Posts Tagged ‘Peter Fonda’

CJAD IN MONTREAL: THE ANDREW CARTER SHOW WITH RICHARD CROUSE ON MOVIES!

Richard sits in on the CJAD Montreal morning show guest host Ken Connors to talk about the small scale superheroes “Ant-Man and the Wasp,” the Christopher Plummer road trip “Boundaries,” the father and daughter drama “Leave No Trace” and the love letter to one of Manhattan’s great hotels, “Always at the Carlyle.”

Listen to the whole thing HERE!

Metro In Focus: Captain America almost had another superhero name

00_02_scene_crouse-captain_md_deanBy Richard Crouse – Metro Canada

Captain America, played by Chris Evans in this weekend’s superhero flick Captain America: The Winter Soldier, was almost tagged with a different patriotic name by creator Joe Simon.

In 1940, when he first imagined the character, he dubbed his creation Super American. Then he had a change of heart.

“There were too many ‘Supers’ around,” he said. “Captain America had a good sound to it. There weren’t a lot of captains in comics.”

The first issue of the new Captain America comic was an instant hit. Released on December 20, 1940, and featuring Cap giving Adolph Hitler a knuckle sandwich, it sold almost one million copies.

Numbers like that should have attracted Hollywood’s attention, but Captain America’s screen debut was inauspicious. In 1943, Republic Films decided to launch a superhero serial based either on the mysterious masked character The Copperhead or the caped do-gooder Mr. Scarlet. Scripts were prepared, but before cameras rolled, the decision was made to insert Captain America into the story without radically altering the screenplays.

As a result, the character bares only a passing resemblance to the comics. In the serials he has a different secret identity and fights evildoer The Scarab instead of Nazis. His famous invincible shield is missing, as is his sidekick Bucky and there is no mention of the Super-Soldier Serum that transformed him from zero to hero.

Nonetheless, the 15-part serial — which featured exciting titles like Blade of Wrath and Vault of Vengeance — was very popular, but unfortunately did little to further the career of its star Dick Purcell. Legend has it that the strain of playing the active character was too much for him and he passed away just three weeks after filming was complete.

Despite the success of the serial, it would be half a century until Captain America was featured in another story shot for the big screen. In 1990’s Captain America, Cappy is played by Matt Salinger, son of author J. D. Salinger, who beat out Dolph Lundgren and Arnold Schwarzenegger for the part.

The movie returned the character to his comic book roots, and was originally set for a 1990 release to coincide with 50th anniversary of the character but was shelved until 1992 — perhaps because of what Entertainment Weekly called a “shapeless blob of a plot” — when it was released on home video.

Captain America is possibly the most patriotic of all superheroes, but the name also pops up in one of the most famous counterculture movies of the 1960s. In Easy Rider, Peter Fonda’s character Wyatt is nick-named Captain America after his Harley Davidson Captain America chopper.

BEST LINES EVER! “We blew it.” – Captain America (Peter Fonda) to Billy (Dennis Hopper) in Easy Rider, 1969 By Richard Crouse

Easy+RiderRoger Ebert calls Easy Rider one of the “rallying-points of the 1960s” but, like S&H Green Stamps and go go boots, seen through today’s eyes it seems a bit dated. The stoner dialogue is littered with hippie axioms—an intense and very drunken drinking game could be played by taking a swig every time Hopper says “man”—but one enigmatic three word sentence in particular still resonates forty years later.

Following the film’s Mardi Gras / LSD sequence Billy (Hopper) and Wyatt (Fonda) hit the road, continuing their trip (double entendre intended) to Florida.

“We did it, man. We did it, we did it. We’re rich, man,” says Billy, referring to the drug money hidden inside the Stars & Stripes- festooned fuel tank of Wyatt’s Hydra-Glide chopper. “We’re retirin’ in Florida now, mister.”

Instead of reveling in the moment Wyatt answers cryptically, “You know Billy. We blew it.”

The meaning of the line has been the source of great debate. Some critics felt it was a comment on the futility of their life on the road; that Wyatt feels by leaving the commune he’s blown his chance at happiness. Others suggest the “it” represents everything from the American Dream, to the failure of the Woodstock Nation to really change the world, to freedom and self discovery.

Hopper has a simpler, more straightforward explanation. He claims the line refers to the corrupting power of their stashed drug money, how it stripped away some of their innocence.

“When Peter says, ‘We blew it’, he’s talking about easy money, that we should have used our energies to make it.”

Fonda is more tight-lipped on the meaning. He wants each viewer to bring their own perception to the line, but in 2010 he told The Toronto Star’s Peter Howell, “Is it still relevant? Look out the window and tell me that we haven’t blown it.

“We’re at war about religion (in Iraq and Afghanistan). We kill each other for racial and bigoted reasons, too, and sometimes just because we’re in the wrong gang. We do all these things today and we do them with much more gusto than we did in 1968 when we made that film.”

3:10 TO YUMA: 4 STARS

07yuma-600There was a time when Westerns ruled the movie theatres. John Wayne, Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea were all larger than life cowboy stars and the sight of a wagon train coming over a mountain pass was pretty much a guarantee of a healthy box office. Then times changed. The western went urban as big city cop dramas squeezed cowboy stories off the big screen. This season, however, after an absence of several years two new westerns are slated to gauge audience interest in good old fashioned horse opera.

The first of the two, 3:10 to Yuma, is a star driven remake of a 1957 Glenn Ford oater (look for the awkwardly titled The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford in late September). The original is a classic of suspense, a tension filled battle of wills between two men, one bad to the bone, the other righteous but desperate. I’m happy to say that the new version takes only slight liberties with the story such as upping the violence and even changing the ending, but maintains the spiritual core of the first.

Christian Bale, hot off his star turn in Rescue Dawn, is Arizona rancher Dan Evans. He’s a Civil War vet, but an injury sustained in battle and bad luck has made it nearly impossible for him to make a living from his land. He’s in debt and about to have his land repossessed by a greedy landowner not above using violence and intimidation to get Dan and his family off their land. Dan feels like a failure, and worse yet, his kids and wife seem to agree in that assessment.

The answer to Dan’s problems, both financial and self esteem wise comes in a strange package. Ben Wade is the outlaw’s outlaw. He’s a gunfighter and gang leader responsible for a trail of lawlessness and bloodshed. When he is separated from his mob and captured, Dan, who was once the best shot in his platoon sees an opportunity to make some money and rehabilitate his reputation with his family. For $200 Dan joins the posse of lawmen charged with the dangerous job of escorting Wade to the 3:10 to Yuma prison train.

The passage is dangerous, made even more so by Wade’s gang, led by the psychotically loyal henchman Charlie Prince (Ben Foster). These guys delight in ultra-violence and are desperate to have their leader back. The journey, peppered with violence, vengeance and tension isn’t merely about the physical, however. This is a spiritual journey for both men, a chance for each of them to prove what they are made of; to dig deep and reveal their true natures.

Director James Mangold (Walk the Line) has a lot on his plate with this remake. The original is a well loved classic (although few people under 40 have probably seen it) with a riveting central performance by Glenn Ford in a rare bad guy role. To his credit (and the benefit of the movie) Mangold cast the major characters with actors known for making roles their own, and this is one of the strengths of the film.

Bale brings just the right amount of vulnerability to Evans, while Crowe digs in to create a bad guy, rotten to the core, who begins to doubt his evil nature. It’s the only way of life he knows, but given a glimpse of decency he doesn’t exactly change his ways, as much as simply acknowledge that under his tough exterior there is a beating heart. It’s like he says after brutally dispatching a man who insulted his mother. “Even bad men love their mamas…”

Also notable are Peter Fonda as an old time Pinkerton cop and Hollywood’s psycho du jour Ben Foster, who takes the standard role of the rancorous goon and injects it with a fierceness that makes him standout in a movie of great performances.

Like Clint Eastwood’s The Unforgiven, 3:10 to Yuma is a great Western cow opera about men looking inside themselves to discover the true essence of their lives. These two polar opposite men find a meeting place in the existential grey area between redemption and damnation. 3:10 to Yuma is a handsome remake and a smart enough movie to allow for a healthy dollop of existential angst amid the horse and gun play. If all the new westerns were all this good, maybe they will make a comeback.