A Mission from BLOG - Part I
Most of you who follow me here on LiveJournal (or Facebook or Twitter, for that matter) also follow fellow Trek scribe Dayton "daytonward" Ward, and therefore are aware of his semi-regular "Wayback Reviews" of the original Star Trek series. Inspired by Wil Wheaton's online retro reviews of The Next Generation, along with a dash of Mystery Science Theater 3000, Dayton's been doing these since the beginning of the year, and seemingly having fun doing it.
A couple of weeks ago, another of Dayton's followers asked if he would do a similar Wayback Review of Back to the Future, celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. Dayton demurred, but this did lead to a post listing a bunch of genre films marking anniversaries in 2010: Commando turns 25, The Empire Strikes Back turns 30, Jaws turns 35. Right around this same time, an unrelated news story in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano declared The Blues Brothers, also turning 30 this year, to be "a Catholic classic" and recommended viewing for Catholics everywhere.
Well, reading that, I decided there was a mission I needed to undertake. So, thanks to my good friends at NetFlix, and their no-return-date policy, I am now proud to present my Wayback Retro Catholic Classic Review of Universal Studios 1980 release, The Blues Brothers:
The film opens on a post-apocalyptic landscape, dotted with hellish plumes of fire and nightmarish... oh, wait, no, it's actually South Chicago, back when they still had their steel industry -- i.e., "the good old days." Sorry for the confusion.
From there we cut to Swamp Castle, after it has sunk into the swamp, was rebuilt, burned down and fell into the swamp, rebuilt again and converted to Joliet Prison. Two guards, who had been told not to let their prisoner leave until the king came to get him, are escorting the prisoner out of the cell block to be released. They bring him to Property, where Frank Oz -- a.k.a. the voice of Fozzie Bear -- lists the prisoner's possessions: "One unused prophylactic... and one soiled! Wokka-wokka-wokka!" After Statler and Waldorf shout at him to get on with it, Fozzie returns the rest of the parolee's possessions: sunglasses, black suit jacket, black pants, black hat clothing. After signing for them with an "X" (psst, dude? Why tattoo your name on your knuckles if not for an situation just like this?), the prison gates slide open, and Jake is greeted on the outside by brother Elwood, dressed in identical black suit, black hat, and dark sunglasses. (It goes unrevealed whether he's also wearing a prophylactic.) They hug briefly, and then climb into Elwood's car and drive away.
Now, you would think Jake would be happy to finally be a free man after three years, and to be reunited with the only flesh-and-blood relative he has. You would think that... but noooooooo!! Jake gets himself all excited over the fact his brother sold their old Caddy, and instead bought an old retired cop car, of all things. Elwood, after briefly considering sending his brother out the window after the cigarette lighter, instead floors the accelerator, races up the lifting half of the East 95th Street Bridge, and jumps the Calumet River as Sherriff Roscoe and Boss Hogg watch, sputtering and cursing. The car, Elwood explains, has a cop engine, cop suspension, cop tires, cop shocks, cop cup holders,... Finally Jake relents, allowing Elwood's contention that it's the rare police car that ever crashes or flips or has anything bad happen to it.
They drive down a dirty shitty alleyway, and park in front of a dirty shitty old building. Elwood reminds Jake that he had promised to visit the Penguin after he got out of jail, and reluctantly he goes with his brother into the old orphanage-slash-abandoned umbrella warehouse. They walk past the most disturbing image of Jesus ever committed to film to that date (eventually surpassed by Dogma's "Buddy Christ") and into the Penguin's office. There they're told that the orphanage has been reassessed by the county, and they need $5000 to pay property taxes, based on a 200% tax rate on the building's actual value. The diocese has already decided that they'd rather toss a bunch of orphans and nuns out into the street than part with five grand (did I mention this was recently declared a Catholic classic?), so Jake offers to pay with the money Andy Dufresne left for him under a rock in Mexico. The Penguin goes Batshit, pulling out a ruler and going all Samurai Nun on Jake and Elwood both. She tells them they're both shit on soles of her shoes, and that they aren't welcome back until they've redeemed themselves.
Way to ask for charity, Sister.
After getting tossed on their asses, the boys hook up with Curtis, whose job at the orphanage is to teach the kids how to dress like Hasidic diamond merchants. He repeats the same exact exposition and advice the Penguin just did, but he does so over a bottle of Jack Daniel's, earning him the boys' respect, and a spotlight scene in the third act. He also suggests they go to the Triple Rock Church to hear Reverend James preach.
I wonder if the diocese would be more willing to keep this place open if the staff wasn't sending its former residents to Protestant churches to find spiritual guidance? Just a thought...
So Jake and Elwood go to hear the Hardest Working Man of the Cloth do his act sermon, and before you can say, "Why is there a trampoline in the sacristy?" the Spirit of the Lord has hit John Belushi's stunt double, moving him to backflip up and down the main aisle.
"The band!" Jake yells as he returns to his brother's side.
"The band!" Elwood shouts back.
Yes, it is now clear that the Lord God Himself wants these two to get their old band back together to save the orphanage. Never mind that, in the next scene, we learn these two have been talking regularly since Jake's incarceration about reuniting the band. Now they're doing for God what they would've done for themselves anyhow. And when in the history of man has anything like that ever gone badly?
(Rhetorical question, kids. No calls, please.)
Heading home, they're caught running a light, and are pulled over by Officer X. He immediately recognizes the two as Men in Black, and takes their phony Shadow Government IDs back to the squad car to alert the Cigarette Smoking Man. Meanwhile, the brothers sweat it out waiting. "I bet he has SCMODS," Elwood says.
Jake answers, "Good thing I still have an unused prophylactic, then."
Elwood shifts into gear and takes off, Officer X in hot pursuit. At this point, Universal executives are calling John Landis, worried that there hasn't been enough product placement in the film, so the Bluesmobile turns into a mall parking lot. What follows is the most egregious depiction of wanton destruction visited upon any shopping center in the world (until Mary-Kate & Ashley's Mall Party), paid for by plugs for JCPenney, Pier 1, Gingiss Formal Wear, and Oldsmobile, and others. Toys R Us later regrets their participation when parody radio jingles began cropping up, singing, "I don't want to grow up / I want to be hit by a speeding car driving through the stuffed animal aisle."
After dodging the cops (both real and mall varieties), the boys return to Elwood's hotel, a piece of real estate that goes a long way toward explaining why Cook County thinks the orphanage is valuable piece of real estate. Just yards away, Princess Leia is waiting in her car with a bazooka, presumably hunting womp rats. Both brothers are unaware of her, and so they both pause right in front of the doors, just long enough to put a stationary Jake right in the center of Leia's crosshairs. Leia fires... and hits the door behind Jake. The boys hit the pavement, but Leia keeps firing and firing, blowing the fucking shit out of the hotel foyer before speeding off. The boys react as most Chicagoans do after being shot at: they behave as nothing unusual happened, go up to their room, and go to sleep.
The next morning, parole officer Johnny LaRue leads Officer X to the Blues' abode, neither of them noticing the recent bombing of the foyer. The law enforcement officers also don't notice Princess Leia across the street, playing with the remote controller of her R/C TIE Fighter. This even though there are no flying models in the area, and even more suspiciously, Leia has taped the label "DETONATE" on one of the switches.
As it turns out, she really, really hated that fucking building, man.
After the brothers climb out from under a pile of bricks that was their building, and shoo away the tweeting birds circling their heads, they head off to start tracking leads on the band. That night, they find themselves driving up to a towering, flashing, impressively iconic Holiday Inn sign... located right next to a generic cinderblock shoebox of a hotel. They walk in on the middle of one of Bill Murray's more pathetic "Nick the Lounge Singer" sketches -- actually, it's "Murph and the MagicTones," who make the Muzak version of Billy Joel they play during their break sound like Mozart. After listening for a moment, Elwood begins to wonder if they really want these former band members back. Anyone's replaceable... heck, worse come to worst, he could maybe get John Goodman to join the band... maybe add a cute kid to the act as well...
Elwood quickly shoves these dark, disturbing thoughts into the deepest crevasses of his mind, and he and Jake sit down with the guys to discuss getting back together. They're all game, but all agree they would need Mr. Fabulous and Matt Murphy back as well. And there's no chance of getting them back -- Mr. Fabulous has a swag job in a fancy French restaurant, and Matt is happily married and settled down. Jake and Elwood remain unfazed; they're on a mission from God, and clearly, God wants them to get Mr. F. fired and to break up Matt's marriage.
So they show up at Chez Paul, an act which by itself makes Mr. Fabulous react like a politician getting a visit from Amber from Discrete Escorts during dinner with the wife. As he sputters, the boys waltz in and seat themselves in the middle of the fancy-schmancy restaurant. They whistle the waiter over, and Jake orders four shrimp cocktails, a bottle of champagne, several servings of Jell-O, and a bowl of mashed potatoes so he can do some impressions later on. The waiter says he also does an impression of a creepy man-child kid show host in a porno theater, but by then Jake has honed in on the most stereotypical prig in the joint, and starts filling his cheeks with potatoes. The old man, furious that he accepted this role after Harvey Korman and Ted Knight turned it down, calls Mr. F. over to complain that that boy at the next table is a P-I-G-pig! Mr. F. pleads with the brothers to leave, and even offers to write a $5000 check to their favorite charity if they do. The boys scoff at this idea, and give Mr. F. no choice but to quit his job.
Which, given that Jake and Elwood just proved that he wasn't actually competent at the job, may not have been such a bad thing after all.
On the way to now screw over Matt Murphy, the brothers happen upon a Nazi Rally. "Illinois Nazis. I hate these guys," Jake says, as Elwood swerves off the road and plows straight through the gathering, forcing most of the Nazis to jump off the bridge they're on. Jake sticks his head out the window, points down into the water, and shouts to the shocked onlookers, "No tickets!" As they speed away, the Head Nazi vows to kill those two deader than Werner Klemperer's career.
Jake and Elwood eventually find Matt Murphy's soul food restaurant, where the boys order toast, four whole fried chickens, several servings of Jell-O, and a bowl of mash....
Ah, shit, I already did that Animal House riff, didn't I? Um.... okay, Elwood asks for a four-whole-chicken sandwich on white toast, hold the chickens... hold them between Jake's knees!!
Five Easy Pieces? Jack Nicholson? Damn kids today. No appreciation for the classics.
Anyhow, Matt realizes it's the Blues Brothers, and he leaps at the chance to take off with them. His wife tells him no way, you my man and you do what I say. Matt tells her she's acting like a diva, and to go eat a fucking Snickers bar. Mister and Missus start fighting through song, and the cook/saxophonist takes advantage of the moment to live his long-repressed dream: to take off his hairnet in the kitchen, and then to jump up on the lunch counter with his horn, so the whole world can see and admire his long, beautiful, thick locks while he plays.
Oh, well. Best laid plans, and all that, Lou.
With the band finally reunited, we cut away to check up on Princess Leia, and find her reading an operations manual for a flamethrower. Gee, I wonder if that will prove to have any significance later on?
With the band finally reunited, we pay a visit Ray's Music Exchange to pick up the $8000 worth of equipment they'll need to earn $5000. The proprietor tries to sell them a used electric piano, claiming it used to be owned by a little old blind man who only ever played it on Sundays. Jake asks how much it is, and Ray answers by saying, bend over, let me see you shake your tail feathers. But when the guys balk at spending $2000, Ray then plays a song. When the piano proves capable of shutting down the entire block and the L, the brother's agree to take the piano. Ray asks how they'll be paying... and the bending over recommences.
That night, Jake decides to call their old booking agent. Rather than use one of the phones inside HoJo's, he and Elwood remain out in the open, and wedge themselves into a phone booth right next to a giant propane tank, marked "WARNING: DO NOT SHOOT WITH A FLAMETHROWER, OR IF YOU MUST, BE SURE NOBODY IS STANDING IN A PHONE BOOTH FIVE FEET AWAY!!" Huh... don't I remember something about flamethrowers from two scenes ago?
Oh, right... here comes Princess Leia, who shoots her flamethrower at the tank, generating the 1.21 gigawatts needed to launch the telephone booth through the time barrier. She quickly drives off, and thus is unaware that when the booth lands again, Jake and Elwood are both fine -- though Rufus and So-Crates are tragically crushed to death.
Speaking of paying off gags set up half an hour earlier... the Illinois Nazis find Elwood's driver's license, and track him to his address at 1060 Addison Avenue... and just like both Elwood and Johnny LaRue said, it's Wrigley Field! Ha! The head Nazi shakes his fist, shouts, "Hooooo-gan!!" and vows to have his revenge in Act III.
And unlike John Landis, I'm going to give you all a break from this overlong post, and put the rest of the review up in a few days.
Well, what did you think, sirs?
A couple of weeks ago, another of Dayton's followers asked if he would do a similar Wayback Review of Back to the Future, celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. Dayton demurred, but this did lead to a post listing a bunch of genre films marking anniversaries in 2010: Commando turns 25, The Empire Strikes Back turns 30, Jaws turns 35. Right around this same time, an unrelated news story in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano declared The Blues Brothers, also turning 30 this year, to be "a Catholic classic" and recommended viewing for Catholics everywhere.
Well, reading that, I decided there was a mission I needed to undertake. So, thanks to my good friends at NetFlix, and their no-return-date policy, I am now proud to present my Wayback Retro Catholic Classic Review of Universal Studios 1980 release, The Blues Brothers:
The film opens on a post-apocalyptic landscape, dotted with hellish plumes of fire and nightmarish... oh, wait, no, it's actually South Chicago, back when they still had their steel industry -- i.e., "the good old days." Sorry for the confusion.
From there we cut to Swamp Castle, after it has sunk into the swamp, was rebuilt, burned down and fell into the swamp, rebuilt again and converted to Joliet Prison. Two guards, who had been told not to let their prisoner leave until the king came to get him, are escorting the prisoner out of the cell block to be released. They bring him to Property, where Frank Oz -- a.k.a. the voice of Fozzie Bear -- lists the prisoner's possessions: "One unused prophylactic... and one soiled! Wokka-wokka-wokka!" After Statler and Waldorf shout at him to get on with it, Fozzie returns the rest of the parolee's possessions: sunglasses, black suit jacket, black pants, black hat clothing. After signing for them with an "X" (psst, dude? Why tattoo your name on your knuckles if not for an situation just like this?), the prison gates slide open, and Jake is greeted on the outside by brother Elwood, dressed in identical black suit, black hat, and dark sunglasses. (It goes unrevealed whether he's also wearing a prophylactic.) They hug briefly, and then climb into Elwood's car and drive away.
Now, you would think Jake would be happy to finally be a free man after three years, and to be reunited with the only flesh-and-blood relative he has. You would think that... but noooooooo!! Jake gets himself all excited over the fact his brother sold their old Caddy, and instead bought an old retired cop car, of all things. Elwood, after briefly considering sending his brother out the window after the cigarette lighter, instead floors the accelerator, races up the lifting half of the East 95th Street Bridge, and jumps the Calumet River as Sherriff Roscoe and Boss Hogg watch, sputtering and cursing. The car, Elwood explains, has a cop engine, cop suspension, cop tires, cop shocks, cop cup holders,... Finally Jake relents, allowing Elwood's contention that it's the rare police car that ever crashes or flips or has anything bad happen to it.
They drive down a dirty shitty alleyway, and park in front of a dirty shitty old building. Elwood reminds Jake that he had promised to visit the Penguin after he got out of jail, and reluctantly he goes with his brother into the old orphanage-slash-abandoned umbrella warehouse. They walk past the most disturbing image of Jesus ever committed to film to that date (eventually surpassed by Dogma's "Buddy Christ") and into the Penguin's office. There they're told that the orphanage has been reassessed by the county, and they need $5000 to pay property taxes, based on a 200% tax rate on the building's actual value. The diocese has already decided that they'd rather toss a bunch of orphans and nuns out into the street than part with five grand (did I mention this was recently declared a Catholic classic?), so Jake offers to pay with the money Andy Dufresne left for him under a rock in Mexico. The Penguin goes Batshit, pulling out a ruler and going all Samurai Nun on Jake and Elwood both. She tells them they're both shit on soles of her shoes, and that they aren't welcome back until they've redeemed themselves.
Way to ask for charity, Sister.
After getting tossed on their asses, the boys hook up with Curtis, whose job at the orphanage is to teach the kids how to dress like Hasidic diamond merchants. He repeats the same exact exposition and advice the Penguin just did, but he does so over a bottle of Jack Daniel's, earning him the boys' respect, and a spotlight scene in the third act. He also suggests they go to the Triple Rock Church to hear Reverend James preach.
I wonder if the diocese would be more willing to keep this place open if the staff wasn't sending its former residents to Protestant churches to find spiritual guidance? Just a thought...
So Jake and Elwood go to hear the Hardest Working Man of the Cloth do his act sermon, and before you can say, "Why is there a trampoline in the sacristy?" the Spirit of the Lord has hit John Belushi's stunt double, moving him to backflip up and down the main aisle.
"The band!" Jake yells as he returns to his brother's side.
"The band!" Elwood shouts back.
Yes, it is now clear that the Lord God Himself wants these two to get their old band back together to save the orphanage. Never mind that, in the next scene, we learn these two have been talking regularly since Jake's incarceration about reuniting the band. Now they're doing for God what they would've done for themselves anyhow. And when in the history of man has anything like that ever gone badly?
(Rhetorical question, kids. No calls, please.)
Heading home, they're caught running a light, and are pulled over by Officer X. He immediately recognizes the two as Men in Black, and takes their phony Shadow Government IDs back to the squad car to alert the Cigarette Smoking Man. Meanwhile, the brothers sweat it out waiting. "I bet he has SCMODS," Elwood says.
Jake answers, "Good thing I still have an unused prophylactic, then."
Elwood shifts into gear and takes off, Officer X in hot pursuit. At this point, Universal executives are calling John Landis, worried that there hasn't been enough product placement in the film, so the Bluesmobile turns into a mall parking lot. What follows is the most egregious depiction of wanton destruction visited upon any shopping center in the world (until Mary-Kate & Ashley's Mall Party), paid for by plugs for JCPenney, Pier 1, Gingiss Formal Wear, and Oldsmobile, and others. Toys R Us later regrets their participation when parody radio jingles began cropping up, singing, "I don't want to grow up / I want to be hit by a speeding car driving through the stuffed animal aisle."
After dodging the cops (both real and mall varieties), the boys return to Elwood's hotel, a piece of real estate that goes a long way toward explaining why Cook County thinks the orphanage is valuable piece of real estate. Just yards away, Princess Leia is waiting in her car with a bazooka, presumably hunting womp rats. Both brothers are unaware of her, and so they both pause right in front of the doors, just long enough to put a stationary Jake right in the center of Leia's crosshairs. Leia fires... and hits the door behind Jake. The boys hit the pavement, but Leia keeps firing and firing, blowing the fucking shit out of the hotel foyer before speeding off. The boys react as most Chicagoans do after being shot at: they behave as nothing unusual happened, go up to their room, and go to sleep.
The next morning, parole officer Johnny LaRue leads Officer X to the Blues' abode, neither of them noticing the recent bombing of the foyer. The law enforcement officers also don't notice Princess Leia across the street, playing with the remote controller of her R/C TIE Fighter. This even though there are no flying models in the area, and even more suspiciously, Leia has taped the label "DETONATE" on one of the switches.
As it turns out, she really, really hated that fucking building, man.
After the brothers climb out from under a pile of bricks that was their building, and shoo away the tweeting birds circling their heads, they head off to start tracking leads on the band. That night, they find themselves driving up to a towering, flashing, impressively iconic Holiday Inn sign... located right next to a generic cinderblock shoebox of a hotel. They walk in on the middle of one of Bill Murray's more pathetic "Nick the Lounge Singer" sketches -- actually, it's "Murph and the MagicTones," who make the Muzak version of Billy Joel they play during their break sound like Mozart. After listening for a moment, Elwood begins to wonder if they really want these former band members back. Anyone's replaceable... heck, worse come to worst, he could maybe get John Goodman to join the band... maybe add a cute kid to the act as well...
Elwood quickly shoves these dark, disturbing thoughts into the deepest crevasses of his mind, and he and Jake sit down with the guys to discuss getting back together. They're all game, but all agree they would need Mr. Fabulous and Matt Murphy back as well. And there's no chance of getting them back -- Mr. Fabulous has a swag job in a fancy French restaurant, and Matt is happily married and settled down. Jake and Elwood remain unfazed; they're on a mission from God, and clearly, God wants them to get Mr. F. fired and to break up Matt's marriage.
So they show up at Chez Paul, an act which by itself makes Mr. Fabulous react like a politician getting a visit from Amber from Discrete Escorts during dinner with the wife. As he sputters, the boys waltz in and seat themselves in the middle of the fancy-schmancy restaurant. They whistle the waiter over, and Jake orders four shrimp cocktails, a bottle of champagne, several servings of Jell-O, and a bowl of mashed potatoes so he can do some impressions later on. The waiter says he also does an impression of a creepy man-child kid show host in a porno theater, but by then Jake has honed in on the most stereotypical prig in the joint, and starts filling his cheeks with potatoes. The old man, furious that he accepted this role after Harvey Korman and Ted Knight turned it down, calls Mr. F. over to complain that that boy at the next table is a P-I-G-pig! Mr. F. pleads with the brothers to leave, and even offers to write a $5000 check to their favorite charity if they do. The boys scoff at this idea, and give Mr. F. no choice but to quit his job.
Which, given that Jake and Elwood just proved that he wasn't actually competent at the job, may not have been such a bad thing after all.
On the way to now screw over Matt Murphy, the brothers happen upon a Nazi Rally. "Illinois Nazis. I hate these guys," Jake says, as Elwood swerves off the road and plows straight through the gathering, forcing most of the Nazis to jump off the bridge they're on. Jake sticks his head out the window, points down into the water, and shouts to the shocked onlookers, "No tickets!" As they speed away, the Head Nazi vows to kill those two deader than Werner Klemperer's career.
Jake and Elwood eventually find Matt Murphy's soul food restaurant, where the boys order toast, four whole fried chickens, several servings of Jell-O, and a bowl of mash....
Ah, shit, I already did that Animal House riff, didn't I? Um.... okay, Elwood asks for a four-whole-chicken sandwich on white toast, hold the chickens... hold them between Jake's knees!!
Five Easy Pieces? Jack Nicholson? Damn kids today. No appreciation for the classics.
Anyhow, Matt realizes it's the Blues Brothers, and he leaps at the chance to take off with them. His wife tells him no way, you my man and you do what I say. Matt tells her she's acting like a diva, and to go eat a fucking Snickers bar. Mister and Missus start fighting through song, and the cook/saxophonist takes advantage of the moment to live his long-repressed dream: to take off his hairnet in the kitchen, and then to jump up on the lunch counter with his horn, so the whole world can see and admire his long, beautiful, thick locks while he plays.
Oh, well. Best laid plans, and all that, Lou.
With the band finally reunited, we cut away to check up on Princess Leia, and find her reading an operations manual for a flamethrower. Gee, I wonder if that will prove to have any significance later on?
With the band finally reunited, we pay a visit Ray's Music Exchange to pick up the $8000 worth of equipment they'll need to earn $5000. The proprietor tries to sell them a used electric piano, claiming it used to be owned by a little old blind man who only ever played it on Sundays. Jake asks how much it is, and Ray answers by saying, bend over, let me see you shake your tail feathers. But when the guys balk at spending $2000, Ray then plays a song. When the piano proves capable of shutting down the entire block and the L, the brother's agree to take the piano. Ray asks how they'll be paying... and the bending over recommences.
That night, Jake decides to call their old booking agent. Rather than use one of the phones inside HoJo's, he and Elwood remain out in the open, and wedge themselves into a phone booth right next to a giant propane tank, marked "WARNING: DO NOT SHOOT WITH A FLAMETHROWER, OR IF YOU MUST, BE SURE NOBODY IS STANDING IN A PHONE BOOTH FIVE FEET AWAY!!" Huh... don't I remember something about flamethrowers from two scenes ago?
Oh, right... here comes Princess Leia, who shoots her flamethrower at the tank, generating the 1.21 gigawatts needed to launch the telephone booth through the time barrier. She quickly drives off, and thus is unaware that when the booth lands again, Jake and Elwood are both fine -- though Rufus and So-Crates are tragically crushed to death.
Speaking of paying off gags set up half an hour earlier... the Illinois Nazis find Elwood's driver's license, and track him to his address at 1060 Addison Avenue... and just like both Elwood and Johnny LaRue said, it's Wrigley Field! Ha! The head Nazi shakes his fist, shouts, "Hooooo-gan!!" and vows to have his revenge in Act III.
And unlike John Landis, I'm going to give you all a break from this overlong post, and put the rest of the review up in a few days.
Well, what did you think, sirs?