124 posts tagged “1980s”

TV3 just re-ran the 2004 remake of Man on Fire, but I thought it might be interesting to see some clips from the original version, in this preview:

Now that Vox seems to be letting me in within minutes rather than hours, my mind turned to cheesy 1980s’ mini-series. Remember when this was cool?

   Maurice Binder did the titles to this Sidney Sheldon-based mini-series, If Tomorrow Comes, starring Madolyn Smith. Binder’s trademark can be seen here: primary colours, a modernist approach to most elements, including the typography (ITC Modern No. 216). The hourglass motif was also used in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. The scary thing is I remember the Nick Bicât theme after all these years, but didn’t remember Liam Neeson being in it as a co-star.
   One YouTuber has put up clips from the mini-series and I was surprised at how slowly things dragged on, even with a 10-minute selection. We’ve obviously become accustomed to the action in the big-screen blockbusters.
   Before Matt Damon was Jason Bourne, Dr Kildare was Jason Bourne. This also dragged on—the difference being I remembered it being slow at the time (1988) and thinking it only needed to be two hours. Evidently some movie executive thought the same in the 2000s with the Doug Liman version.
   However, for Ludlum purists, the mini-series was more faithful to the book and even has a few scenes that creep up in the second movie.
   Old Doc Kildare was looking pretty worn by 1988, though Jaclyn Smith still looked amazing (and in 2009, as a 60-something, she still does). There were some good action sequences, but they were few and far between. However, as with If Tomorrow Comes, some European filming gave the mini-series a bit of polish that was absent from the hourly TV shows on back then.
   Here’s how it started (similarly to the Matt Damon one): And here’s a meeting at Treadstone—and yes, that is Shane Rimmer in the military uniform:    How about this one, Deceptions, starring Stefanie Powers, from 1985? This stands up quite well, with a ridiculous plot of two twins swapping lives, and Barry Bostwick with a lot of facial hair. The finalé takes place on Tower Bridge, London, and they shut off the bridge to film it, so some big bucks were involved. More entertaining than a lot of the stuff on TV today, and certainly miles better than any of that reality garbage.

Before Steve Martin, Roger Moore, not Peter Sellers, was the last person to play Chief Insp Jacques Clouseau.

The stories are different enough that one could not accuse the Hong Kong film-makers of outright copying, but there is clear inspiration between the English Ooh, You Are Awful (or Get Charlie Tully), starring Dick Emery, and the first of the successful franchise 最佳拍檔 (Aces Go Places). The films are 10 years apart.
   The plot lines are similar: in the original, Emery has to find a Swiss bank account number, separately tattooed on four different girls’ behinds. In the later film, Sam Hui (the father of Canto-pop) and Karl Maka’s characters have to find a map reference, tattooed on two different girls’ behinds. The following is of two very similar scenes, one set at Waterloo Station in London, the other at a taxi company’s radio department, and subsequent scenes involving photographic booths, where one might be able to claim there was a fair amount of direct copying. Emery is more blue, while the later film is more slapstick with better pacing.
   And yes, that is the lovely Cheryl Kennedy in the first clip.
   In the 1970s and 1980s, it was highly unlikely for Hong Kong cinemagoers to have seen the Emery film.
   Head to 2.45 for the above scene in the first video; 0.43 in the second clip.

For our American friends who might not know what Chris Tarrant looks or sounds like in the 21st century, ITV (presumably, as the eventual successor to ATV and Carlton) did a Tiswas reunion special a few years ago. I found this part on YouTube, and it includes a very politically incorrect rant against the French by Michael Palin toward the end.

Chris Tarrant leaves Tiswas in 1981—goodness, when I compare him to those Millionaire repeats, he’s less intelligible here.

Surprisingly, I have never pasted this video on my blog before. About time that was redressed.

   The YouTube comments include one that reads, ‘Balls of steel’.

We were chatting about non-US actors adopting American accents on Jaklumen’s blog and I thought of several American actors who do pretty good English accents.
   First up, Rénée Zellweger as Bridget Jones:

   Secondly, James Cromwell as HRH the Duke of Edinburgh in The Queen:

Just to show that Brits remake American shows, too, and do just as lousy job of it as Americans do when UK shows cross the Atlantic. Anyone old enough to remember The Fosters, co-starring Lenny Henry as Sonny Foster?
   Click here to see a clip at TV Ark.
   It’s British Good Times, and Henry was in the J. J. Evans equivalent role played by Jimmy Walker, but it was less gritty.
   Equally forgettable were The Upper Hand (British Who’s the Boss?) and Married for Life (British Married with Children). The former I have featured on this blog because it did have its fans (Pussy Galore was in it); the latter is so bad that I could only find a single clip on YouTube:

Yep, bad.
   If you are going to remake shows, maybe the Russians do it a bit better: