The Monday Movie – What’s up, Doc?

When I was at primary school, some nuns came to visit one day and showed us the film this week’s classic scene comes from. True story. It was on a proper projector and everything, none of this new-fangled VCR or DVD nonsense.

The film is 1972’s What’s Up, Doc?, a screwball comedy produced, co-written and directed by Peter Bogdanovich. Conceived as an homage of sorts to classic American comedies from the 1930s, the film plays kind of like a cross between a Harold Lloyd film , a Warner Brothers Looney Tunes cartoon and the 1930 film Bringing Up Baby, its most obvious direct inspiration.

It stars Barbra Streisand, Ryan O’Neal and Madeleine Kahn as just three of the people caught up in a farcical, slapstick plot revolving around four identical tartan suitcases that get mixed up and the attempts by various individuals to either steal one or reclaim their own.

The big finale of the film is a brilliant car chase that takes place in the streets of San Francisco and which was designed as an elaborate spoof of the Steve McQueen car chase in Bullitt - but which is pretty impressive in its own right.

Enjoy!

Tuesday Is Theme Tunes Day – The Banana Splits Adventure Hour

“Flipping like a pancake, popping like a cork,
Fleegle, Bingo, Drooper and Snork”

This week’s classic intro is surely a contender for the greatest TV theme of all time.

It’s the wonderful The Tra La La Song (One Banana, Two Banana) from the Banana Splits Adventure Hour.

The show ran, in is original one-hour format, for two seasons (31 episodes in total) in 1968 and 1969. It was made by Hanna-Barbera and created by Sid and Marty Krofft, who would go on to create classic kids’ shows such as H.R. Pufnstuf and Land Of The Lost.

The Banana Splits were Fleegle (a dog), Bingo (an ape), Drooper (a lion) and Snorky (an elephant). Their comedy segments of the show, apparently modelled after the then popular wacky comedy sketch show Rowan And Martin’s Laugh-In, were sort of anarchic live-action cartoons which served as links between several Hanna-Barbera animated shows that aired during the programme. These included The Three Musketeers and Arabian Knights (“Size… of an elephant!”).

The Banana Splits Adventure Hour also featured a live-action cliffhanger serial called Danger Island, which starred future Airwolf hero Jan-Michael Vincent and was directed by Richard Donner, who went on to make films such as The Omen, Superman and the Lethal Weapon series.

Donner also directed the live-action segments featuring The Banana Splits themselves.

I’ve been planning to include the theme tune here for ages but it’s tough to find a decent version of the original opening credits sequence. That’s because the show is only ever seen these days in a cut-down, half-hour syndicated version, which has a much shorter version of the theme tune and opening credits.

One suspects we will never see the original one-hour version of The Banana Splits Adventure Hour again – a plan to release the first series on DVD was scrapped after a review of the restoration work on the original master recordings that would be needed.

However, YouTube user Briben57 has managed to piece together a cut of the original season one opening titles, albeit from rather poor quality video footage.

Still, it’s the best version I can find out there and this is certainly the opening title sequence I remember fondly from my youth in the 1970s watching reruns of the show on Saturday-morning TV in the UK:

Here’s a better quality version of the theme song (audio only):

This is the shorter intro from the syndicated, half-hour Banana Splits TV show:

And finally, from 1979, a cover of the song from US punk band The Dickies:

The Monday Movie – A Room For Romeo Brass

Shane  Meadows is one of my favourite film directors and, for my money, the best, most interesting and exciting contemporary British filmmaker.

More recent films such as Dead Man’s Shoes and This Is England have cemented his reputation but his talent was clear from the very start.

His first feature film was 1997’s Twentyfour Seven, shot in stark black and white and starring Bob Hoskins.

It was good but it was his second feature, A Room For Romeo Brass, that really won me over. I saw it at a press screening during the 1999 Edinburgh Film Festival and I was hooked from the moment the opening credits rolled.

The film, which like much of his work is semi-autobiographical, is a coming-of-age story co-written by Meadows and his childhood friend (and frequent collaborator) Paul Fraser. It stars Andrew Shim and Ben Marshall as the titular Romeo Brass and his best pal Gavin Woolley.

Here is the films’s fantastic opening credits sequence (featuring the excellent A Message To You, Rudi by The Specials), which introduces the pair (watch out for a cameo from Meadows as a chip-shop worker):

Their friendship is put to the test by the arrival of eccentric loner Morell. The role showcases an astonishing, outstanding debut performance by Paddy Considine, a long-time friend of Meadows’, who has gone on to become arguably the finest British actor of his generation.

Initially Morell, who takes a shine to Romeo’s older sister Ladine (Vicky McClure), seems like a harmless, amiable, socially awkward buffoon – only for the plot to take a darker turn when a prank played by Gavin makes Morell look stupid in front of Ladine and he doesn’t get his own way.

Here are a few scenes of Considine in action:

Here’s a glimpse of his more menacing side:

And finally, could this have been Ricky Gervais‘ inspiration for David Brent’s infamous dance in The Office?

It’s Classic Clip Friday: Absolutely – McGlashan On England’s World Cup Draw

Sorry for the late arrival of this week’s classic clip, which I will mostly be blaming on technical difficulties.

In fact, I was having problems finding the clip I wanted to post in honour of England’s ludicrously easy FIFA World Cup draw on Friday afternoon, which now has every Scot in the world fearing the worst – a repeat of the year that dare not speak its name.

In the initial group stages of the competition next summer in South Africa, England will face those giants of world football: Algeria, the USA and Slovenia.

No offense to supporters of those three teams but, well, it’s a bit like John Rambo being drawn in a group with Frank Spencer, 30 Rock’s Kenneth the page and a Star Trek red-shirt in a jungle warfare competition.

And so here is what every person in Scotland thought of as soon as they saw the draw. From a September 1990 episode of the excellent Channel 4 sketch comedy show Absolutely, it’s (lion) rampant anglophobe McGlashan’s take on the injustice of World Cup football draws.

Incidentally, you’ll find much more McGlashan ranting if you click here (the original YouTube videos had been removed but I’ve replaced them with other sources, so they are working again now).

A Word From Our Sponsors… Accurist Watches

In keeping with the Monty Python theme of this week’s Monday Movie, today’s classic advert features some prime-vintage John Cleese.

Here, from 1978, is an award-winning series of Accurist adverts in which a Basil Fawlty-esque Cleese character flogs us some of those fancy new digital watch gizmos.

In those days, you see, as Douglas Adams famously wrote, us ape-descended lifeforms were so amazingly primitive that we still thought digital watches were a pretty neat idea.

Um… actually, the Choob still does. Hmmm…

Ahem. Moving on, it’s time (see what I did there?) for those classic ads:

The reason these ads came to mind this week is because I noticed that Accurist have dusted one of them off and, with a few digital tweaks, started re-running it, 31 years on. Spot the differences between the following 2009 version and the original:

Tuesday Is Theme Tunes Day – Tiswas

We’re travelling back to the 1970s for this week’s classic theme tune and ITV’s legendary Saturday-morning kids’ show Tiswas.

Notorious for its anarchic presentation and slapstick entertainment – with presenters, guests and audience members endlessly getting drenched in water, covered in gunge or being hit in the face with custard pies – Tiswas ran for eight seasons, 302 episodes, between 1974 and 1982. There were many presenters and co-presenters over the years, the best-known being Chris Tarrant, Sally James and Lenny Henry.

This is the opening to what is thought to be the earliest surviving episode, dating from 1975. Many viewers will be unfamiliar with this version of the opening titles and theme tune since the show was made by regional ITV broadcaster ATV and originally aired only in the English Midlands.

In the very early days, few other ITV regions picked up the show and so many parts of the UK did not get to see it till a few years later as its popularity grew and more regions started to show it.

Next, the more familiar Tiswas theme tune, with two different versions of the opening titles:

The Monday Movie: Monty Python’s Life Of Brian

Brian: “Look, you’ve got it all wrong. You don’t need to follow me. You don’t need to follow anybody. You’ve got to think for yourselves. You’re all individuals”
Huge crowd (in unison): “Yes, we’re all individuals!”
Brian: “You’re all different.”
Huge crowd (in unison): “Yes, we are all different!”
Lone voice: “I’m not.”

Monty Python and The Holy Grail and Monty Python’s The Meaning Of Life have both already appeared in this feature, so it’s only right that they are joined by the team’s masterpiece.

Monty Python’s life Of Brian still provokes controversy, 30 years after it was released.

Some refuse to see it as anything other than a sacrilegious indictment of Christianity and a blasphemous personal attack on Jesus himself.

In fact, it is at heart an extremely intelligent, thoughtful and scathing satire on the dangers of fanaticism, exploring the effects of blinkered acceptance of doctrine without question or debate.

Along with, y’know, jokes about Romans who have rude names and speech impediments.

You can find a more in-depth article about Life Of Brian in this post by the Choob.

The difficulty with trying to choose a classic scene is that there are so many to choose from in this movie. So here are a few of my own favourites.

First, the scene that cuts to the very heart of the film’s satire:

Next, what have the Romans ever done for us?

Brian realises that standing at the back of the crowd listening to the sermon on the mount was a bad idea (unless you are a cheesemaker, or, indeed, any manufacurer of dairy products):

And finally, for now, Romans with unfortunate names and speech impediments: