten minutes after I left the theater. Except the unbelievable, unexplained, I-don’t-care-if-someone-has-a-theory-about-it ending.
Why did I forget?
Because the ending SUCKED.
Horror: I could go for the duck sitting there in its barrel on this one and deride the Frank Darabont horrorshow titled "The Mist," but I, ladies and gentlemen, shall avoid the easy target, and take the high road.
The unbelievable adaptation of Stephen King’s "IT" for television (Richard Thomas as Stuttering Bill!?!), complete with effects ripped right out of some sandbox plastic dinosaur fight I might have had in the early ’70s.
Except MY dinosaurs were BETTER.
King let the t.v. miniseries hacks literally hack his great novel (IT is my favorite, sorry The Stand) into palsied, palatable-to-middle-America pieces.
And, no, I didn’t like Tim Curry as Pennywise, either.
Not because he was freaky.
It’s because he wasn’t the Pennywise I saw when I read the book.
I love the poster tagline: "The master of horror unleashes everything you were ever afraid of."
Yeah.
Another crappy version of one of his books.
Fantasy: Did you enjoy the end of "LOTR: Return of the King"? Really?
‘Cause I was napping off and on from the minute Pippin started singing until Sam carried Frodo up Mount Doom.
Sam carried Frodo up Mount Doom?!? What, did someone slip in my dvd of "Hearts In Atlantis"?
Did I not read that chapter in the book? It’s possible. There were quite a few chapters in the books that I napped through.
So maybe the movies did an admirable job of recreating the book experience, and Tolkien’s relatives, with their incessant bitching about the films, are simply wearing their BVDs one size too small.
I give P.J. and crew props for trying to stuff battle after battle after battle after battle into those last two films, but even though "LOTR: The Fellowship of the Ring" just got everything started storywise and ended hanging on a relatively weak cliff (everyone KNEW Gandalf weren’t dead, y’all), it still ended more satisfactorily than ROTK.
The Mutt (a little bit of everything, and Michael Pare): In 1983 I took a trip to Universal Studios and during the tour saw the huge black tents that the tour guide mysteriously, giddily exclaimed to our group were from the in-production movie "Streets Of Fire," starring Diane Lane, Michael Pare, and Willem DeFoe!
OK, I don’t recall the exclamations about the cast, but I’m fairly certain there was mention of them.
I saw this film in theaters the next year and enjoyed it for what it was: a popcorn film designed by throwing together many disparate elements—rock/pop/doo-wop music, a hot damsel in distress (Lane), a brooding anti-hero (Pare), a plucky sidekick (AmyFILKINGMadigan, hopelessly miscast), a sneering villian (DeFoe, both more and less terrible than his Goblin), and a colorful cast of supporting characters (Robert Townshend! Rick Moranis! Deborah Van Valkenburgh! Rick Rossovich! Bill Paxton! Ed Begley, Jr!)—into a fantastic setting neither future nor past.
Touted as "A Rock & Roll Fable," the film manages to entertain on a thin story and a few witty lines delivered from the steely Pre-Swayze chin of Michael Pare (and if the wiki is right, someone needs to tell him, in his long career of bad career moves, he really needs to rethink the upcoming Uwe Boll collaboration).
The music throughout is decent–you can still hear Dan Hartman’s "I Can Dream About You" on the radio, especially XM’s ‘Sunny 24’ station–and the movie is bookended by two of the best Jim Steinman songs EVAR.
If those songs don’t make you yearn for your years of misspent youth, you maybe didn’t have any.
Watch that last clip to the five-minute mark (or pull the dvd off your shelf and find the chapter) and you’ll see what I mean when I say "Why, oh, god, why did they screw up the ending?!"
At the 4:06 mark (in the video), when I was watching the movie for the first time, I thought, "Oh, this movie is going to end JUST perfectly, with our anti-hero walking into the distance (no sunset, but you get the jist), roll credits."
For seven seconds I think this, and my joy is rapturous.
Then the camera cuts to a different angle.
And then the damned sidekick drives up.
Blahblahblah, pseudo-witty banter, and a ride is offered, and the filking anti-hero takes it! Didn’t anyone tell this guy that anti-heroes don’t take rides?!
Why am I torturing myself? When I own the dvd, the movie ends when I make it end! HA! Take that, crappy screenwriter/producer/director/Hollywood system that makes everything so plain that the majority of America won’t have to use ANY cogitation whatsoever!
I have the remote now! And I’m not afraid to use it!