When I first heard yesterday that Henry Gibsonhad died of cancer, I felt like I was alone in my mourning. But a day later, the film blogs have paid him due respect. And it being a slow news day, I’m devoting today’s Bloggery to this great character actor, despite the morbidity of having more than one obit/tribute roundup in one week.
I’m quite happy to see that many people appreciated the actor’s talent, though it makes me sad that he wasn’t given more and better work in his later years. Sure, he was still prolific in his TV and film appearances, but isn’t it a shame his role in Wedding Crashersis his most memorable of the past decade?
I remember the first time I saw and heard him in one of my now-favorite films Nashville. I couldn’t believe it was the same guy I primarily knew from Laugh-Inand Joe Dante films. Maybe it was because I thought he resembled Teller of Penn & Teller, and so in spite of the villainous turns, I typically saw him as a sweet, cute, relatively silent and somewhat dopey-looking character actor. Also, his parts were usually pretty small.
In Nashville, though, he’s a central figure, one who feels far more real than any characters I’d seen him play before. Not that there’s anything wrong with his sillier roles. Check out this villain from an episode of Wonder Womanfor why I truly love him. But the guy obviously had range, and I wish we could have seen more from him.
Check out some more memories of Gibson from other film blogs after the jump: …Read more
This week, thanks to The Rocker, we can add another fictional band to the long list of music groups created solely for the movies. They’re called Vesuvius, and they’re an ‘80s hair band with a hit song titled “Promised Land.” As part of the film’s marketing, the track was offered as a free download for play on Rock Band (see the clip above). But if you ask me, the wrong tune was used in the promotion. Another song from the soundtrack, also credited to Vesuvius, is called “Pompeii Nights,” and it’s definitely the better of the two.
I’m not surprised, though. While most people favor the songs of Spinal Tap, a once-fictional band that has become popular enough to evolve into a “semi-fictional” performing act, I’ve preferred such gems as “The Whites of Their Eyes” by PEZ® People, from The Big Picture. Also co-written by This is Spinal Tap’s Christopher Guest and Michael McKean, and sung by McKean, this song is apparently so underrated that I can’t even find an audio sample, let along a YouTube clip of the fake band’s music video, which was directed by fictional filmmaker Lydia Johnson (Jennifer Jason Leigh).
Fortunately, for the benefit of this list, the rest of these under-appreciated tracks have a few fellow fans.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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