#sid caeser

[fatmagic]

[everymovie2020]

Grease (1978)

Date watched:  11 April 2020

I needed a mood booster after Steel Magnolias.

When I was a kid I loved John Travolta so much and I think I nearly wore out our VHS copy of this movie.

As an adult Rizzo is clearly the best of them all.

Also, it’s only occurred to me recently how misogynistic the song “Beauty School Drop-Out” is, yeesh.

[everymovie2020]

Airport 1975 (1974)

Date watched:  12 April 2020

THAT POSTER.

I'm 100% sure this is the one they based Airplane! on because they checked a lot of the boxes, and the first one has more of a "serious movie" vibe than this one does.  It's been awhile since I've seen Airplane! but from memory:

Sick girl needing a transplant (played by Linda Blair) – check;

Singing nun (played by Helen Reddy) – check;

Romance between head flight attendant and hero who saves the day – check;

And I'm sure there are other things but it's been so long since I've seen Airplane! that I can't remember what they are!

Now, they haven't fully embraced the insanity with this movie and I must admit at the start I was like, this is pretty boring, but about halfway through things go from boring to wtf pretty quickly.

Also – Charlton Heston is billed as the star of this movie.  He's in the first five minutes, to set up the romance between his character and the female flight attendant, and then he disappears for literally 40 minutes until he's required to come back in to save the day.  At one point I was like, "Where the fuck is Charlton Heston?" because he'd been gone for so long.

I guess he was the go-to disaster movie actor in the 70s?

Plot:

There's a huge lead up to the actual event happening, but the basic pre-disaster gist is that Charlton Heston and Karen Black are on the rocks, she boards her flight and he fucks off somewhere for 40 minutes. At the same time the movie switches between the people on the commercial flight to this light air pilot, who is obviously the source of the disaster that happens.

Sure enough, about halfway through, as the commercial plane is coming in to land and the light plane is trying to do the same thing, they run the fuck into each other.  The co-pilot and the navigator are killed instantly, there's a huge gaping hole in the cockpit and the main pilot has been glassed.

Look, I don't know a lot about aviation but like… I thought holes in planes were bad.  And these movies seem to have a lot of planes with holes in them that don't immediately disintegrate.  The only thing I can come up with to explain this is that planes flew a lot lower in the 70s than they do now, probably weren't as fast and that's why they're not all falling apart?  I DON'T FUCKING KNOW THE ANSWER TO THIS.

I thought GIANT HOLES IN PLANES WERE BAD.

And I'm missing the most obvious thing, that a light plane and a passenger plane collided in mid-air and one of them was still able to land, wtf?  I JUST DON'T THINK IT'S POSSIBLE.

ANYWAY, Karen Black comes into the cockpit, finds 2/3 of them dead and immediately freaks the fuck out.  She rings up the command centre and tells them what has happened, and then screeches into the phone, in possibly my favourite piece of acting in all four movies – "THERE'S NO ONE LEFT TO FLY THE PLANE!"

I try not to use gifs twice BUT THIS WAS THE BEST PART OF THE MOVIE.

So now we're in a situation where there's a giant hole in the cockpit of the plane, they're flying through snowy mountain ranges heading towards Salt Lake City – the Rockies? – and there's no bastard left to fly the fucking plane. 

Suddenly Charlton Heston reappears, in another light plane with George Roberts en route to help stop this disaster.  There's an extended bit where he talks her through flying the plane, but then they decide that she can't possibly land it on her own, and so they need to get a man on the plane.

And this is the part where I shouted, "I KNEW IT!" and scared my cats, because as soon as I saw that hole in the cockpit I thought, Charlton Heston is going to board the plane through that hole. They did try to trick me though, because another dude was going to do it but a piece of his harness got caught on the wreckage and unhooked him, so he died.

But then, as I predicted, in comes Charlton fucking Heston, because sometimes you need a goddamn A-lister to do things right. This scene is truly bonkers – they fly a military helicopter in front of the passenger jet and send Charlton Heston over to it on a rope, and he climbs in through the broken window.

Like, I mean, it's just not plausible.  You cannot convince me that is a thing that could conceivably happen in the real world.

Thankfully, because this is a movie, he heroically lands the plane and gets the girl, and the only casualties are the pilots, that one guy in the light plane and the rescuer who fell off the plane to his untimely death.

Honestly, this one is way more enjoyable than the first. It's bonkers.  I didn't even mention Gloria fucking Swanson, as herself, like… I don't even KNOW WHAT THAT WAS ABOUT.

And Helen Reddy as the singing nun, and Coach Calhoun from Grease is in it, and Jerry Stiller… and the décor of the planes is just so goddamn 70s.  It's brilliant.

[ihearyourmelody]

In between goals is a thing called life, that has to lived and enjoyed.

Sid Caeser

[cmmerchant]

In between goals is a thing called life, that has to be lived and enjoyed.

Sid Caeser

[popculturebrain]

Sid Caesar, Master of TV Comedy, Dies at 91 | Variety

[metaphysicalquest]

In between goals is a thing called life, that has to be lived and enjoyed.