Miracle Mile (1988)

The 1980s yielded some very strange, just outside of the mainstream, films. Films that have a grandiose nature within a small frame, that deviate from the typical, Hollywood sensibilities of what should go in films and how they should be made - challenging subjects inside unlikely vessels. It was a time of experimentation. Films like Ladyhawke, After Hours, Buckaroo Banzai, even Ferris Bueller's Day Off would be hard pressed to see production today. Over the past two decades we've seen this territory approached, but very seldom reached, and in all this time there has been no more beautiful an enigma than Miracle Mile.

Miracle Mile begins with a very simple premise: Harry (Anthony Edwards) accidentally meets the girl of his dreams, Julie (Mare Winningham), and after a successful afternoon together plan for a date. Accidents happen and he misses it. The payphone outside the diner where they were supposed to meet is ringing, so Harry picks up... A frightened voice, who'd gotten the wrong number, tells him that nuclear weapons have been launched at the US, and there's only 70 minutes left. From there the movie takes a serious shift. If Harry really does have such a short time he wants to spend it with Julie, and he'll do anything to get to her. With everything at stake and nothing to lose, Harry, and any of the colorful crowd awake past midnight whom he shares his secret with, are capable of anything. Things get chaotically strange.



The film is a dark, dark comedy, playing off the increasingly bleak perspective of the period right before the iron curtain fell. It's also a romance, and a powerful one. It runs like a chaotic dream where you're constantly finding and losing what you're looking for. LA's Miracle Mile, is transformed from a fun and funky few blocks of city into a tremendous labyrinth. The art direction is astounding and the soundtrack by Tangerine Dream permeates the entire film, accompanying the atmosphere superbly.

The film was originally penned as part of the 1983 Twilight Zone Movie. At one time the script was listed as being among the top 10 best unmade screenplays. Writer and director, Steve De Jarnatt put a significant amount of personal funds and legwork into make the film happen. Not only was the script making film companies uncomfortable, but De Jarnatt didn't have much directing experience; only one previous film, Cherry 2000 (which looks awesome, but I haven't seen it), and writing credits for the Bob and Doug McKenzie movie, Strange Brew. Following Miracle Mile, De Jarnatt's career has been entirely in television. He's worked on everything from X-Files and ER to Lizzie McGuire. Here's hoping he returns to film someday. I'd like to see what else his mind can conjure up.

Miracle Mile is available on DVD, and is up on YouTube:

WATCH IT:


BUY THE FILM: Amazon

And if you want just a little taste of the flavor of Miracle Mile, check out these samples from Tangerine Dream's score:

Miracle Mile: Original Soundtrack From The Hemdale Motion Picture

01 Tangerine Dream - After the Call
02 Tangerine Dream - Running Out of Time
03 Tangerine Dream - Museum Walk

FILE: Samples from Miracle Mile (1988)
BUY IT: Amazon

- Cap

The Plague Dogs (1982)

Many of you may have seen, or at least have heard of, the 1978 animated movie Watership Down. In short, it's an adaptation of the novel by Richard Adams about a group of rabbits who take heed of an apocalyptic prophecy and leave their home. On their journey they undergo many trials and confront a great evil in the form of a fascist regime of rabbits. It is very dark, heart-wrenching, and beautiful. If you haven't seen it, check it out. It is one of my favorite films, and easily one of the greatest animated features.

Watership Down isn't the topic of the discussion though, rather Watership Down's lesser-known bastard sister - The Plague Dogs. Plague Dogs is an adaptation of another Richard Adams book, directed by the same director, and produced by the same studio. However Plague Dogs wasn't a success like Watership Down was, and it's easy to see why. While Watership was dark, it maintained enough lightheartedness, hope, and adventure to serve all audiences. Sure, some kids would get nightmares, but not all of them. Plague Dogs is DARK, pitch black dark. Nightmares, seriously.



The story is about animal testing and the severe and brutal cruelties that can come from it. It opens with one of the main characters, a dog named Rowf, being repeatedly drowned and having the water pumped out of his lungs, you know, just to see. Rowf, and his friend, a dog called Snitter, escape the laboratory and search for a place to call home. Meanwhile, the lab thinks there's a chance that the escaped animals might be carriers of some deadly viral strains they were exparimenting with so they begin to scour the country side to exterminate them. This film is bleak and some really remarkably awful stuff happens, but it's a work of art and throughly compelling. It's basically the Dancer in the Dark of animated films.

After a long time the film was finally made available on DVD in the US, but it's not the full version, about 15 minutes are missing. The most recent international releases are the full 99 minutes. So whip out the region-free DVD player. If you don't have one, get one - there are plenty of good reasons. If that's not the road for you, you can always watch it on good ol' YouTube.

WATCH IT:


BUY IT: Amazon.co.uk

- Cap

Bobby Orlando

If you dip into the dance music world often enough you will one day find that a large portion of your favorite tracks were produced by the same person either under different monikers or as the "man behind the curtain" for a group of pretty models.

Such is the case with Bobby Orlando. His track record is extremely impressive, producing the Pet Shop Boys, Divine, Fancy, The Flirts, and the list goes on. Before I even knew who Bobby "O" was I was already blasting the Pet Shop Boys and Fancy and dying for more. So you can imagine that I was quite excited when I found out that there was one man behind these amazing jams.

Sadly there is not that much information on Bobby Orlando available on the interweb. There is no official site, just this outdated fan site, a Wikipedia entry, this rather in-depth article, and an article from the 80s painting Bobby as a semi-fanatical religious dance producer who creates so many songs because God has commanded him to. Personal theologies and adaptations of the scripture aside, the man produced an incredible amount of infectious songs.

"If a producer has the ability to put out that many records and he doesn't then he is disobeying God's command."

PS - I just found this website that seems to have a good amount of info on Bobby.

From Wikipedia:

Orlando is credited as one of the founding fathers of euro/pop dance music. His productions are easily identifiable by their dense synthesizers, rolling bass lines, and resounding percussion. Orlando tracks showcase him playing multiple instruments including keyboards, guitars, drums, percussion and saxophone. The ringing cowbell percussion lines and robotic sequencers heard in “She Has A Way”, “The Best Part Of Breakin’ Up,” “Desire,” and “Native Love (Step By Step)” define the electrifying sound he pioneered.

LISTEN: last.fm - Bobby Orlando, The Flirts, Divine
BUY IT: Amazon



Some videos for your enjoyment:

Interfilm's Interactive Movies (1995)

Interfilm was one of the many mid-90s attempts to merge live action with interactive gaming. They took things one step further - attempting to reach an even bigger audience with interactive movies.

The set up involved a hand full of theater's arm rests being modded with a 3-button controller. It was basically a choose your own adventure book without any majorly dire consequences - just different methods of achieving the same goal. Audiences were actually encouraged to shout at the screen to affect the other audience member's decisions in the realtime voting. Interfilm became known to me when, while pouring over some old copies of GamePro, I came across this article with some names that seriously caught my eye: the Back to the Future/Interstate 60 dreamteam of Christopher Lloyd and Bob Gale starring in "Mr. Payback: An Interactive Movie."

From BTTF.com:

The film was released in February 1995, in approximately 25 newly retrofitted interactive Interfilm theaters, but it was never released in wide release due to the required $50,000+ each theater had to spend to upgrade their screens with the necessary interactive equipment. Viewers were able to sit through three showings of the twenty minute film (compiled from two hours of footage), with no show ever being shown the same way twice.

"Mr. Payback" is the story of some half-witted vengance robot committing the ultimate sin: posing as a human. Mostly it's a vehicle for repugnant fart jokes and sexual innuendo. What was Bob Gale thinking?

Check out the only existing clips from this film:



The scenes splice nonsensically due to the complex and somewhat nonsenscical 3-laserdisc system used to play the movies. These clips are from one of the three laserdiscs.

"Mr. Payback" was the first release from Interfilm, though not actually the first film. The first film was "I'm Your Man" starring former MTV VJ Kevin Seal. Easily the weirdest thing about this movie is that Joe Jackson did the incidental music for it. Here's a very optimistic promotional documentary produced for the film:



Oddly enough it turns out you can actually purchase and play "I'm Your Man" in DVD form. "I'm Your Man" was the third film released, possibly out of desperation, after the Adam West sci-fi bycicle race comedy "Ride For Your Life." "Ride For Your Life" toned down the "edgy" PG-13 sass for a lighter, more video gamey fair. Apparenlty "Mr. Payback" upset more than a few theatergoers:

"That was like watching pornography," one viewer complained after having subjected her preteen daughters to 20 minutes of Mr. Payback.

I thank Joe Redifer deeply for making details of this oddity available to the interweb.

- Cap

Prince Buster - Fabulous: Greatest Hits (1963-1981)

I have always been a fan of dub music and early ska. Now, I don't claim to be at all that knowledgeable when it comes to these genres but I always try to grab a few albums when I find them cheap. What we have here is a real gem! Prince Buster isn't your 2 tone or third wave ska. This is the original stuff baby!

LISTEN: last.fm
BUY IT: Amazon

From Wikipedia:

Cecil Bustamente Campbell, O.D. (born May 28, 1938), better known as Prince Buster and less known by his muslim name Muhammed Yusef Ali, is a musician from Kingston, Jamaica and regarded as one of the most important figures in the history of ska and rocksteady music. The records he made on the Blue Beat label in the 1960s inspired many reggae and ska artists.

- Nick

Musique D'Express (1990)

Express clothing stores were the number one source for fashion-savvy American women to indulge in sleek, Parisian style. Conceived as a younger, hipper version of its parent company, The Limited, Express channeled the streamline fluidity and comfort of European fashion. Even their clothing displays were chic. One of my earliest memories in a shopping mall is of an Express display: mannequins resembling surrealist painter René Magritte’s bowler-hatted men with apples hovering in front of their faces, set against red brick walls with silhouettes of cut-out sky behind them. During this golden age in the clothing retailer’s history, Express was miles ahead of the rest of the mainstream. Yet amidst all this thought-provoking fashion there was one key element that cemented and secured Express’ slick ambiance - the amazing playlist of French pop music they piped through their speakers.

In 1990, through Polygram Records, Express released a compilation cassette, called Musique D’Express. The album is rich with the energetic stylings of sophisiti-pop at the ’80s-’90s cusp. Even today its tracks are a lush selection of fresh sounds and artists that most American ears are unfamiliar with. I was six-years-old at the time. I remember the display for the tape next to the register, and I remember my mom buying it. It must seem strange that I have such vivid memories of a clothing store. However, something profound and subconscious was at work. I grew up without MTV, there wasn't a hip older relative bringing the mainstream world to me, and I was too young to pay much mind to the pop culture surrounding me. The tape's attractive harmonies and mysterious, moody lyrics. were a first taste of what I'd been missing. New wave, pop, modern rock and all the other music of the time was trapped in the background as melodies I was effected by but could never capture. I distinctly remember overhearing Phil Collins’ “Another Day in Paradise” and Bruce Hornsby’s “The Way it is” in a grocery store around this same time and being bewitched by them. It was many years later before I ever figured out what the songs were and who was behind them. Musique D’Express was a crystallization of many musical sensations I was only beginning to understand.

Niagra’s “Soleil d’Hiver” glistens like sunlight through glass bricks, Claudia Phillips’ “Picasso” and Luna Parker’s “Fric Frack” are collages of splashy synths and summertime fun, and Pauline Ester’s “Oui, Je l’adore” is a big band twirl through night rhythms and soft focus lenses. Meanwhile, on the opposite spectrum, legendary French singer, Serge Gainsbourg, re-renders the French classic “Mon Légionnaire” into a grungy, grinding funk set to a sexy bass line. The video for the song is a gem of conceptual excess, featuring a smokey factory setting with muscly urban dancers. François Feldman’s “J’ai Peur” shares “Mon Légionnaire”’s dark beat but with a faster, more danceable, tempo. Feldman’s other track on the album, “Joue Pas“, is a duet with the soulful-voiced Joniece Jamison where pop and R&B meet at a compelling middle ground. From the jaunty stroll of Lio’s “Tu Es Formidable” to the dreamy saxophone-lit melodies of Vanessa Paradis‘ “Soldat” and “Joe le Taxi“, Musique D’Express is perfect for any kind of cool you want to be.

I listened to the album all through my childhood, but at some point in my adolescence it got swept by the wayside. When I wanted to find it again, I couldn’t remember the name of the album, the titles of the songs, or any of the artists - I hadn’t paid attention to any of that as a kid. I only remembered the tape itself. With the nagging memory in mind, I spent a good deal of time fretting over finding the tape, or at least figuring out what it was called. I searched online, I scoured thrift stores, I even e-mailed Express and asked about it, but they didn’t know who to go to with a question about a promotion that old. Finally, I managed to type the right combination of words and Google delivered to me an Amazon page where used copies were being sold.

I now present to you Musique D’Express ten succulent tracks (plus the weird little tones that play before the side changes). It is one of the finest compilations of its time, personifying a specific moment in music that is frequently overlooked - a virtual time travel transport to the harmonics of 1990s France, or perhaps a shopping mall somewhere in the past.

FILE: Musique D'Express (1990)
BUY IT: Amazon.com

- Cap

Cop Rock (1990)

Over the years Steven Bochco has created a lot of hit television shows. Hill Street Blues, LA Law, NYPD Blue, and the list goes on. But even KISS and the Rolling Stones had disco songs. If you get what I am saying. Know when to say when!



But then again who thought a show about a robotic little girl would last four seasons?

More on YouTube
More on Wikipedia

- Nick