Reel 64: Same Title, Different Movie (redux)

Yowza, my friend. Welcome to the land of weird issues with this episode.

Just to peel back the curtain a little bit, Sean and I record an episode, then later on I do some editing, I put in the music and Alex’s bits, then I package everything and run it through some software called Auphonic to make sure everything’s evened out and compressed a little for your consumption, plus I make up the artwork and write these bits.  And usually the editing is the easy part. This time around, however, it was the hard part. There were some odd glitches on his side that I didn’t hear during recording, so I had to make some peculiar repairs to the sound, and that meant using some of the backup audio that we record. Then on the run through Auphonic, I bumped into the software inserting huge silent gaps  in the show, which needed to be cut out again as seamlessly as possible.

On top of all that, Sean and I do have day jobs, ya know. Neither of us make a dime on the show; it’s a labor of love, baby.

Okay, enough whining, because this episode deals with a couple of great films that really should be getting more attention, and coincidentally they both have the same title despite being about very different subjects.

The title for this episode’s films is Loving, and the first version is from 1970, directed by Irvin Kershner. It stars George Segal and Eva Marie Saint as a couple whose relationship is unwinding just at the point where Segal’s character is just starting to get his career back on track. It’s a serious story with a comic overlay on it, and while some of it may be a little dated, it’s a compelling story regardless.

In part 2, the “Loving” in the film is in the form of Mildred and Richard Loving, a real-life couple who decided to take their relationship and make a Federal case out of it. Ruth Negga and Joel Edgerton play the lead roles in this 2016 film directed by Jeff Nichols. It’s worth noting that most of the events of this film took place during our lifetimes—okay, MY life; Sean was born the year after the Loving decision was handed down by the Supreme Court. The bottom line is, attitudes about such things were quite different not very long ago.

COMING ATTRACTIONS: 

In our next two episodes, we take a look at remakes which managed to surpass the original version. We start with The Man Who Knew Too Much, a 1956 film starring James Stewart. From there we jump to 1988’s Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, a film that I’m still not 100% clear the studio knew how to market.

Reel 63: Same Title, Different Movie

A long while back (Episodes 14—17), we looked at English remakes of non-English films. Those were the same story but different titles. Then in Episode 23, it was four different versions of the same story, with the same title. Now, we give you a pair of films with the same title, but that’s the only thing they have in common: the story lines and subject matter are vastly different from one another.

In this episode we’re screening two films titled No Way Out. In the first half, it’s the 1950 version starring Sidney Poitier in his feature film debut, along with Richard Widmark, Linda Darnell and Stephen McNally. Poitier is a doctor who runs into race issues and a medical complication during his first night in a new assignment. The issue snowballs until there’s a full race riot going  on. Poitier’s character comes up with an interesting tactic to prove he did the right thing that first night, but it nearly backfires on him.

From there we jump to 1987. This No Way Out stars Kevin Costner, Gene Hackman and Sean Young in a story of Cold War intrigue. We practically guarantee that you’ll be caught off-guard by the way everything resolves.

COMING ATTRACTIONS: 

Next time around, we’ll continue this gimmick with another pair of films that have the same title and nothing else in common. The films’ title is Loving. One is from 1970 and the other is from 2016.