friday flick fix: girl (1998)

Girl is a 1998 movie about - you guessed it, a girl.  Specifically a straight-A high school senior from the upscale part of a small town, who suddenly discovers the underground scene and swaps her safe, boring life for an exciting new one filled with rock music, grungy fashion and cute boys.

In short, she falls in love with a rock star and becomes a full-fledged groupie.

back when teen wolf was a low-budget youth movie

I'm not a fan, but I recently caught an episode of the Teen Wolf (2011) series.  It's supposedly inspired by   the 1985 flick with the same title (You know - Michael J. Fox's other movie that year) which spawned a 1987 TV series.   It's got the same general conflict:  teenage boy discovers he's a werewolf and his life is forever changed.   It also has the same main characters' names, and the same sucky title.

back when everything i needed to know about life i learned from daria

My ten most valuable lessons learned from MTV's Daria.

  

friday flick fix: sixteen candles

Sixteen Candles (1984) is one of my favorite '80s movies.  It's a funny and relatable look into high school infatuation, directed by John Hughes. Starring the former teen queen herself, Molly Ringwald.

friday flick fix: hackers (1995)

When the possibilities of PCs and the worldwide web were yet a huge mystery, a flick like this was considered wickedly cool ... but next to idiotic now that people carry computers in their pockets and spend most of the day online. You will just have to keep in mind that it was released at a time before it was considered a necessity to have an e-mail address.

back when everything we needed to know we learned in clueless

As if!

friday flick fix back to the future

Images from here.

The Hubby and I marathoned the Back To the Future movies a couple of weeks ago when we were experiencing jet lag. We agreed that an 80's sci-fi comedy with the likes of Michael J. Fox makes for good late-night company. ^_^ The last (and first time) we watched the three movies straight was around this time last year; I was supposed to write an entry in time for the 25th anniversary of Back To The Future (1985) in 2010 but some things came up and I hardly had any time for blogging.

So, anyway.

Robert Zemeckis' Back To the Future (starring Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd) was another one of our Betamax frequents when I was a school-age child. I think it was everybody's go-to Beta tape - can't imagine any '80s kid who never watched it at least once. Personally I'd memorized the details and bits of dialogue from watching it again and again and again.

Love the soundtrack too; Huey Lewis and the News were very hip in those days.

BTF was so flipping cool, with the cute guy dressed in a life-vest and sneakers; the cute girl in grandma's clothes, and the time machine dressed in a luxury car, and all the space-time jargon around the Flux Capacitor. There was an incestuous love-triangle-turned-love-square, but things ended happier ever after for the McFlys.

The DeLorean was a hot piece of automobile in the mid-'80s. It was streamlined (yeah, compared to the staple box-types) and supposedly ultra-modern. Its doors flipped upward like wings instead of opening the usual way, and that was ostentatiously, outrageously wyckid.


Logically, an amped-up DeLorean in a hip movie about time travel raised its popularity.

But it took only a few years for people to realize that those unconventional doors were massively inconvenient, not to mention unnecessary, so it isn't a wonder that we don't see cars like that anymore.


Michael J. Fox was like one of the hugest teen idols outside of the Brat Pack. Though at that time I think he was around a decade to old to be considered a teen, but he looked young and starred in a couple of youth-oriented flicks.

He was the original Teen Wolf (1985), a well-loved '80s classic that has now become another unfortunate victim of re-imagining (The original Teen Wolf was a wholesome comedy, by the way, for you kiddies who think everything you watch nowadays is original).

Something as big and as top-grossing as Back To the Future was sure to have a sequel, specifically since the last shot in the movie was superimposed with a huge TO BE CONTINUED. Back to The Future II (1989) thus came four years after.


Four years felt like a lifetime for a kid like me, but pleased as I was, I was half-surprised producers even bothered to grind out the sequel.

But -- Great Scott! What happened to Jennifer!?

Image from RetroJunk.com

Part II pulled a switcheroo, subtly slipping in a new actress for the same character. The whole last scene of the first movie was the first scene of the second, re-shot exactly as it was but with a different Jennifer. The new blonde who played Marty McFly's old girlfriend was Elizabeth Shue, who was later in Melrose Place, The Saint and Hollow Man.

I don't even remember who the original Jennifer was.

Something I do remember about this second movie was that it was nominated for (or did it actually win?) best visual effects. The particularly impressive scene was the one where Michael J. Fox played an aged Marty McFly, Marty junior and Marty junior's sister, all in one shot. Back then, that was an incredible feat of manual film editing.

Another bit that was so amusing about the second movie were the references to the first. Like for example that part where Marty McFly lies semi-conscious on a bed in the dark, being nursed by his mother. And all the 1955 scenes that make it into the timeline. I'd hate to retell everything here, but if you've seen both movies, you'd know what I mean.

A whole chunk of movie II was set in 2015. Seeing the flick for the first time in the cinema, we all probably thought the moviemakers did an amazing job of extrapolating what would happen thirty years into the future. Well I certainly did, and I even hoped hoverboards, smart homes and self-adjusting clothing really would come around soon.

Watching it again in 2011 - which really isn't that far from 2015 - all the "futurism" seems so ludicrous (but not in a bad way, mind you; it's still a comedy after all). For one thing, today's graphics are no longer so angular. Hover technology is still lightyears from becoming mainstream, and not even NASA's astronauts wear intelligent clothing.

On the plus side, the concept of video-communication is more or less consistent with today's goings on, except that we use the internet now instead of phone lines and Fax machines.

That Retro Cafe scene where Marty taught a couple of kids how to play a video game from the '80s - that's hilarious because it's quite spot-on that the little kids of 2015 would call it a baby's game. Video games today are a far cry from Marty's Lone Gunman, which was already quite advanced in 1985.

One of those kid actors was the young Elijah Wood in his first screen appearance (left) :

From RetroJunk.com

Other notable appearances: Before he was known as the Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist, Flea was in the second and third movie as Needles.

Image from RetroJunk.com

Billy Zane of Titanic fame, also then a nobody but already cute, was one of Biff / Griff's henchmen (right, back):



Just as the first installment closed with TO BE CONTINUED, Part II finished with TO BE CONCLUDED, immediately followed by a teaser trailer of the third movie.


Part III came a year after II. For Marty McFly though, all these things took place within the span of a few days.

Marty and Doc continue their adventure in 1885. The DeLorean gets smashed after Marty gets home, Doc constructs a steampunk time machine with a train as a base. Marty develops character and therefore saves his future, and everything ends with a high note.

In my opinion, this is the least spectacular of the trilogy, but it does give some sort of conclusion.

------------------------

At the beginning of this post, I mentioned the Hubby and I had a bit of jet lag. Early June this year, we spent a week in California and one of the places we visited was Universal Studios, where much of Back To The Future was filmed.



On the studio tour, we were shown the set that was once used for the Hill Valley clock tower:

Photo mine

(which was also the courthouse for Liar, Liar and the town square for this period movie)

... and one of the prop DeLoreans:


And that concludes today's trip back to my childhood years. Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did!

friday flick fix: dazed and confused (1993)

Really sorry I can't credit the photos.

I nicked them some time ago.

A huge '70s revival went on back in the 1990's. Bell bottoms and platforms made a comeback, disco music was covered by showbands at clubs and That '70s Show was a top-rating sitcom. Here and there were movies set in the 1970s.

Dazed and Confused was set in 1976. It shows a day in the lives of some high-schoolers - the last day of school to be exact. It doesn't really follow the story of any one of them, but shows bits and pieces about the incoming seniors and incoming freshmen.

It's supposedly rife with '70s cliches - as in, actual people from back then are supposed to be reminded of actual people who were like the characters. I heard that to fully appreciate this flick, you had to be a teenager in 1976. I wasn't even born then yet.

Cliches in a teen movie definitely mean stereotypes, so here we go ...

There were the football-playing, pot-smoking jocks:

At left is the cute one (Jason London), at right is the brawny one.

The nervous incoming freshmen, straight from their last day of middle school:

The queen bee:

A cute Parker Posey in shoulder pads and super-short, ratty denim cutoffs.
A couple of years ago she played Lex Luther's girlfriend Kitty in Superman Returns.

I think it was the fashion for girls in the late '70s to cut their old jeans so short that the pockets stuck out. I once heard a story of how girls used to sew their clothes themselves, and some daring ones made skirts the length of their hand-span.

The nice bitch / popular jock's steady girl:

Joey Lauren Adams. She was in a few other '90s teen movies after this.
Her most recent notable role was as Jennifer Aniston's character's friend in The Break-Up.

A silent, pot-smoking, hippie-chick girlfriend:

She's so gorgeous, you noticed her presence even if she hardly said a thing.
This is model/actress Milla Jovovich, before she was famous. We know her today as Resident Evil action hero Alice.

A soup-brained pothead:

If you're a fan of CSI: Miami, you may recognize Rory Cochrane as Speedle (the agent who died). He was also in 24.

A dumb bully who will be repeating his senior year with the incoming batch:

Recognize this actor?
This is Ben Affleck, in his pre-Good Will Hunting, pre-stardom days.

One of the other dudes intent on paddling the freshmen:

After graduating from teen roles, Cole Hauser was later in 2 Fast 2 Furious, Tears of the Sun, and The Break-Up.

A sleazy older guy who won't relinquish his high school glory days:

Matthew McConaughey, with the pedophile mustache.

Apparently male fashion included ultratight pants and ultratight shirts with folded sleeves. Men sometimes stuffed a packet of cigarettes into one of the folded sleeves - see McConaughey above. I remember my uncle used to do that up until the early '80s.

The not-so-popular kids:

Adam Goldberg at left.
You may have noticed him from Friends or Saving Private Ryan.

At right is Anthony Rapp. He's Mark in both the theater and film versions of Rent.

The not-so-popular readhead was played by Marisa Ribisi.
Today she's mostly known as Giovanni Ribisi's twin sister, or Beck's significant other.

And the various background people:

You probably didn't spot her, but that's a chubby Renee Zellweger in an obscure role.

This flick was cool stuff when I was a teenager - I don't remember exactly why though. I recently watched it as an adult and went, What the heck was that all about again? There were funny and/or interesting scenes in there, but as the credits rolled I realized that the whole movie was just a series of funny and/or interesting scenes that don't make up much of a story - which isn't really a bad thing, especially since the movie title includes the words dazed and confused.

back when before there was a tv comedy about musically-inclined teen misfits

... there was this television comedy about these musically-inclined teens.

"Don't wake me up when I'm dreamin' ..."

California Dreams is an early '90s TV series about high school kids juggling school work, coping with growing-up issues and pursuing their dreams.

Bands were big in the early '90s. This group of friends got together to form their own musical group and called themselves (a very cheesy name) California Dreams. They wrote original songs, played gigs and hoped to get signed up to release a recording. Since music was a huge part of the characters' lives, there was a musical number every now and then - no dancing about; just singing, smiling and posturing with their instruments. I think most of the cast members did their own singing for this show.

My friends and I used to watch this as often as we could back then. Saturday afternoons, channel 9. My best friend and I fussed over the limited info we could about the show's cuties (this was of course before the dawn of fansites and widespread internet use, so limited meant very limited). I had scrawled Michael Cade on the top margin of my notebook to remember the name of the guy who played Sylvester "Sly" Winkle, and that was pretty much the only info I ever gathered about him.

I don't remember much of the plotlines but I do remember California Dreams was a positive, feel-good kind of teen-oriented show that promoted good moral values. In true early '90s teen sitcom fashion, the clothes were unrealistically colorful, the songs unbelievably positive and the teens too cute to be true. It was a definitely more wholesome alternative to that other show about high schoolers that made parents nervous, Beverly Hills 90210.

As with most television series centered on the young, the characters had to grow up sometime; California Dreams had to graduate. Which was probably just as well, since viewer tastes evolved in the mid-'90s. The colorful, cute and cheery were soon considered corny because real high school life was no longer just about peer pressure and trying not to get caught running in the halls. Teens wanted something more like 90210 - edgy, allegedly more realistic, honest about life's struggles (i.e., what about those people who don't say no to drugs or premarital sex?), and packaged with an up-to-date pop-rock soundtrack. Moral lessons were no longer valued, and choice became a popular concept. Producers gave in and pretty soon there was an influx of Dawson and Joey types who slept around, got wasted onscreen and had almost-useless parents. It's still pretty much the pattern of the most popular teen TV series these days - including the supposedly "wholesome" one with musically-inclined misfits that break into song every now and then.

friday flick fix: can't hardly wait (1998)

I recently went through my in-laws' DVD library hoping to find something I can borrow; I needed some "background entertainment" while making fashion accessories for a buyer. Fortunately, tucked in the top shelf was a backup copy of Can't Hardly Wait (1998).

I've seen this flick before of course, and considered "renting" it - I remembered it to be sufficiently happy and feelgood, with a good amount of noise to keep me awake; simple enough not to pay attention to, but it's not the too-idiotic kind of slapstick. I decided to take it home to play while I worked.

Poster from here.
Directed by Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan.
With Jennifer Love Hewitt, Ethan Embry,

Seth Green, Lauren Ambrose, Charlie Korsmo, Peter Facinelli

For all its teen-movie stereotypes, silliness and predictability, it's still fun. I'm glad that it at least didn't have a prom scene.

Can't hardly believe that this movie was released over a decade ago; for some reason it looks rather fresh. The clothes weren't even too '90s.

But of course the mere appearance of Jennifer Love Hewitt as the dreamgirl Amanda Beckett makes the movie dated (likable choice for the role, BTW).

In the late '90s Hewitt became a teen queen for her work in Party of Five and the I Know What You Did Last Summer franchise. She even had an album back then and a rumored boob job.

Anyway.

I loved the geeks in Can't Hardly Wait, particularly the overachieving and vengeful William Lichter (Charlie Korsmo) who became top dog for one night (Trivia: Did you know he was the kid in Hook?). But There's just something about them nerds and their plot that is too reminiscent of John Hughes' Sixteen Candles (1984).

Re-watching this flick, I recognized a lot of extras who had significant roles in other late '90s teen movies - Sean Patrick Thomas (Save The Last Dance), Donald Faison (Clueless), Breckin Meyer (Clueless), Channon Roe (Girl), Clea Duvall (She's All That), Tamala Jones.

A not-yet-famous Selma Blair and Jaime Pressly were in there too for a few minutes each.




Already-famous-then Melissa Joan Hart (a.k.a. Sabrina the Teenage Witch), Jerry O'Connel and Jenna Elfman (of Dharma and Greg) had cameos.

Can't Hardly Wait isn't film at its best; I would even agree with anyone who'd say it's a poorly-made movie (note: cliches, stereotypes, predictable outcome, corny dialogues, flat characters, focus problems, continuity problems, sloppy ending et al). But it's one heck of a fun ride back to 1998.

These days we still get to see a lot of Jeniffer Love Hewitt in The Ghost Whisperer and a flop movie here and there, though I kinda think she's too cute for non-teen roles. Keeping everyone up-to-date with the public's interest in her lady parts, she became the first celebrity advocate of vajazzling.



Seth Green, who played "the wannabe" Kenny Fisher (the annoyance who thinks he's Afro-American) has since been spotted in the Austin Powers movies and The Italian Job. He's also one of the geniuses behind Robot Chicken, and the voice of Family Guy's Griffin.




Lauren Ambrose who was "the best friend" Denise Fleming as later seen in the HBO series Six Feet Under (2001).




Good for Peter Facinelli - formerly "the jock" Mike Dexter - he has a series of movies lined up as Dr. Carlisle Cullen in the Twilight Saga.




I also noticed that one of Mike Dexter's goofy henchmen was Freddy Rodriguez, who happens to be Wray in the 2007 Grindhouse movies.




I have no idea what Ethan Embry has been in lately.

friday flick fix:10 things i hate about you

I hate the way you talk to me, and the way you cut your hair. I hate the way you drive my car, I hate it when you stare.
I hate your big dumb combat boots and the way you read my mind. I hate you so much it makes me sick, it even makes me rhyme.
I hate the way you're always right, I hate it when you lie. I hate it when you make me laugh, even worse when you make me cry.
I hate it when you're not around,

and the fact that you didn't call...

Image found floating around Tumblr.

The year was 1999. I was twenty-one years old and resented teen movies - not because I thought I'd already outgrown them, but because they were usually poorly-produced crap with corny dialogues. Good thing there were a few exceptions in the vast flood of pathetic film misrepresentations of my generation.

Such as 10 Things I Hate About You (1999). 




10 Things I Love About 10 Things I Hate About You

1. It's a bastardized modernized Shakespeare.
   
   I have a sort of liking for Will's love children by contemporary cinema. Ten Things was based on the Bard's comedie, The Taming of the Shrew.
   
   
2. Julia Stiles.
   
   Not just another mean blonde in a teen flick, she played heinous bitch quite convincingly, while still being very appealing. I love how she hadn't just played the role but conveyed nuances (like how she slipped on a self-conscious smile in the serenade scene, or how she spontaneously blushed after flashing the coach).
   
   After seeing this movie for the first time, I decided I was going to be a Julia Stiles fan -- but it turns out she was never into becoming that big of a star.
   
   TRIVIA: Julia Stiles starred in 2 other adapted Shakespeares. She played Desi - based on Desdemona - in a campust-set version of Othelo entitled O (2001). She was also Ophelia in a modernized Hamlet (2000).
   
   
3. Heath Ledger.
   
   Heath Ledger was and is lovable in any role. I especially enjoy watching him croon over Kat from the bleachers.
   
   Too bad we won't be seeing any more from him. :(
   
   
4. The characters.
   
   They were endearing, even the antagonistic classmates and the teachers. They didn't come off as trying too hard to look cool but were actually believable. Though absurdly exaggerated, the main characters seemed to represent real high-schoolers - not airbrushed movie stars - with just the right proportions of cuteness, naivete and awkwardness.
   
   I also appreciate how the characters were not at all cliche teen-flick staples - no blonde cheerleader, no football jock, no bespectacled geeks.
   
   
5. The casting.
   
   I kinda think the cast was perfect. They were pretty much nobodies when that movie came out (except probably for Larisa Oleynik, who was easily recognizable as Alex Mack), but I could't imagine a better Kat Stratford, a better Patrick Verona, Cameron and so on. Well, I suppose there could be a better Bianca, but Larisa wasn't so bad.
   
   Where are they now? Take a look at this for flash updates.
   
   
6. The soundtrack.
   
   Barenaked Ladies, Save Ferris, Letters To Cleo et al. To this day, I keep songs from 10 Things in my playlist.
   
   
7. The witty, quippy script.
   
   Particularly Kat's comebacks and AV Club geek Mikey's lines.
   
   
8. The love-hate poem.
   
   Even if it had a slight drizzling of cheese and corn, it was a clever deconstruction of a Shakespeare sonnet.
   
   
9. Letters to Cleo in the end song.
   
   The band rocked their version of I Want You To Want Me on a rooftop. Abominably cool.
   
   
10. The outtakes that showed while the credits rolled.
    
    The flick was funny enough by itself, but those scenes were a hilarious add-on.

Plus an extra thing, #11: Witch Hazel's song, Your Winter, a snippet of which played after Kat and Bianca's heart-to-heart. It isn't a fabulous song at all, not even my preferred genre, but it happens to have a particular significance to me. Your Winter somewhat spelled out how I felt over a relationship that ended about that time period.

-------------------------------------------

A few days ago, I was channel-surfing and I stumbled upon a TV series entitled 10 Things I Hate About You (2009). It had the familiar dialogues, but very alien faces. Confuddled, I watched it for a while and saw that it even had the same logotype for the title. What the -- ?

Apparently, ten years after Ten Things I Hate About You was first released, some people thought of making a television remake. Oh, say it isn't so! (More importantly - Has it really been ten years?) A bastardized bastardized Shakespeare. It had the same set of characters, only with a younger, blander cast (except for Mr. Stratford; the role is reprised by the same guy in the original flick). There were obvious attempts at cleverness, but it didn't have the cutting wit the '99 movie exploded with.
.

friday flick fix: footloose (1984)

Image from here

Footloose (1984)
Starring Kevin Bacon | John Lithgow | Lori Singer
directed by Herbert Ross
Plot summary here.

Everybody cut, everybody cut! =D

Eighties kids are familiar with Kenny Loggin's LSS-prone song, Footloose, which was the theme to the 1984 youth-oriented film. I'm not sure which came first - did the song inspire the movie, or did the producers of the film ask Loggins to write it for the soundtrack?

I recall there was a bit of a dance craze, mostly involving kicking your feet and throwing your hands up. The getup: high-waist baston jeans and sneakers. Throw a printed button-down shirt over a tank top, roll the sleeves up real high, then tie the front instead of buttoning it. Accessorize with a bulky, angular Walkman and headphones.

Footloose happens to be one of the Hubby's childhood faves, so he couldn't resist buying it when he chanced upon it on the sale rack of the video store. I never saw it before, so seeing it now for the first ever time feels like watching a B-movie. Of course as with all classics, I had to adjust my lenses a bit.

Hanep ang fashion. Baston kung baston!

Kevin Bacon used to be cute. Not exactly gorgeous but quite attractive. I never knew he could dance like that. I wonder if he still does. It'd be almost sad if he didn't, but then again he's found his niche as a dramatic actor.

Also in that movie is young Sarah Jessica Parker, at that time fresh from her geek role in Square Pegs. Not yet the Carrie Bradshaw-ish bombshell fashionista we know her to be today, she was cast as the leading lady's supportive, less attractive friend.

It was so bizarre that the characters kept on referring to their dance music as "rock", hahaha.

And oh - I got a kick out of seeing an old-school Walkman. Those things were one of the coolest inventions at a time no one has yet even dreamed of the possibility of an MP3 player.

IMDB says a remake is in production. I'm pretty much indifferent. Another dance movie starring virtual nobodies? Another "breaking the status quo" story? Whatever.

The word footloose is so dated, it sounds like something a Quaker would say. It would be dorky to use in a movie after the year 2000. (I'm trying to think of a more current word that means footloose. Merriam-Webster defines it as having no ties; free to move about). Besides, "rock" and "dance" music are a lot more distinct these days.

On the other hand (um, my more polite hand), I can see why it appealed to the 1984 crowd and how it might possibly still tickle 2011 moviegoers. I mean, 2011 moviegoers besides the already-existing fans from a subset of Generation X.

Well, first of all it's got that overused breaking free from the status quo / standing up for what you believe sort of theme. Story lines like that work on the dreamer in everybody.

And then - combine that theme with a particular kind of hero. Or shall i say, antihero. The nice rebel type who becomes a catalyst of change in a community devoid of passion. Ren McCormack (played by Kevin Bacon) reflects that part of our personae that is just itching for change, gathering strength to stand up to our own Reverend Moores (played by John Lithgow)

Then toss in a contemporary soundtrack and a bit of choreography. Teenagers (and the young at heart) love music and energy. Even if means sitting through a scene with a dude freaking and thinking no one's watching.

As shallow and as slow-paced old movies go, Footloose bored me. I fell asleep halfway through and had to pick it up another day. I finished it just because it's a loved classic, but with all the predictables I don't think I'll be watching it again any time. It's just nice to load up on classic movies.

friday flick fix: not another teen movie (2001)

While waiting out the hours last night, I decided to pop Not Another Teen Movie into the player. It's light, corny viewing; a not-so wholesome cheerer-upper that I watch at least once a year. It's silly, predictable and a little bit disgusting, but it's a whole lot of fun - especially if you're familiar with the movies it parodies.


In Scary Movie fashion, it's a hodge-podge of plot cliches and stereotypical characters from teen flicks that have piled up in the mid-eighties through the nineties. Featuring oh-too-familiar characters such as the bitchy blonde cheerleeder, the jock, the poor girl, the obsessed best friend and the token black guy.

Starring no one famous (Chris Evans and Jamie Pressley are in there, but they weren't really known yet at that time), with cameos including Good Charlotte, Mr. T, Lyman Ward (the dad in Ferris Bueller's Day Off) Melissa Joah Hart, Sean Patrick Thomas and 80's teen queen Molly Ringwald. Paul Gleason also reprises his role as Dick Vernon from The Breakfast Club.

I was able to identify bits that were parodied from the following movies:

American Beauty (1999)
American Pie (1999)
The Breakfast Club (1985)
Bring It On (2000)
Can't Buy me Love (1987)
Can't Hardly Wait (1998)
Cruel Intentions (1999)
Dazed and Confused (1993)
I Know What You did Last Summer (1997)
Jawbreaker (1999)
Never Been Kissed (1999)
Porky's (1982)
Pretty In Pink (1987)
Road Trip (2000)
Rudy (1993)
She's All That (1999)
Sixteen Candles (1984)
Ten Things I Hate About You (1999)
Varsity Blues (1999)
The Wedding Singer (1998)

The thing I love most about Not Another Teen Movie is the soundtrack. It includes remade hits from the '80s, such as Nena's 99 Luftballons (performed by Goldfinger and given a punk-ish twist), OMD's New Wave hit If You Leave (remade by Good Charlotte), Soft Cell's Tainted Love (shock-rocked by Marilyn Manson), New Order's Bizarre Love Triangle (redone by Stabbing Westward), and one of my personal all-time favorites, Modern English's Melt With You (punked-up by Mest).

It's not exactly suitable viewing for teenagers (because of the sexual content and nudity), but it may be a kick for adults who were teenagers when all those teen flicks came out.

back when the original karate kid movies showed

I kinda think that everybody loves a good underdog movie.

The Karate Kid (1984) is in my opinion one of the best feelgood movies of the '80s. It's a classic coming-of-age, character development plot, a sort of Cinderella story complete with a Fairy Godmother type, but with a lot of testosterone.

It had two of the most memorable movie characters - the nice-guy antihero Daniel played by Ralph Macchio; and the steady, wise sensei Mr. Miyagi, played by Pat Morita. Morita's Oscar-nominated Miyagi became a sort of legend; he set the tone for movie sensei roles.

It became so popular that wax on, wax off and the crane pose became a sort of Gen-X inside joke.

A sequel came out in 1986 and a Part 3 in 1989 - those probably weren't as inspiring or compelling as the first movie (Part 2 was particularly mushy) but were just as loved.

(In fact they were so loved, producers coughed up The Next Karate Kid in 1994 to milk the fans - sans Daniel and starring a then-unknown Hilary Swank. An utter flop. I don't even consider it as part of the franchise. The trilogy is fine)



I think one reason why The Karate Kid was / is so lovable (despite it's unimaginative title) was because everyone could relate to Daniel, the underdog. We were drawn in by Daniel's nice naivete and were hooked by his need to be something more. It tickled the dreamers and idealists in us as we watched him grow with the aid of an unlikely but awesome mentor, until in the end he kicked a** and showed those nasty rich guys who used to pick on him - all while still staying unbelievably nice.

Weren't we all tense and inwardly cheering with the crowd while he was doing that crane thing in the end?



And of course, the lovable antihero got the girl (played by Elisabeth Shue, who always seemed to play leading man's girlfriend in '80s and early '90s movies).

The movie even came with an unforgettable pop-rock soundrack - how much more '80s could you get than Moment of Truth? It was really fitting for the story. But the hopeless romantic in me liked Peter Cetera's uber-cheesy Glory of Love in the sequel: I am a man who will fight for your honor ... I'll be the hero you've been dreaming of ... Tsss. I don't even remember the theme song for the third movie.

The Karate Kid is forever enshrined; it had / has the right combination for a must-watch, must-have family classic. (It's been Robot Chicken-ed, and that says something). It's one of those movies I wouldn't mind marathoning over and over again. It's something from my childhood that I would love to bequeath to the next generation of children.

But wait - the plot thickens ...

Some time ago when I heard that Will and Jada Pinkett Smith were producing a Karate Kid remake, I was less than excited. Remakes have often been cataclysmic letdowns.


On top of that, I felt like they were defiling a well-respected memory, taking advantage of an already-existent fanbase and attempting to milk Gen-Xers by playing on their nostalgia. The movie was even using the same title though it featured kung-fu and not karate. I was especially offended when I found out that it was starring the Smiths' own son Jaden, who I thought awfully young for the lead -- and was this kid supposed to be a bigger star than Mr. Jackie Chan to be given top billing? They were even using Jackie Chan to draw viewers.

I made up my mind that this Kung-Fu Kid movie was going to utterly suck and I wasn't going to watch it.

It's just that the Hubby and I were hanging out with his parents last Sunday and they wanted to watch it, so we gave in and bought tickets.

... And boy, I was not disappointed.

The Karate Kid (2010) rocks! Props to! [NO SPOILERS HERE] Finally, a remake at par with the original.

This 2010 movie works on the same plot, and I'm glad for that, even if it was about kung-fu. It's minus the corny '80s dialogue of course, but I noticed it stuck with a huge bulk of the script, infused with some elements that were obviously Will Smith in attitude. It paid homage to original Karate Kid trademarks such as wax on, wax off and the old catching-a-fly-with-chopsticks trick, but those were not presented at all in the expected cliche way. Dre Parker (the new Daniel, played by Jaden Smith) did not have a crane thing at the end, but he did have something else that might be a little less dramatic but just as good.

And yes, it's fitting for Jaden Smith to have top billing.

It's just as entertaining and inspiring as the original Karate Kid, but perhaps a bit more exhilarating because of the faster pace. I'd love to watch it over again, even just for the martial arts sequences (and those Chinese boys really steal the show - those kids are unbelievable). I've been telling my friends to watch it.

But nothing will ever compare to the tandem of Daniel-San and Mr. Miyagi of course.