pooh-24
Joined Jan 2001
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The rise and fall and the return to glory of an African American rhythm and blues singing group is presented in Robert Townsend's, The Five Heartbeats. Set between the years of 1965 and 1977, The Five Heartbeats is a biopic that tells the story of how five young black fellows catch a break and rise to fantastic fame and breathtaking stardom, only to be taken down by greed, jealousy, drugs, womanizing, and corruption from within.
Like most, I would love to like The Five Heartbeats. But it is a film made with totally simplicity. That is, the film glosses over how the Heartbeats made it so fast and how their music made them so special in the eyes of the public.
You see in the movie, the Heartbeats making the cover of Time, Newsweek, and Ebony magazine in their epic rise to stardom. Yet sad to say none of the music in the film ,despite having R&B music great Thom Bell's input, is anything special. The songs are not sung by the actors portraying the Heartbeats in the film and are poorly lip-synced by the same actors.
The movie shows the corrupt head of the record company the Heartbeats work for, "Big Red" (Hawthorne James), taken down and indicted and sentenced to prison for murdering the Heartbeats' manager, Jimmy Potter(Calvin Patterson) in a big front page headline in a newspaper. For a movie that many posters here have said portrays the reality of the music business perfectly, the fall of Big Red is a bit of a stretch. Red was supposed to be a Berry Gordy type of businessman. It would have been impossible to have pinned the murder of Potter on him and even harder to bring him down.
As for the part in the film where The Heartbeats see a new album of theirs have the picture of a white family at the beach instead of themselves on the cover, well that had to be one of the most awkward scenes in the film. Yes black R&B acts in the 1940's and the early part of the 1950's had faced a great deal of racism. But by the time the Heartbeats (Their rise started after 1965) became big why couldn't they be seen on an album cover together? Why would their own record company present this them way? What would putting an white family on an album cover of black R&B group have to do with crossover appeal? Townsend seems unable to present the problem the group supposedly had with racism properly. I mean if you make the cover of Time magazine that is crossover appeal isn't it?
When the film was made, Robert Townsend, was hot and he knew it. Hollywood Shuffle and Eddie Murphy's Raw made him a hot producer. He and Keenen Ivory Wayans wrote The Five Heartbeats. The Five Heartbeats, missed the mark by a wide margin. The film is inconsistent ,trite and a bit too long. In the long run the Heartbeats, their own stories as individuals, and their own music, couldn't and cannot match real life music groups. The story is supposed based on the real life R&B group ,the Dells, but Townsend couldn't translate their story in a competent manner.
Like most, I would love to like The Five Heartbeats. But it is a film made with totally simplicity. That is, the film glosses over how the Heartbeats made it so fast and how their music made them so special in the eyes of the public.
You see in the movie, the Heartbeats making the cover of Time, Newsweek, and Ebony magazine in their epic rise to stardom. Yet sad to say none of the music in the film ,despite having R&B music great Thom Bell's input, is anything special. The songs are not sung by the actors portraying the Heartbeats in the film and are poorly lip-synced by the same actors.
The movie shows the corrupt head of the record company the Heartbeats work for, "Big Red" (Hawthorne James), taken down and indicted and sentenced to prison for murdering the Heartbeats' manager, Jimmy Potter(Calvin Patterson) in a big front page headline in a newspaper. For a movie that many posters here have said portrays the reality of the music business perfectly, the fall of Big Red is a bit of a stretch. Red was supposed to be a Berry Gordy type of businessman. It would have been impossible to have pinned the murder of Potter on him and even harder to bring him down.
As for the part in the film where The Heartbeats see a new album of theirs have the picture of a white family at the beach instead of themselves on the cover, well that had to be one of the most awkward scenes in the film. Yes black R&B acts in the 1940's and the early part of the 1950's had faced a great deal of racism. But by the time the Heartbeats (Their rise started after 1965) became big why couldn't they be seen on an album cover together? Why would their own record company present this them way? What would putting an white family on an album cover of black R&B group have to do with crossover appeal? Townsend seems unable to present the problem the group supposedly had with racism properly. I mean if you make the cover of Time magazine that is crossover appeal isn't it?
When the film was made, Robert Townsend, was hot and he knew it. Hollywood Shuffle and Eddie Murphy's Raw made him a hot producer. He and Keenen Ivory Wayans wrote The Five Heartbeats. The Five Heartbeats, missed the mark by a wide margin. The film is inconsistent ,trite and a bit too long. In the long run the Heartbeats, their own stories as individuals, and their own music, couldn't and cannot match real life music groups. The story is supposed based on the real life R&B group ,the Dells, but Townsend couldn't translate their story in a competent manner.
The time:1965. The place:Phiuladelphia. The movie:The In Crowd. A fun and enjoyable timepiece about the time when Americans enjoyed and loved seeing and participating in dance shows in their various local cities. You see this when the movie ,cleverly, shows the beginnings of several dance TV shows from across the country and the hosts of these TV shows (Sam Riddle in Los Angeles, Wink Markindale in Memphis among others).
The movie centers on three stories. One having the movie's star, Donovan Leitch playing a character called Del. A bright young man with a bright future ahead of him but he wants to be a dancer on the local TV dance program, "Perry Parker's Dance Party". Del doesn't know it but he has nothing in common with the dancers on Perry Parker's show , except that he is a fine dancer himself which gets him a chance to be on the show.
The second part of the movie deals with Perry Parker himself, played by that great actor Joe Pantoliano. Parker .like most people in Philadelphia, feel betrayed that Dick Clark took American Bandstand away from Philaelphia and moved it to Los Angeles.He tries to tell his dancers that if Dick Clark fails the network may want to look for a replacement, like his own show for instance. Parker is like a lot of TV hosts of local shows of that era, hoping to be the next Ed Sullivan, the next Steve Allen, the next Dick Clark, the next Johnnny Carson. Hoping the networks will take him in a make him a big star on network television.
The third part deals with Del and his short love affair with Vicky (Jennifer Runyon). Vicky is pretty but is too lowbrow even for Del. This is one movie where the pretty girl fails to meet the expectations of the supposed geek in the film rather than the other way around. In the end Del tries to help Vicky leave Philadelphia and join her Fonzie like boyfriend Dugan (Scott Plank) as they head for Hollywood.
The In Crowd has great music using some good soul music in the film that is true to the era and not just the same old music you might have heard over and over again in other films about the early 1960's. The choreography is great and inspired and it makes for a good musical and that is what The In Crowd pretty much is. A musical. The living room dance duel between Del and Dugan is proof of that.
The movie told a true tale of how things were changing in America without getting highhanded and clumsy in how they did it. Perry Parker is a prime example of this. An associate producer tells him the show is getting low ratings and that the type of music he has on his show won't work. He should try Mitch Miller instead says the producer. The station manager(Blake Soper) has no use for Parker or his dance show and wants something else. When he brings along a British Invasion like group ,longhair and all to the TV studio and wants Paker to put them on the show, Parker says no saying that,thanks to the long hair, he can't tell if they are boys or girls. He was right, the group was all wrong for his dance show but Perry Parker's days on TV are numbered anyway.
Pantoliano is his usual great self here. As with all of his roles he makes Perry Parker his own. The film is a nice timepiece just before everything came apart in the US.The music, the dance numbers, and some decent acting make this a decent movie if you really wanted to know what America was like back in 1965.
It is the type of tale that Dick Clark tried to tell himself through the American Dreams TV series but failed miserably because the show was all over the map. It wasn't overwrought and overrated like the NBC mini series about the sixties called The 60's. The In Crowd is a good film that wasn't all that appreciated when in came out in theaters in 1988. Hopefully people shall take a better liking to it when they see it again in the future.
The movie centers on three stories. One having the movie's star, Donovan Leitch playing a character called Del. A bright young man with a bright future ahead of him but he wants to be a dancer on the local TV dance program, "Perry Parker's Dance Party". Del doesn't know it but he has nothing in common with the dancers on Perry Parker's show , except that he is a fine dancer himself which gets him a chance to be on the show.
The second part of the movie deals with Perry Parker himself, played by that great actor Joe Pantoliano. Parker .like most people in Philadelphia, feel betrayed that Dick Clark took American Bandstand away from Philaelphia and moved it to Los Angeles.He tries to tell his dancers that if Dick Clark fails the network may want to look for a replacement, like his own show for instance. Parker is like a lot of TV hosts of local shows of that era, hoping to be the next Ed Sullivan, the next Steve Allen, the next Dick Clark, the next Johnnny Carson. Hoping the networks will take him in a make him a big star on network television.
The third part deals with Del and his short love affair with Vicky (Jennifer Runyon). Vicky is pretty but is too lowbrow even for Del. This is one movie where the pretty girl fails to meet the expectations of the supposed geek in the film rather than the other way around. In the end Del tries to help Vicky leave Philadelphia and join her Fonzie like boyfriend Dugan (Scott Plank) as they head for Hollywood.
The In Crowd has great music using some good soul music in the film that is true to the era and not just the same old music you might have heard over and over again in other films about the early 1960's. The choreography is great and inspired and it makes for a good musical and that is what The In Crowd pretty much is. A musical. The living room dance duel between Del and Dugan is proof of that.
The movie told a true tale of how things were changing in America without getting highhanded and clumsy in how they did it. Perry Parker is a prime example of this. An associate producer tells him the show is getting low ratings and that the type of music he has on his show won't work. He should try Mitch Miller instead says the producer. The station manager(Blake Soper) has no use for Parker or his dance show and wants something else. When he brings along a British Invasion like group ,longhair and all to the TV studio and wants Paker to put them on the show, Parker says no saying that,thanks to the long hair, he can't tell if they are boys or girls. He was right, the group was all wrong for his dance show but Perry Parker's days on TV are numbered anyway.
Pantoliano is his usual great self here. As with all of his roles he makes Perry Parker his own. The film is a nice timepiece just before everything came apart in the US.The music, the dance numbers, and some decent acting make this a decent movie if you really wanted to know what America was like back in 1965.
It is the type of tale that Dick Clark tried to tell himself through the American Dreams TV series but failed miserably because the show was all over the map. It wasn't overwrought and overrated like the NBC mini series about the sixties called The 60's. The In Crowd is a good film that wasn't all that appreciated when in came out in theaters in 1988. Hopefully people shall take a better liking to it when they see it again in the future.
After making movies for their other comic book titles like Spiderman, The X-Men, the Hulk, Daredevil, among others, Marvel Comics goes about and makes a film about the characters that started it all for the Marvel Universe, The Fantastic Four. Yes Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Johnny Storm , and Ben Grimm are brought to life in a feature film that will give them the respect and studio money that the marvel title that was billed "The World's Greatest Comic Book Magazine" deserves. Well it was planned that way anyway.
But something happened along the way that is quite apparent that the new Fantastic Four film didn't quite meet expectations. The story is about four people, Reed,Sue,Johnny and Ben going in a private rocket ship ,funded by Reed's own money, to reach the moon. The ship doesn't reach its' destination and goes through a massive storm of cosmic rays that transform Reed, Sue,Johnny, and Ben into people with fantastic powers. This does not happen in the film however:
The space flight is done for different reasons. The flight is funded by the very successful Victor Von Doom , who in the picture, is the finance of Sue. Von Doom goes with the four on the fateful flight and receives a dose of cosmic rays as well. A tremendous change from the origin of the greatest villain in the Marvel Universe that one sees in the comics.
The four find out about their powers in a very different fashion than they did in the comics. Quite naturally, their portrayals don't even come close to bringing out the Fantastic Four and fleshing them out as deep well rounded characters.
Ioan Gruffred looks lost as Mister Fantastic. Reed in the comics was a highly successful confident man(Tim Robbins would have been great as Reed). Gruffred ,no matter how one looks at it, isn't Reed Richards.His chemistry with everyone in the movie is readily not apparent.
I know many studio executives may have thought that making Jessica Alba as Sue Storm would bring in a lot of publicity for the film and it may have. But to say a studio can't find a blond white woman to play Sue (Say Naomi Watts) is incredible. I am not a hater or anything but Sue in the comics wasn't Hispanic like Alba is. Alba and her acting skills left a lot to be desired too. Having Jessica Alba playing a scientist is a bit of a stretch that not even Reed Richards with his powers could reach.
Johnny Storm in the comics was a teenager so it is hard to believe Chris Evans was to play Sue's younger brother. Huh? Evans and Alba don't even look like brother and sister(The danger of the stunt casting just mentioned above.) and Evans looks older than Alba. He does do a decent job playing a hard edged Johnny Storm. He seems to be the only member of the four who enjoys his new found powers.
That can't be said for Ben, who now has become a large body of orange rock thanks to the accident. Michael Chilkis does a fine job playing the unfortunate Thing. But he like Alba seem to have no great chemistry with Gruffred. Alba and Gruffred have absolutely no chemistry with each other at all. Gruffred is old enough to be Alba's older brother but not really suited to be her love interest.
Why they had to make the blind Alicia Masters into a black woman (Kerry Washington) for the movie is not easily understandable. Her comment about not being accepted by society when she meets Ben in the bar late in the film is smacks of political correctness not real human frustration.
Julian McMahon makes for a serviceable Doctor Doom. But changing his story, changing how he met Reed and how he became Dr. Doom hurt the film the most. The Reed/Doom rivalry of great masterminds, one for good one for evil, is totally lost in the shuffle. As with everything else Gruffred seems to have no chemistry in his dealings with McMahon. The Richards/Von Doom rivalry is ruined even more.
There is not enough action in Fantastic Four to make it an exciting movie. At the very best it is just serviceable. The final showdown between the Fantastic Four and Dr. Doom is one quick let down. The showdown is over and done with before you know it.
Director Tim Story(Barbershop) seems as if he didn't really put his best foot forward into this movie.The acting, at times, is stilted and awkward. Marvel Comics could have found a better producer for this film than Story.
Whereas Marvel hit two home runs with Spiderman and the X-Men, with the Fantastic Four, Marvel gets a single but gets thrown out trying to stretch it into a double. As with the creators of The Adventures Of Rocky And Bullwinkle not having Jay Ward around to help that movie out,the creators of this Fantastic Four movie didn't have the mentoring of its' real creator, the late Jack Kirby. Stan Lee may have had his little cameo in the film. But the spirit, the flair, and the imagination of Jack Kirby was truly missing with this film. It only goes to show how much studio executives and their focus groups do to ruin feature films through their lack of imagination, their lack of experience in film making, and their own greed.
The Fantastic Four is one of those types of films. We all thought that with this film, we could forget the small budget Roger Corman FF film of 1994. But it seems like we shall have to wait somewhere in the future for giving The Fantstic Four the type of film they and their fans and movie fans everywhere really deserve.
But something happened along the way that is quite apparent that the new Fantastic Four film didn't quite meet expectations. The story is about four people, Reed,Sue,Johnny and Ben going in a private rocket ship ,funded by Reed's own money, to reach the moon. The ship doesn't reach its' destination and goes through a massive storm of cosmic rays that transform Reed, Sue,Johnny, and Ben into people with fantastic powers. This does not happen in the film however:
The space flight is done for different reasons. The flight is funded by the very successful Victor Von Doom , who in the picture, is the finance of Sue. Von Doom goes with the four on the fateful flight and receives a dose of cosmic rays as well. A tremendous change from the origin of the greatest villain in the Marvel Universe that one sees in the comics.
The four find out about their powers in a very different fashion than they did in the comics. Quite naturally, their portrayals don't even come close to bringing out the Fantastic Four and fleshing them out as deep well rounded characters.
Ioan Gruffred looks lost as Mister Fantastic. Reed in the comics was a highly successful confident man(Tim Robbins would have been great as Reed). Gruffred ,no matter how one looks at it, isn't Reed Richards.His chemistry with everyone in the movie is readily not apparent.
I know many studio executives may have thought that making Jessica Alba as Sue Storm would bring in a lot of publicity for the film and it may have. But to say a studio can't find a blond white woman to play Sue (Say Naomi Watts) is incredible. I am not a hater or anything but Sue in the comics wasn't Hispanic like Alba is. Alba and her acting skills left a lot to be desired too. Having Jessica Alba playing a scientist is a bit of a stretch that not even Reed Richards with his powers could reach.
Johnny Storm in the comics was a teenager so it is hard to believe Chris Evans was to play Sue's younger brother. Huh? Evans and Alba don't even look like brother and sister(The danger of the stunt casting just mentioned above.) and Evans looks older than Alba. He does do a decent job playing a hard edged Johnny Storm. He seems to be the only member of the four who enjoys his new found powers.
That can't be said for Ben, who now has become a large body of orange rock thanks to the accident. Michael Chilkis does a fine job playing the unfortunate Thing. But he like Alba seem to have no great chemistry with Gruffred. Alba and Gruffred have absolutely no chemistry with each other at all. Gruffred is old enough to be Alba's older brother but not really suited to be her love interest.
Why they had to make the blind Alicia Masters into a black woman (Kerry Washington) for the movie is not easily understandable. Her comment about not being accepted by society when she meets Ben in the bar late in the film is smacks of political correctness not real human frustration.
Julian McMahon makes for a serviceable Doctor Doom. But changing his story, changing how he met Reed and how he became Dr. Doom hurt the film the most. The Reed/Doom rivalry of great masterminds, one for good one for evil, is totally lost in the shuffle. As with everything else Gruffred seems to have no chemistry in his dealings with McMahon. The Richards/Von Doom rivalry is ruined even more.
There is not enough action in Fantastic Four to make it an exciting movie. At the very best it is just serviceable. The final showdown between the Fantastic Four and Dr. Doom is one quick let down. The showdown is over and done with before you know it.
Director Tim Story(Barbershop) seems as if he didn't really put his best foot forward into this movie.The acting, at times, is stilted and awkward. Marvel Comics could have found a better producer for this film than Story.
Whereas Marvel hit two home runs with Spiderman and the X-Men, with the Fantastic Four, Marvel gets a single but gets thrown out trying to stretch it into a double. As with the creators of The Adventures Of Rocky And Bullwinkle not having Jay Ward around to help that movie out,the creators of this Fantastic Four movie didn't have the mentoring of its' real creator, the late Jack Kirby. Stan Lee may have had his little cameo in the film. But the spirit, the flair, and the imagination of Jack Kirby was truly missing with this film. It only goes to show how much studio executives and their focus groups do to ruin feature films through their lack of imagination, their lack of experience in film making, and their own greed.
The Fantastic Four is one of those types of films. We all thought that with this film, we could forget the small budget Roger Corman FF film of 1994. But it seems like we shall have to wait somewhere in the future for giving The Fantstic Four the type of film they and their fans and movie fans everywhere really deserve.