Filed under: Staff Picks | Tags: beach, comedy, documentary, guilty pleasures, movies, staff, summer
Museum staff weigh in on their favorite summer beach movies.
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10
10 (1979)
Cinque Reeves, Security Officer
I’d have to go with 10 from Blake Edwards for the most memorable beach scenes. Just thinking about George trying to walk on the hot sand makes me laugh. It’s probably one of Dudley Moore’s best performances.
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Endless Summer
The Endless Summer (1966)
Dana Haugaard, Coordinator of Facilities
My favorite summer beach movie is also the one of my favorites for the middle of winter: The 1966 documentary The Endless Summer by Bruce Brown. It is as carefree as every summer should be, and the soundtrack cannot be beat.
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One Crazy Summer
One Crazy Summer (1986)
Emily Beard, Web Content Coordinator
This movie is basically exactly the same as Savage Steve’s other Cusack vehicle Better Off Dead, except instead of snow there’s sand, and in lieu of a French exchange student, you get Demi Moore with hippie braids. There’s the rich-boy bully, his hot 80s girlfriend, sidekicks Bobcat Goldthwait and a Murray brother, a vindictive 9-year-old, drive-ins and cartoons. Even when it tries to be serious it isn’t, and that’s what makes it an excellent beach movie.
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Shag
Shag (1989)
Berry Lowden, Curatorial Assistant, Decorative Arts and Design
1. Myrtle Beach in the 60s
2. Bouffant hair
3. Shag dancing
4. Making out in vintage 60’s cars
5. Racy Bridget Fonda routines with American flags (errr….)
It’s a keeper!
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Weekend at Bernie's
Weekend at Bernies (1989)
Danielle Avram, Curatorial Assistant, Modern & Contemporary and Photography
It may be embarrassing to admit, but Weekend at Bernies is one of my all-time favorite guilty pleasures. We had a VHS copy when I was a kid and actually destroyed it from watching it so many times.
Filed under: Re-Releases, Watching Now | Tags: busby berkeley, carmen miranda, guilty pleasures, latin american film festival, movies, surrealism, youtube
Carmen Miranda
Next week I’ll be writing about summer movies, but to start things off (and with Latin American cinema on my mind since I’m planning the upcoming 24th Latin American Film Festival) I want to share one of my guilty pleasures – Carmen Miranda in The Gang’s All Here .
Kids today (you know who you are) look to the Davids (Lynch and Cronenberg) when they need their surrealist fix, but for gloom-free other-worldliness there’s no one like Carmen Miranda. Known as the Brazilian Bombshell, and the inspiration for Chiquita Banana, Miranda’s flame has been kept alive by generations of drag queens, but I sense that among post-Baby Boomers only the hard-core camp connoisseurs know her. On a recently re-aired episode of America’s Next Top Model, the contestants were challenged to channel Miranda’s spirit during a photo shoot in her old neighborhood; they smoldered away, but not one captured her over-caffeinated gleam. (See their sorry efforts here.)
Chiquita Banana
Miranda, who was born in Portugal and raised in Brazil, was a huge star before she hit Hollywood. Her produce-aisle headgear, mangled English, and general air of hopped up zaniness, was a perfect fit for World War II era audiences eager for cinematic escape (and a tinsel-town emanation of the U.S.’s Good Neighbor Policy). She may have been one of the most highly paid women in show biz during the 40s, but from her on-screen performances it looks like she worked hard for the money.
Her supernova radiance reached its apotheosis in The Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat number from The Gang’s All Here. Busby Berkeley’s choreography has never been more Freudian — check out the undulating bananas and colossal berries — and a tanker truck of B12 couldn’t endow most of us mortals with Miranda’s energy.
It’s easy to watch just a YouTube clip but The Gang’s All Here has other allures, including a cast that includes some of Hollywood’s finest character actors and a gonzo finale called The Polka Dot Polka. Seek out the June 2008 re-release as part of 20th Century Fox’s “Carmen Miranda Collection,” which features a neon-bright color transfer.
-Linda Dubler
High Museum of Art: Films 