To Trumpanzees: You do know that he would have stuck you on the decoy plane as well, leaving you to take an Iranian missile enema while he stayed safe and sound with Natalie, his Secretary of Diapers. You've never been anything to him but under-the-bus squashed refuse.....losers and suckers, targets for his never ending grift. Having fun yet?
Ode to Billie Joe (1976)
Max Baer Jr. spent almost a decade playing lovable cornpone hunk Jethro Bodine in TV's "The Beverly Hillbillies", which ran on CBS form 1962 to 1971.
So who in the world would ever guess that a few years after 'Hillbillies' ended, Baer would briefly emerge as a writer-director auteur of the Deep South.
As both writer and star, Baer struck nationwide boxoffice gold with his modest but powerful melodrama "Macon County Line", which riveted us city slickers just as much as the drive-in movie crowd below the Mason-Dixon line. (A film we promise to review in the near future.)
Suddenly a hot Hollywood property, Baer went on to write and direct the family drama "The Wild McCullochs" and then secured his biggest assignment ever...... guiding Warner Brothers' film version of country singer Bobbie Gentry's 'Ode to Billie Joe', her rambling, catchy, wildly popular story-song.
Gentry's epic length song, dripping with country flavor and attitude, recounted the sad, star-crossed love of two hormone engulfed teens, Billie Joe McCallister and Bobby Lee Hartley. Back in '53 on Choctaw Ridge, Mississippi, their romance went tragically awry when Billie Joe, for some unknown reason (in the song, anyway) threw himself off the Tallahatchie Bridge.
'Ode', much like Baer's 'Macon County Line' captured everyone's attention, both North and South....... and it fell to Baer and screenwriter Herman Raucher ("Summer of '42", "Sweet November") to not only bring the song to cinematic life, but tell what really destroyed the lives of these drawlin' cutie pies in the throes of their first love.
Presumably with Baer and Gentry's approval, Raucher came up with his own startling and dramatic gut-punching revelation......and considering the era and place the film is set in, a bold, way ahead of its time plot twist to deploy.
This film couldn't have found a director more appreciative and understanding of the material. Baer, if nothing else, knew in his casting and cinematography how to properly evoke the South of the 1950's. Devoid of any slick gloss, the film looks and sounds as weathered and lived in as the pickup trucks that roll across the wooden slats of the Tallahatchie.
And he couldn't have found two more empathetic actors for his leads. Robby Benson's Billie Joe, a sensitive outlier among the beer swillin' good ole boys comes a courtin' Glynnis O'Connor's Bobbie Lee with the amusing deliberate manner of a silver-tongued Southern gentleman. (Herman Raucher supplies his two young lovers with pseudo ornate mock Tennessee Williams dialogue that's jarring at first to listen to at first but then becomes sort of entertaining.
O' Connor, capable of appearing both beautiful and plain within the same camera shot, perfectly embodies Bobby Lee's sexual longings within a protective loving family......one whose father sees her only as still a little girl. While Benson might have the most showy role here (considering the traumatic event he endures), it's O' Connor, functioning as the narrator, who breaks your heart as the romance she wished for comes apart before her eyes.
(As for the film's whammer explanation of Billie Joe's demise, we'll not uncover the film's jumbo spoiler......but we will say that Raucher, Baer and the cast handle it with just the right amount of low key depth and a sense of inevitable sadness.)
Max Baer directed only one more film ("Hometown USA"), but with the cult 'Macon County Line' and the successful crowd-pleasing 'Billie Joe' he made the most of his brief time amid the chaotic, creative landscape of 1970's filmmaking and the exciting, emerging talents that emerged out of it.
Maybe it might appear too corny, obvious and overwrought for today's more jaded audiences, but we still appreciate the care and skill that went into this film. 3 & 1/2 stars (***1/2)
The End of Oak Street (2026)
Dinos running rampant in 1980's suburbia?
You bet Jurassic they are......
Let's put our hands together (at least for a few seconds) for writer-director David Robert Mitchell. He took on the harder-than-it-looks task of crafting a genuine imitation Spielberg movie from Spielberg's own 1980's Golden Age...(of "E.T.", "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and his producer status on "Poltergeist", "The Goonies" and "Gremlins".)
Not really an easy task to pull off, combining the master director's magical mixture of comedy, fantasy, action, heart-tugging moments and cheer-inducing finales.
Back in 2011, writer-director J.J.Abrams took a fairly good crack at it in "Super 8", about suburban kid filmmakers encountering as escaped alien monster on the loose. Lots of fun, loaded up with Spielbergian vibes to the max. And Abrams is still back at it, functioning here as 'Oak Street's executive producer.
And you'd be sorely mistaken if you think crafting a Spielberg homage is easy......this year, with the severely disappointing "Disclosure Day", even Spielberg himself couldn't quite nail making a traditional Spielbergian, aliens-on-the-loose rip-off of his own classic films.
Again, we're back in sunny, happy suburbia, where Alice and Greg Platt (Anne Hathaway, Ewan McGregor) enjoy a block party-carnival with their teen and tween kids Audrey and Brian (Maisy Stella, Christian Convery).
Trouble in paradise, though........Having lost his job, Greg's reduced to delivering pizzas. Alice secretly pounds away at a novel about a woman aching to walk out of her marriage. Hmmm....this does not bode well....
Know what else doesn't bode well? The neighborhood warped into bordering a prehistoric jungle, with all manner of CGI'd dinosaurs running across the manicured lawns to stalk and munch on the neighbors like an all-you-can-eat buffet.
Wooo hooo! From this point on, the film puts pedal to the metal as Hathaway, McGregor and the kids desperately fight for their survival amid all the stompin', chompin' reptiles.
Crowd pleasing, showstopping scenes abound.....you'll cringe and wince as the family argues about their next move, unaware that a charging, hungry T-Rex currently lopes across the lawn right behind them. And let's hear it for that monstrous white snake, oozing its way through all three floors of the family's house, which they somehow manage to ignore (like the T-Rex) until they're almost snake-snacks.
Writer-director Mitchell puts on a true popcorn gobbling, soda slurping good time here. So good, in fact, you'll end more than willing to swallow the goofball scientific explanation for the dinos return and the extra feel good ending that could only happen in the Magic Surburbs of Spielgergia.
And it's ironically sad, in a way, that composer Michael Giacchino slathers the film with a loud, propulsive rip-roarin' imitation John Williams score.....a feat that maestro Williams himself could barely accomplish, finding little to inspire him when composing for his long time collaborator's muddled "Disclosure Day".
But as for "Oak Street", for a pure, shamelessly entertaining thrill ride (and one that doesn't burden itself with a bloated running time like some other current blockbusters) this deliriously dino-mighty treat spreads out a fine end-summer movie picnic. (Keep the lid on the mayonnaise jar when the T Rex is around......)
4 stars (****).
It wasn't just members of his cabinet, members of his inner circle and the press corps that he threw into the line of Iranian fire while he snuck out in a catering truck disguised as a mutated taco......
Our president is essentially President Greg Stillson of Stephen King's "The Dead Zone" (here played by Martin Sheen).....holding up a baby to shield him from an assassin's bullets......and the baby represents you, me and all of America.
Let us now bid a not-quite-fond farewell to Karoline Leavitt, who never met a lie so stupid that she couldn't spew it out in public......
BQ visitors, have a great, great weekend.
To Trumpanzees: Remember everything Pumpkinhead warned you about Kamala Harris and Democrats.....endless wars.....a crappy economy....higher and and higher prices for everything you buy? Remember? Ring a bell yet? Guess who served up all that shit to you on a fake gold-plated platter......figured it out yet? We know you're thinking hard....we can smell the wood burning.
