Shaun Berk's 10 Movie Recommendations

Welcome to the 149th Edition of my long running blog. I am now 1-1 in Fantasy Football. I lost last week by one point and my players that killed me most were Colts WR Marvin Harrison, 49ers TE Vernon Davis, and Chiefs RB Larry Johnson. I hope these don't selections do not haunt me in the long run. Enough of that for right now. If you look at my playography on my profile, you will see that right after ANNIE I am in a show called A TIME FOR CHRISTMAS which is a one weekend show at the Muncie Civic Theater run by some church so I'm sure I start rehearsals for that right after ANNIE. You guys did not come here for my life story, you want to see what movies I recommend this week so get your queues and get started.

The Battle of Gettysburg (1955): This was an Oscar-nominated documentary short which can be found of the dvd of the 1993 film GETTYSBURG. Leslie Nielson narrates this documentary which is filmed entirely at Gettysburg National Military Park where we see statues of everyone who is discussed in this important Civil War battle. This was very interesting and worth watching if you have the DVD mentioned.

Wall-E (2008): This was an unexpected pick for me. I usually don't feature movies when they are in theaters, nor do I usually go to theaters but my friend Geoff and his nephew were going to see it and Geoff invited me to come with him so I took him up. This is the latest and possibly the best effort by Pixar where we see a distant future abandoned by humankind due to all the waste and everything. We have a title robot which is left behind to pick up the insurmountable abount of trash left by us. Wall-E then meets a robot named Eve who is sent to see if life on Earth is still sustainable and Wall-E then falls in love with this robot leading him to the planet now inhibited by humans who have learned to be lazy so that they do not have to do anything. This is a great animation tale, and a bit of satire to the world of today. We also have the greatest robot love story of all time so what more could we ask for. We combine the animation with a little live action with Fred Willard in a very amusing role. I also loved the human qualities that Wall-E had and the emotions he was at least programed to experience like his loneliness on Earth and his love interest was programmed to be very dangerous and even cold but he still loved her and did what he could to change her.

You Can't Cheat an Honest Man (1939): This is the 3rd and last part of my W.C. Fields series with Mr. Fields this time as a crooked traveling circus owner in debt to many people. W.C. has some funny one liners and insults but the most entertaining part of this was ventriloquist Edgar Bergin and his puppet Charlie McCarthy and his love story with Fields' daughter played by Constance Moore. The puppet Charlie McCarthy and Fields had a long-running radio "feud" which they decided to extend here. Fields wrote the script here.

Smoke (1995): This is a movie with a lot of subplots. Our main person here is Harvey Keitel who plays Auggie, the owner of a cigar store and we see many of his customers including writer Paul Benjamin, played here by William Hurt whose movie MR. BROOKS was featured last week to mixed results, who was experiencing writer's block. He then has a near death experience where he is saved by a young black youth named Rashid, played by OZ ands LOST alum Harold Perrineau, who has his own problems in life and forms a bond with Paul. Auggie's role here is to kind of bring people together to get a satisfaction out of life. Good performances make this one worth watching.

The Rules of Attraction (2002): I chose my facebook friend Stevie this week to look into his movie list on his profile. He is a Civic Theater actor like me just not someone I have worked with yet but would like to. I ended up watching this when I was getting my brakes fixed. Roger Avary directed this interesting look at the lives of select college students. Like my last movie, this is more of a character piece than something with a plot. Two of our stars here are WB alums; we have James Van Der Beek who starred as Dawson Leery in DAWSON'S CREEK and we have Jessica Biel who was preacher's daughter Mary Camden in 7TH HEAVEN. I never really thought I would see these two people have such an encounter but they did and I was able to forget they played these characters. Now I admit that might just be me because I try to let actors move on with their career because I know it can be very tough if you have been known as one character for many years. We also have Shannyn Sossaman who is the roommate of Jessica Biel and is a sensitive virgin who has her eyes set on a guy named Victor played by Kip Pardue. Ian Somerholder plays a gay student who seems to like to try to turn straight guys over. I'm not going to go into characters any more on this and I will also say that there is a lot of disturbing imagery here so this is not something for everyone. This movie is taken from a view of each of the main characters and when ready for the other one, we "rewind" things back to the next character. Roger Avary also employed some very interesting camera tricks which just have to be seen to be explained and as he states in an interview on the DVD that these worked because of the performances by all the actors. This is based on a novel by Bret Easton Ellis who wrote AMERICAN PSYCHO and Van Der Beek's character Sean Bateman is the brother of AMERICAN PSYCHO character Patrick Bateman who Christian Bale portrayed in the movie version. Look for WONDER YEARS alum Fred Savage. Something else that is interesting to me since I work at a call center troubleshooting Apple computers is that Avary used the Apple program Final Cut Pro to do his editing which was much less expensive than what most feature films use and he became an advocate for that software.


The Searchers (1956): We now get a little more serious here. John Ford directs this classic western which could be looked at in many ways. We could say there is some racism towards indians but we show both sides as rather ruthless and some of them are portrayed in a rather good light here. John Wayne plays a Civil War vet named Ethan whose niece is captured by Commanche indians and teams up with his adopted nephew Martin, played by Jeffrey Hunter, to rescue her in an attempt that takes a few years but neither give up. Natalie Wood plays this niece when grown up but in the beginning, her younger sister plays her. Ford employed many Navajo indians in the cast and crew of this movie which questions one man's morality and his later redemption. We also have underrated western actor Harry Carry Jr. in the beginning of the movie. The DVD I had contains a couple insightful short documentaries showing the making of this film.


Hair (1979): My local theater did this musical in the studio theater which included myspace and facebook friends Stevie, Shanna, Beth, and Kristen that I remember. Milos Forman directed this adaptation that is quite different from the Broadway play, especially the strange ending. Here we start with John Savage who plays the role of Claude who goes to New York before he deploys into the army where he meets and he is befriended by a group of hippies lead by Berger, played very well here by EVERWOOD alum Treat Williams and Claude then begins to question what he really wants in life. If you like hippies, and musicals you will love this one.


Snoopy: The Musical (1988): I decided to feature this movie after hearing of the death of producer Bill Melendez. This was a follow-up to YOU'RE A GOOD MAN, CHARLIE BROWN. We join our favorite Peanuts characters and hear many musical numbers. This is said to be a stage musical production but I have never heard of anyone performing this one. It might be interesting.


Chunhyang (2000): I now take a look at this Korean film directed by Kwon-Taek Im. We have a son of a governor who meets the daughter of a courtesan who has the title name. They fall in love but obviously in 18th century Korea, this was not looked highly upon. I think you can all conclude the plot here. There was a rather disturbing torture scene with Chunhyang. This was a pretty moving film that kept me but I was really getting sick of that singer who was narrating the story.


Battling Butler (1926): My W.C. Fields series has ended here but I start a three-part Buster Keaton series with a feature this week and a couple of his shorts after this. Buster directs this story where he stars as Alfred Butler and meets a girl whose family believes he is a boxer named Alfred "Boxing" Butler. He takes advantage of this to keep his girl but has trouble keeping his cover when he meets the real boxer. This is not Keaton's best but he does still manage to deliver some laughs.


Well, that is my ten for this week. Stay tuned for #150 next week and tell me here what you love and what you hate.