["Primer of the Year," by The Vigilante, by Bill Smollett plays.]
Hey. Did you bring him?
Got him. Right here.
We've got what you've been looking for, Denver.
The Nuggets. Tuesday night at 6, they take on the Poles from Chicago.
Watch them play right here on KMGH Channel 7.
Nuggets!
Humbug! The holidays depress me. Maybe I'll foreclose on someone. That usually cheers me up.
Scrooge, you old miser.
Marley!
Why must you be so crotchety?
I'm not sleeping well.
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Splendid, Marley. I'm on my way.
Yow!
Oh, did that hurt, Marley?
Yeah!
And this! And this! And this! And that!
If you enjoy skiing downhill, Chevy's got something just for you.
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A body warranted against rust-through for six years at 100,000 miles.
In the battle against the elements, nobody's winning like today's Chevy truck.
You'd like to get your hands on this collector's edition movie poster calendar from Blockbuster Video?
Just look at all these great movie posters.
And look at this. There's $36 worth of free video rentals.
$36? That's a lot of free movies.
This calendar is free when you buy a book of ten Blockbuster gift certificates.
So give the gift certificates for Christmas.
Thanks.
And keep the calendar for yourself.
Now that's the kind of deal.
You'll want to get your mittens off.
America's Family Video Store.
Our next movie is named Mystery Train, and it's the new film by the hot young director Jim Jarmusch,
who's stranger than paradise and down by law, have been both cult and popular hits.
His new movie is a mysterious and sort of haunting comedy
that takes place during one long day and night and the next morning in Memphis, Tennessee,
and centers around three groups of characters.
The first couple are rock and roll fans who have come all the way from Japan
to visit the Memphis shrines honoring the birthplace of rock and roll.
The young man is a Carl Perkins fan, but his girlfriend idolizes Elvis.
They're in a fleabag hotel run by Screamin' Jay Hawkins and Sankee Lee,
who don't know what to do with the Japanese plum they left as a tip.
Meanwhile, two women who are stranded in Memphis agree to share a room for the night,
and they are visited by a famous ghost.
Excuse me.
Excuse me, ma'am.
No, I was in need to hear, excuse me.
Uh, no, really, excuse me, ma'am.
Uh, I must have got the wrong address or something.
The movie's next group are Rick Avila, Steve Buscemi, and rock star Joe Strummer,
who plays a lowlife nicknamed Elvis.
They've been hanging out in a bar and seem headed for trouble.
You better straighten up, Johnny.
Go for a spin in Earl's County.
Who's Earl?
All three stories center around that fleabag hotel where a mysterious pistol shot is heard by everyone
while Elvis sings Blue Moon on the radio.
In a way, not a whole lot happens in Mystery Train.
It's heavier on atmosphere than plot, but that's what I enjoyed,
the opportunity to try to figure out these strange and oddly assorted people
whose paths cross at such an unexpected time and place.
A lot of movies look like they could have been shot anywhere,
but Jim Jarmusch's movie is shot inside the very heart and soul of Memphis
and creates a mood that is haunted and nostalgic and sometimes violent,
and also often very funny.
I didn't think it was funny enough.
I liked the first two films that he made very, very much.
This picture, I liked the first third.
I liked the Japanese couple coming through,
and then I would have followed them actually through the whole story.
The middle chapter with the two women.
That's the weakest.
Well, I didn't think it was anything special.
And the group at the end, that really, I don't know, seemed so fresh or particular.
It seemed like a bunch of guys just hanging out, getting into trouble,
and that could have actually taken place, I think, just about anywhere.
So the first third of the movie I liked, the rest of it not.
I think maybe what he was trying to show was that the image of Memphis
that is in the minds of these Japanese rock and rollers is so different.
I mean, they have a hilarious scene where they go on a tour of the Sun record plant,
and that woman has memorized her speech and she can deliver it in 15 seconds.
But then the other stories are more about the mix in Memphis that created rock and roll,
the mix of violence and low life and energy and vibrancy and strange characters
that kind of created what they came there,
but they never got to see what they really came to see.
Right. Well, I could handle that, and then having them be frustrated continuously
would have been kind of interesting.
Again, the middle chapter, I don't know if the two girls represent what you just said,
which sounds like it's an interesting subject.
The guys, true, at the end.
The middle part is the weak part.
Coming up next, a documentary on legendary jazz pianist,
the loneliest monk, is called Straight No Chaser.
Grandpa, you really know how to throw a party.
Orville and Gary Redenbacher introduce light microwave popcorn.
What better reason to celebrate, Grandpa, than this new fantastic light microwave popcorn?
Well, you can celebrate any time when you have popcorn with one-third less calories.
And two-thirds less fat in a regular microwave.
This is a fantastic tasting popcorn.
Grandpa, who would ever think that you are a party animal?
That'll teach them.
You've got a great product. So a great party.
There's more to keeping fit than exercise.
You also need a balanced diet.
So if you're missing honored vegetables and can't get to eat them, you can drink them instead.
One glass of delicious V8 juice provides a serving of vegetables to help balance your diet.
Better serve him a V8.
Drink V8. Keep your diet straight.
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Many families in Colorado don't know where their next meal will come from.
But now Channel 7 has teamed up with Safeway and the Food Bank of the Rockies
in the Change for the Hungry project.
Just tell your Safeway checker how much of your change you'd like to donate.
Or round off your check for a little more.
Your donation will go straight to the Food Bank to help feed the hungry.
Turn a little of your change into a big change in someone's life.
Our next film is called Thelonious Monk, Straight No Chaser,
telling part of the life of the celebrated jazz pianist
through documentary footage of him performing, recording, and being interviewed.
In this case, the music is much more captivating than the man.
Here, Monk at the Piano performs his classic song, Run Midnight.
The film fails to get very close to the man himself,
as for example, in this interview with him, and later, his road manager.
I was in the room, Nellie was in the room, backstage,
and the reporter came in and asked him what kind of music he liked.
And Thelonious liked all kinds of music, a legitimate answer.
And then the reporter said, well, do you like country music?
Thelonious didn't answer me.
And the reporter said, well, do you like country music?
And Thelonious didn't look at the reporter but at me and said,
I think the fellow's hard of hearing.
The only time the personal story of Monk is made interesting
is when the film suggests that he might have suffered some sort of brain damage,
and that accounts for sometimes his strange behavior.
Thus, Straight No Chaser is an easy film to review.
It works when Monk plays, but only when he plays.
There doesn't seem to be enough of an effort here
made to explain his place in jazz history or render his life worthy of a feature film.
Gee, I saw a much different movie than you did.
This movie is really about the life of Thelonious Monk in addition to his music,
and it's made quite clear that this man had a mental problem
that caused him to be closed off from everyone
and to continue to close the door more and more through his career.
There's that scene in the airport where he turns around and around and around.
That's fascinating.
And other scenes where the people who loved him and who tried to support him
talk about the fact that even while he was making this wonderful music,
he was drifting away into that private place.
So finally, he spends the last eight or ten years of his life just sitting in a room,
but when they play some music, he'd open the door to listen.
So it's a human tragedy, Gene.
It's about a man who was a great jazz innovator
and who was mentally ill to the point where he finally couldn't connect with people anymore.
When you say it's hard that the movie doesn't really relate to Thelonious Monk,
he didn't relate to anyone, and that's what the movie's about.
Well, I thought if there had been more investigation of that.
I wanted to see more of that. That's exciting.
I would like to know more about it. I'd like to see that.
But I have more people talk about the relationships with him,
but the film doesn't have enough footage there.
Oh, I thought it did. You know, it talks to people who live with him.
It talks to people who loved him, people who managed him, people who played with him.
It shows him on screen.
You can understand that he can hardly communicate with these people.
I felt it was a really extraordinary portrait of this man's life.
Not good enough for me.
Okay, now let's take another look at the movies we reviewed on this show.
Two thumbs down for National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation,
which seems to have the makings for a good comedy, but never delivers.
Two jubilant thumbs up for the triumphant comedy Roger and Me.
We both think it's an American classic.
Two thumbs down, though, for Triumph of the Spirit,
a well-intentioned but not compelling story of a Nazi death camp survivor.
A split decision on Mystery Train.
I liked its mixture of Memphis mood and legend.
Gene only liked the first third of the movie.
And finally, another disagreement on Thelonious Monk's Straight No Chaser.
I thought it was a fascinating portrait of a tortured man's great music.
Gene wanted to know more about the man.
And so, obviously, the movie that springs out from this show is Roger and Me.
I've seen it twice.
I've rarely seen a film that seems to have captured the mood of audiences in this country more immediately.
This is the movie that people want to see right now.
I thought, what a great way to make movies.
Find a little drama and then just follow it.
Trail it around wherever it leads.
It'll lead in a serendipitous fashion that'll be more fascinating than any kind of made-up story that people can do.
I want this guy to make more movies, and I want him to make a lot of them quickly.
You know what? And I'm going to go way out on a limb here.
Here's a guy that held a bingo game every Tuesday night in Flint to finance this movie that he shot himself.
I think it has a chance of being nominated for one of the best pictures of the year. I swear it does.
Whether it gets nominated or not, it is one of the best pictures of the year.
Okay, that's it for this week.
Next time, we'll be back with reviews of more big holiday season films, including The War of the Roses,
a romantic black comedy starring Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, and Danny DeVito,
and also She-Devil, starring the unlikely pairing of Meryl Streep and Roseanne Barr.
That's next week, and until then, the balcony is closed.
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This Christmas, give the 1990 edition of Roger Ebert's movie Home Companion
with a special section on black and white movies.
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