From the Couch Hole: All My Little Plans and Schemes

Previously on FTCH, there was a civil war because of the Martian chronicles about the best limited television show of all-time. The dawn of the planet of the apes was somewhere only we know with hot honey mini pretzels. This week was a beautiful spring week most of the week before the rains came. Lots of time spent prepping for the May visits and Saturday was a quick day trip to College Station. This week the war of the planet of the apes had a sympathizer who knew real love. The 13th apostle spent a late night with the devil and a coconut cream Dr. Pepper. Remember, at FTCH, you can do it, we can help.

Pop Culture Ephemera

• Late Night with the Devil (2024) (Directed by Cameron and Colin Cairnes): “The power of Christ compels you! The power of Christ compels you!” – Gus McConnell. This movie is its own worst enemy for building up such an interesting premise that it can’t live up to on their budget. A fourth network in the 1970s hires Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian) out of Chicago to host their late night show to try to unseat Carson. Years later, he can’t overtake Carson, and they are planning a special Halloween episode for “sweeps.” It’s set up as a “found footage” episode. Then it proceeds to break that conceit with lots of backstage footage that wouldn’t have made the air. The movie is 1977 as seen by Gen Z who have seen it through the prism of YouTube videos. I think it does a good job of capturing the illusion of 1977 without capturing the feeling of 1977. I liked the film up until the last 15 minutes where it really asks the viewer to do some leaps and bounds in a way that hasn’t been set up to this point. There’s talent here and I’d expect big things from the next film by this directing duo.

Buy The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

• The Sympathizer – “Death Wish” (2024) (S.1 E.1) (HBO): “In America It Is Called The Vietnam War. In Vietnam, It Is Called The American War” I wasn’t going to miss a new series directed by Park Chan-wook. Especially one based upon an acclaimed novel by Viet Thanh Nguyen. A Korean director, filmed in Thailand, with starring roles of actors from Australia (Hoa Xuande) and America (Robert Downey, Jr.) based upon the novel written by a Vietnamese author. There were plenty of ways this story set at the fall of Saigon could have gone off the rails. The first few minutes are filled with an overwhelming amount of information and we go forwards and backwards at a dizzying speed. Stick with it. This show has some subtle dark humor that’s easy to miss, and it mixes it with a decent espionage storyline. This is a long way to go to get the story to America and I can only imagine how this will pay off for the remaining six episodes. This is another show that’s likely to make the best-of lists in December just based on this first episode.

Buy The Beatles: Anthology 2

• The Beatles – “Real Love” (1996) (from Anthology 2): “Seems that all I was really doing / Was waiting for you.” – Lennon. Written by John Lennon in 1978/1979, rerecorded with his elements from a couple of demos and released in 1996 as a single as part of the Anthology project. It has the feel of a ’70s tune with the “love conquers all” message. The Jeff Lynne production gives it much more of an “ELO meets the Traveling Wilburys” sound than it wouldn’t have had if George Martin had agreed to produce. I like this better than “Free As a Bird” from the same era. I don’t get all of the negativity this gets from Beatles’ fans. I’d like to hear it remastered again with 2024 technology to bring forward the Lennon vocals in the mix and clean it up.

• War for the Planet of the Apes (2017) (Directed by Matt Reeves): “I did not start this war. But I will finish it.” – Caesar. Despite the title, this isn’t a war film for the first half of it. The final film of the trilogy is a Revisionist Western that could have been made by Peckinpah in 1972. It turns into Apocalypse Now (1979) with the appearance of Woody Harrelson (shaven head so you don’t even have to think hard about who he is). Then it finishes with as a prison escape film of the ’60s. As much as that might sound like the description of a very disjointed film, this isn’t at all. It’s a satisfying ending to a creative trilogy. The films respect the original story without repeating it. Things like apes wearing clothing, Cornelius and Nova are set in motion here to make plausible the events of the earlier films, not logically but thematically. The film brings what was missing in the first two films, comedy, thanks to Bad Ape (Steve Zahn). I never imagined that a Planet of the Apes trilogy would transcend genres this well. The shot of Caesar on the horse riding to find his child is only lacking a Leone close-up and a Morricone score to be complete.

• The 13th Apostle (1988) (Directed by Suren Babayan): “Respect, reason. Those things are short on Earth.” A Russian science fiction film that is loosely based upon the first few stories in Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles (1950). About 15 minutes into the film, I had to double check that there wasn’t some other film with the same name from the same year with a completely different plot. Then I had to come to terms with the fact that maybe the Russian translation of the book is decidedly different in Russian. Once I was able to orient myself, that didn’t clear up the mess. This is Bradbury as directed by arthouse David Lynch. The original story has some religious symbolism but instead of embracing that, this film tries to create their own out of whole cloth. There is room for a remake of this portion of the story for its horror elements alone. This ignores that too for the sake of just being weird. My only hope, in the end, is that Bradbury never watched this film.

Best of the Rest

• Tom Odell put a slower and more aching touch to “Real Love” and it was used for the 2014 John Lewis Christmas Advert to perfection. It’s hard not to feel the lyrics as Monty just wants to experience “real love”.

• Maybe the most surprising cover of the song comes from Funny People (2009). Adam Sandler makes a serious attempt at the cover in a serious role. I’m taken aback a little. There’s something special when the right song is chosen at the right moment in a film.

• I’m not one to complain too loudly that movies don’t have new ideas. I can point to many new ideas, like Late Night with the Devil (2024) to show that there are good “new” films. The problem is when the remake is totally unneeded. The new best example is Tom Cruise set to remake The Gauntlet (1977). There are only a few Clint Eastwood films that I would consider for a remake, and this is not one of them. I don’t see a way that it is either updated or told in the same era and improved upon.

Sunday Morning Tuneage Flashback

• On the Sunday Morning Tuneage of 10/26/2008, the football woes continued with losses in the high school, North Texas and Michigan clinching their worst season in my lifetime. My #63 Favorite Film of All-Time was The Shining (1980). This is a fair rating for one of my favorite Kubrick films that feels like a Kubrick film more than a Stephen King adaptation. There’s just enough chaos surrounding it that I can’t say it’s a perfect film. It ‘s an interesting lead into the List of the Week (more on that in a second). I was enjoying True Blood (HBO), The Office (NBC), and I was impressed with the initial episodes of the adaptation of the UK series, Life on Mars (ABC). The list that week is certainly one that must have gone through some evolution. Let me take a look.
  • BEST BOOK-TO-FILM ADAPTATION OF ALL-TIME (2008)
    • 10. One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)
    • 9. Watership Down (1978): Almost impossible to capture the depth of this book.
    • 8. Sin City (2005): A good directorial vision. I need a sequel to see if it can be improved upon.
    • 7. Charlotte’s Web (1973): Why do animated versions come closer to the book than the live-action versions?
    • 6. The Exorcist (1973): I read the book after seeing the movie, and it still kept me up at night.
    • 5. Jaws (1975): It’s a better movie than book, but the book made Brody more interesting.
    • 4. Shawshank Redemption (1994)
    • 3. The Godfather (1972, 1974): The movies actually out-do the book in this case.
    • 2. Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971): This Roald Dahl book has always been one of my favorites.
    • 1. The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003): Such a huge task (even in three films), and I can’t imagine it being done any better.
  • BEST BOOK-TO-FILM ADAPTATION OF ALL-TIME (2024)
    • 10. One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (1975): I saw the film first. The book didn’t have the feel of any new observations that weren’t in the film.
    • 9. The Godfather (1972, 1974): The book is a good, solid read that is turned into an opera of violence and loyalty.
    • 8. The Maltese Falcon (1940): The Hammett novel is confusing. This adaptation does a good job of simplifying some of the convoluted plot points.
    • 7. The Hunger Games (2012): I’m not claiming it’s the best film ever, but I will say that from print to screen, the book feels like it was used as the shooting script.
    • 6. The Green Mile (1999): If there was a category for best casting for book to film, this might be the winner. It matched my imagination almost character for character.
    • 5. Jaws (1975): I barely remember the book after fifty viewings of the film. I’ve put it on my Summer reading list.
    • 4. Harry Potter (2002-2011): A bit of cheating here so that I don’t have to take up multiple spots on the list. Eight movies to cover seven books still isn’t enough, and there are lots of cuts that had to be made. At some point in my lifetime they will remake these and I bet they will be two films at least per book. Best of the adaptations: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002).
    • 3. The Exorcist (1973): The more you see how hard it is to make a good, quality horror film, the more impressed I am at how this source material created a genre-defining film.
    • 2. Dune (2021, 2024): This might benefit from being the films and book on the list that I’ve most recently viewed and read. I thought that David Lynch had proved the rule that it was just too much for a screen adaptation. Denis Villeneuve took the challenge (and a huge budget) and captured all of the major themes of the book.
    • 1. The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003): I’ve read all of the haters on these adaptations. You can poke holes in the choices if you don’t want to have fun in life. Even with an unlimited time and budget, it would be hard to adapt as written. If you think just about the spirit and tone of the books, Peter Jackson gave the material full respect.
  • The rule then and now is that I need to have read the book and watched the movie. Out because I’ve watched the movie but not read the book are films like Fight Club (1999) and The Wizard of Oz (1939). Out because I’ve read the book but not fully watched the film are films like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998). I left off comic book adaptations and novellas this time around. You know I can make a list of only Stephen King adaptations, so I kept myself to just one (sorry, Misery [1990]) It kills me to leave off A Christmas Carol but I just couldn’t narrow it down to the single best adaptation of the book.

1974 in Review

• April – Batman #255 (DC Comics): Main cover art by Neal Adams. “Moon of the Wolf” written by Len Wein and art by Neal Adams. This would be adapted into an episode of Batman: The Animated Series (1992) and remains one of my favorite episodes of the series.
• April 25 – The National Football League adopted new rules for the upcoming season including moving the goal posts to the back of the end zone, allowing sudden death overtime in tied games and missed field goals would now be returned to the line of scrimmage of the attempt instead of the 20-yard line.
• April 8 – People Weekly: Ted Kennedy Jr. had a leg amputated because of bone cancer and learned to ski again in Vail, Colorado.

What the Hell Did I Put in My Mouth?

“Thought I’d been in love before
But in my heart, I wanted more
Seems like all I really was doing
Was waiting for you” – John Lennon

Stay Hard

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