Father's Day- Hulk, Rollerball

(NOTE: This is a discontinued post from New England Guy that I (LAGuy) am salvaging. Hope you don't mind, NEG. And where's your post about the Celtics?) (I finished- see below-NEG)


For Fathers Day, I did a lot a things with my 11 year old son- we went to see "The Incredible Hulk," watched "Rollerball" on DVD (the 1975 version with James Caan) and hiked 3 miles to an ice cream place. ( I think that was both carbon and calorie-neutral). It was about the best Father's Day I can remember

I thought the "Hulk" was pretty good- a vast improvement over Ang Lee's 2003 effort will some cool cameos and inside references ("The Courtship of Eddie's Father" shows up on a Brazilian TV set). My 63 pound son owns four seasons of the Bill Bixby TV series so I've seen a lot of the Hulk recently and thought this movie did a pretty good job of conveying the angst and loneliness of Dr. David/Bruce Banner (although he always has hot smart girls interested in him- here its Liv Tyler)

Rollerball I remember from network TV in the 70s and I was worried about the R rating and what might have been left out. Actually pretty tame by today's standards.

[Thanks LA Guy you have editing powers that I don't have or haven't figured out how to use - I got pulled away mid post- the rest should should read:]

Rollerball-Three exciting rollerball games with great use of Bach (I will admit I always think of Bach's "Toccata and Fugue" or "Adagio" as the "Theme from Rollerball" whenever I hear it and didn't know it was actual classical music until recently- I thought it was a stadium organ special)

As a youth, I thought the movie was exciting action surrounded by what I remembered as dull impenetrable scenes about some vague corporate future. On rewatching, its now not so impenetrable but its still boring. (My son on the other liked the action but he was fascinated by the sterile corporate future.) I'm not sure "corporate" is the right word- they were much more like big government- although maybe their capitalistic efficiency had enabled the corporate directors to solve all social problems- so much so that people now had to watch violent sports and burn down pine trees so that they could at least feel something.

(Also, James Caan really nailed the portrayal of the inarticulate jock- so much so that its fairly hard to follow him when he speaks)

Interesting comment from the featurette from shaggy-looking director Norman Jewison on the set - paraphrasing-"I believe that in 5-10 or certainly 20 years that we will witness violent sports like Rollerball in the US." He said this 33 years ago- weed and big pronouncements I think were more common in the seventies. He also said that he didn't want to romanticize the violence, which was a risk he took in making this film, and made the movie to show the dangers of violence in sports. I think there he failed-the violence is entertaining and pretty much the whole appeal of the movie.

Next weekend -"Konga" and the Rollerball remake (looks horrible).

[Thanks LA Guy . The only thing I'll say about the Celtics is maybe now I can stop hearing and seeing "Beat LA" everywhere.]