Midnight Oil: Movies and More - SNAM Video Trailers Alphabetical Listing

Soylent Green (1973)

“Soylent Green” (1973) IMDb with Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson turns out to be a surprisingly effective film for a sci-fi flick. I’ve watched it a couple of times now on TVO. Quite unexpectedly, I've been moved by its stark vision of future humanity. I don’t know exactly what it is about this film that gets me, because there is lots that is unremarkable about it by today’s audience standards. Maybe it’s the “scoops” scene, or “the furniture” or the Beethoven playing over top of Edward G. Robinson’s compelling death scene. What should be written of as just kind of corny somehow gets beyond the limitations of, well, the film’s limitations, and becomes kind of haunting. It’s worth a peek in my estimation.

This film was recently screened with Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451” found in the Midnight Oil video trailer archives.

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Catch the video trailer for "Soylent Green" (1973) here.

Posted on Saturday, November 22, 2008 at 12:41PM by

Catherine Savard in 1970s movies, Saturday Night at the Movies 2008, Science Fiction, Video Trailers |

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Starting Out in the Evening (2007)

“Starting Out in the Evening” (2007) is actually a film about more than just writers and the craft of writing. It’s about family, career, ambition, following one’s passions, facing death and disappointments . . . and probably a few other things along the way.

Some may find the film a bit slow and obsessively internally focused. What else can one expect? After all, it’s about the world and the process of being a writer, for goodness sake. (Well, actually, we’re not really too sure for whose sake any of this writing stuff is really for in the end. It seems to me that the film desperately wants to convince us that art for art’s sake is its own reason for being.)

Leonard Schiller has lived the life of a New York intellectual. He now has lots of time to reflect on whether it has all been worth it as he faces the illness and incapacity of old age. He’s been stuck with a bad case of writer’s block for years now. It is high time to face up to the truth: neither he nor the characters of his latest novel are going anywhere. A bright young grad student (Lauren Ambrose) intent on building her own career helps Schiller to realize that he has been following his characters around for years in vain, “waiting for them to do something interesting”. Schiller is faced in the end with a moral dilemma that cuts to the core of his artistic and personal integrity. Does he have the courage to face life the way it really is with its disappointments and limitations and still engage fully in the creative process? Will he do it this time in a wiser, less self-centred way?

Schiller’s daughter, Ariel, has a different dilemma. Her life as a former dancer is anchored in a much more physical day-to-day reality, in contrast to her father’s intellectual pursuits. Ariel has to face her own moral dilemmas and internal wrestlings as she processes what it means to her to be pushing 40 and still be childless. Conflicted desires and yearning for fulfillment bubble up as she faces the mandatory “early retirement” of her dancing career and encounters a former lover who has other priorities in life. (See the video clip.)

Not the film to see if you’re in the mood for an adrenalin rush or up for mindless movie-watching with lots of microwave popcorn on hand . . . It certainly does have its merits though. If you’re not in a rush, why not spend a couple of hours mulling things over with this engaging piece of cinema.

>>More to see: Looking for more out of life?

>>Real Life Story: Successful author, Anne Rice, tells of how the exploration of her personal demons led to writing a series of vampire novels before taking a surprising twist later on in her professional life.

Understand more about "The Written Life" as depicted in SNAM's Interviews about two films which take on the subject of authors and the work of the author. The films described in the Interviews are "Starting Out in the Evening" (2007) and "Infamous" (2006).

See the trailer for "Starting Out in the Evening" (2007)

Posted on Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 09:43AM by

Catherine Savard in 2000s movies, Adrian Lester, Andrew Wagner, Drama, Frank Langella, Lauren Ambrose, Lili Taylor, Saturday Night at the Movies 2010, Video Trailers |

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Sweet Charity (1969)

Shirley MacLaine is “Sweet Charity” (1969) IMDb. A Broadway musical converted into a film vehicle, the plotline follows the misadventures of the hopeless romantic, Charity Hope Valentine as she seeks to escape her sleazy lifestyle as a taxi dancer at the Fandango Ballroom. Ms. MacLaine is a bright light in this film in her performance as the ingenuous Charity. But let’s all be honest and admit that the whole thing is just a big excuse to watch the incredible dance numbers put together by Bob Fosse. At least, that’s the way it is for me.

“Sweet Charity”(1969) has been shown in the past on SNAM and was most recently screened on a Friday night.

Not to be missed is the dance sequence, “The Rich Man’s Frug” by Bob Fosse. Remember that toy with the crazy plastic boxers slugging each other? Take a gander at this little number on the dance floor with “The Heavyweight”.

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>>On to "Who's Directing Your Life?"

Catch the video trailer for “Sweet Charity” (1969) here.

Posted on Sunday, October 26, 2008 at 07:21AM by

Catherine Savard in 1960s movies, Musical, Saturday Night at the Movies 2008, Video Trailers |

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Sweet Smell of Success (1957)

“ Sweet Smell of Success” (1957) IMDb starring Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster reveals a side of life in the big city that is anything but sweet and sunshiney. Lancaster’s unsavory character, J.J. Hunsecker, is said to be based on real life New York columnist, Walter Winchell. Throughout the film, Lancaster and Curtis as the sycophantic Sydney Falco perform a dangerous dance reminiscent of the mating ritual of the black widow spider. The machinations of the corrupt columnist and equally despicable publicist are accompanied by the cool jazz numbers of the Chico Hamilton Quintet and the rapid-fire dialogue of screenplay writers Lehman and Odets. This kind of film-noir might not be everyone’s cup of tea making it worth staying up for the late show, but I sure thought it was a film worth seeing again. It was just as smooth and searing hot on the way down this time around.