Old Friends (Or, Ajax & Enrico Gimondi)

No matter what side of the fence you fall on when it comes to Quentin Tarantino, I don't think one can argue with the pleasure that comes from seeing which old(er), familiar faces from the past the filmmaker will resurrect next.  With Django Unchained, there is no shortage of cinema greats and near-greats from years gone by.  Perhaps most exciting was the "friendly participation" of original Django Franco Nero.  We get the likes of Don Stroud, Russ Tamblyn, Don Johnson, Lee Horsley, Robert Carradine, Tom Wopat, Michael Parks, Bruce Dern, Cooper Huckabee, James Russo, and the list goes on.

I personally most loved that Tarantino used two of my favorite actors from two of my favorite films of 1979 or any year...Dennis Christopher of Breaking Away and James Remar (in 2 roles!) of The Warriors.  Breaking Away may not be part of the official gang cycle of that year (Warriors>Wanderers>Over The Edge>Boulevard Nights>Walk Proud), but it did focus on a group of pals...a gang of sorts, albeit a non-violent one.  Anyhow, I imagine Tarantino had this in mind, to a degree, when he cast Christopher and Remar.

TV Spot on the DVD: Sitting Target (1972, Douglas Hickox)

Warner Archive has unleashed a bounty of hard-boiled '70s films this week.  The most anticipated--by me, anyway--of this bunch is Douglas Hickox' Sitting Target starring the late and much-lamented (by those who didn't have to work with him) Oliver Reed.  I previously wrote about this unjustly under-seen film here.  The film has famous fans in Tarantino and Wright, which I mentioned in the previous piece, with Tarantino naming Michael Fassbender's character in Inglourious Basterds after director Hickox.

This U.S. television spot is pretty effective, not just for the bluntness of the copy, but for the forceful delivery of said copy, which sounds to be laden with a touch of Boston English.  "Sitting Tah-get.  Rated R."

EDIT: I'm told by the Warner Archive folks, via Twitter, that this television spot will appear on the DVD in lieu of a theatrical trailer, as the latter could not be located.

"I used to like her early stuff. Borderline."

I was reminded of the dearly-departed Eddie Bunker's great line at the beginning of Reservoir Dogs as "Borderline" came on my shuffle on the commute home tonight and I hit repeat 2 times. Bunker's sentiments nearly echo my feelings on one Madonna Louise Ciccone. For me, nothing really tops the "Jellybean" Benitez collaboration and "Borderline" is my personal favorite of that batch of singles. I hadn't actually watched this scene, which opens Reservoir Dogs, or the film itself in about 15 years. But, I got the Blu-ray super-cheap from Amazon a couple months back and was prompted to crack it open tonight to refresh my memory of the scene.

Aside from chuckling again at the irony of old Bunker, nearing 60 at the time, chiming in on Madonna, I got a big kick out of one of the lines that precedes it, spoken by the dearly-departed Chris Penn, forever to be remembered by the masses as "Sean Penn's little brother." But, the man was a fine actor in his own right, as anyone who sees him in Short Cuts, The Funeral, Reservoir Dogs, and any number of his other numerous roles can attest to. Even being a longtime fan of Sean Penn, I somehow never caught, or had forgotten, the in-joke that Tarantino fit into the scene for Chris Penn to play off. When Tim Roth's Mr. Orange reveals that he is unfamiliar with Madonna's "True Blue," Penn's Nice Guy Eddie replies incredulously, "Oh, you ain't heard "True Blue"? It was a big-ass hit for Madonna. I don't even follow that Top 10 pop shit, and even I've heard of "True Blue.""

I knew that this song was written and released in the middle of Sean and Madonna's tempestuous relationship and I figured this might have been one of the ones written "for Sean." Sure enough, upon checking that most trustworthy source, Wikipedia, my hunch was confirmed. Not only the song, but the entire album of the same name, was dedicated to Sean, "the coolest guy in the universe." Now, I'm wondering how Sean, not known for his sense of humor, felt about his brother poking a little fun, at his (then recent) ex-wife and the song characterized as an "unabashed valentine" to him.

Original paparrazzo Ron Galella snapped a thinner than thin Christopher Penn and his date (and Wild Life co-star) Sherilyn Fenn at a May 24, 1984 production of Nine.