Tag: Cameron Crowe

Reel 50: Inspired TV

Yow! We’ve made it to the 50-episode mark! Thanks so much for your support; we couldn’t have done it without you.

Today we’re looking at a pair of films that bear a very strong resemblance to a pair of television shows, but (on paper, at least) there’s no official connection between the two productions.

We start with 1953’s Stalag 17, directed and co-written by Billy Wilder. This film stars William Holden in an Oscar-winning performance. The film also stars Don Taylor, Robert Strauss, Harvey Lembeck, Peter Graves, Neville Brand, Richard Erdman, Michael Moore, Sig Ruman, and Otto Preminger. It’s worth noting that Strauss and Lembeck appeared in the original Broadway production.

Stalag 17 almost certainly inspired the 1965-71 CBS comedy Hogan’s Heroes, which was also set in a German POW camp and had several other elements in common. (Claude says during the episode that Hogan’s Heroes also took place in Stalag 17, but his memory failed him; Hogan’s Heroes was set in Stalag 13.)

From there  we jump forward, to 1992. Cameron Crowe’s Singles,  starring Bridget Fonda, Campbell Scott, Kyra Sedgwick, and Matt Dillon, among others.

Despite the film being about a half-dozen young adults making their way in the world, and most of them living in the same apartment building, this is not connected to the NBC  television series Friends, which is about a half-dozen young adults making their way in the world, most of whom live in the same apartment building. And Friends debuted nearly two years after Singles. However, it was green-lighted only a short time after Crowe turned down Warner Brothers’ offer to adapt Singles into a series. But you can be the judge of that one.

COMING ATTRACTIONS: 

Over the next several episodes we’ll be taking you around the world. And we start South of the Border, down Mexico way. We’ll be reviewing Y tu mamá también, a wild little coming of age road film from 2001. Then we’ll be looking at Roma, a story about the life of a housekeeper in Mexico City. Both of these films were directed by Alfonso Cuarón, who chose to release Roma only to Netflix to ensure the largest possible audience.

Reel 48: A Fan’s Eye View

Strap in, kids, this is going to be a long one.

It took forever for Sean and I to get to this particular episode, and both of us have been dying—DYING, I tells ya—to talk about Almost Famous. It may be Sean’s favorite film that doesn’t involve music by Andrew Lloyd Webber. It’s certainly one of the eleven films in my Top Ten. (See, that’s two pokes I took at him, there. I’ll be paying dearly for this soon, I’m sure.)

At any rate, this time around we’re looking at a couple of films where it’s a fan of the music who gets the insider’s view. And that fan is the audience surrogate for much of the action that takes place.

First up is 2000’s Almost Famous, Cameron Crowe’s semi-autobiographical love letter to 1970s-era Rock and Roll. It’s got everything you want in a movie: some laughs, some drama, some tension, a little sex (mostly implied), an amazing soundtrack and a genuine feel for the era in which it takes place. We were so anxious to talk about this film that it’s probably the longest segment we’ve ever recorded for one movie.

Likewise, in Part 2 we have 24 Hour Party People, a 2002 film by Michael Winterbottom. In this film we get a peek into a specific slice of the early days of the 1980s New Wave era. Likewise, Winterbottom puts us in the middle of the action and while we’re told outright that some of the events in the film didn’t actually happen the way they’re presented, this has a documentary feel that has you buying every last bit of it. And you already know it wasn’t like that!

COMING ATTRACTIONS: 
Next time around we’re looking at some butt-kicking female thieves. First up is Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon from 2000. Less well-known but still really good is Widows, a Steve McQueen film from 2008 that will grab you quickly and suddenly turn on a dime into a much different story.