Musical Monday with Tina Turner

 In 1984, Tina Turner and her pet tribble performed the hit song "What's Love Got to Do With It?" They reunited later to perform again in a black-and-white video released to promote  remastered version of the song.

The black and white video is far more interesting and artistic--and just better in every way--than the better-known one that got wide play on MTV.

Take a look below. If you like the films that get reviewed here, I think you'll like the style on display in this video. (The release date is in quesiton, because I have come across conflicting information about it.)

What's Love Got to Do With It? (1984? 1997?)

Starring: Tina Turner

Director: Bud Schaetzle

Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

 

Musical Monday with Sheena Easton

We continue our Halloween-themed music videos with a great tribute to the classic Universal monster movies that has little to no connection with the subject matter of the song. Nonetheless, it's fun to watch Sheena Easton sing her heart out while squaring off against (or being absolutely unphased by)  Frankenstein's Monster, Dracula, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, and even King Kong! (Although... one does have to wonder if she's brave, doesn't have anymore more damns to give, or is stone-deaf when it comes to her reaction to the Frankstein's Monster!

I hope you enjoy this classic music video, which was directed by the Steve Barron, who helmed some of the greatest music videos of the 1980s... and this neat little gothic romance in the style of great horror movie classics is certainly counted among those!


Telefone (Long Distance Love Affair) (1983)
Starring: Sheena Easton and the Universal Monsters
Director: Steve Barron
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

Musical Monday with Depeche Mode

Depeche Mode's greatest album was, arguably "Music for the Masses", and, it was released on date--September 28--exactly 33 years ago. Here's a video released in support of the album to celebrate. It tells the tale of a crippled man whose car breaks down, and he is miraculously healed by a sexy chick on a moped. He then roams the countryside with her.


Depeche Mode: Behind the Wheel (1987)
Starring: Dave Gahan and Ippolita Santarelli
Director: Anton Corbijn
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

Musical Monday with Daisy Gray and Chris Isaak

In 2015, a young singer named Daisy Gray uploaded her cover of Chris Isaak's 1989 "Wicked Game" to YouTube. It became popular, and she followed it with several more songs. Five years later, in February of 2020, she uploaded a rather nicely done video for the song that she described as a tribute to the one that supported the original Isaac song back. But, instead of focusing on Gray's beautiful voice and the artistic photography in the video, many YouTubers of 2020 instead went into hysterics over the fact that she's--GASP!--smoking cigarette in the video!

Personally, I find it far more troubling that she's gone to the beach in her underwear... but then I'm not prone to hysterical outrage over every little thing. Here's Gray's beautiful cover, as well as her new video to go along with it.



Here's the original video and Chris Isaak's original song. Personally, I find that I prefer Daisy Gray's version, but take a listen/look and tell me what you think.

Musical Monday with the Pet Shop Boys

It's a great video for one of the best songs from the Pet Shop Boys! Here's hoping you have a great Monday!

Musical Monday: Everything She Wants

This week, it's 35 years since Wham!'s third consequetive hit song debuted in the U.S. Check out the song and the video... and don't let the monstrous mullets scare you too much!

Who is Wham! you ask? Well, it's where George Michael got his start as one half of a duo. You can read all about it by clicking here.

Musical Monday: Strangelove

Let's get the second week of 2019 started off right, with one of the greatest songs from Depeche Mode, orginally from the "Music of the Masses" album. (And be assured that there is nothing strange in loving Depeche Mode!)

Musical Monday: The Chauffeur & Duran Duran

"The Chauffeur" is a song off Duran Duran's second album, "Rio." As far as I know, it never climbed any charts, but it is nonetheless a song that's reportedly near and dear to Simon LeBon's heart. It's also a song with a weird video. It's a moody bit of black-and-white film work that has just enough boobage and sexuality to earn itself an R-rating (if such things were applied to music videos).



Yes, Ian Emes directed an extremely interesting and engaging music video. But what does it mean? Your guess is as good as mine. Feel free to offer some in the comments section to this most!

Webb Wilder: The Human Cannon Ball

One of the CDs in my collection that I haven't thought of in years is the 1990 spot of rock wackiness "Webb Wilder: Hybrid Vigor." Then I spotted this video at Rip Jagger's Dojo:



It's a fun a song, and a fun music video that's all in black-and-white (so it fits the theme here). It prompted me to find the CD, play it, and discover that it's every bit as good as I remember it.

Webb Wilder is apparently still around, still rocking two decades later, with a new CD released last year. He has even starred in a few movies, where he played a hillbilly hardboiled detective. I think I'm going to have to track those down!

Click the link to visit Amazon.com's Webb Wilder Web Store to listen to samples of this band's fun music.


And here are words to live by...

Something old, something borrowed makes 'Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid' an effective spoof

Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982)
Starring: Steve Martin, Rachel Ward, Carl Reiner, Reni Santoni, Ava Gardner, and Humphrey Bogart
Director: Carl Reiner
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Hardboiled detective Rigby Reardon (Martin) takes on the case of a lifetime when an investigation into the seemingly accidential death of a cheese-loving philanthropist leads to romance with his beautiful client (Ward) and run-ins and shoot-outs with a whole host of suspicious characters who are either Friends of Carlotta or Enemies of Carlotta... and many of whom seem eerily familiar.


"Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid" is an amusing spoof of the detective movies of the 1940s and early 1950s. There are a few touches of absurd humor here and there, but it developes most of its jokes from taking tropes from those films and taking them to extremes. Some of the humor also arises from strange actions taken by Steve Martin's character in order to make the film's main gimmick flow effectively through the story: Clips from real movies of the genre being spoofed are spliced into this movie, and Martin is seen interacting with the likes of Cary Grant, Ava Gardner, Humphrey Bogart, Kirk Douglas, and many, many more. In fact, just about every film that is "borrowed" from for this movie will eventually be featured in this space.

Technically, this is an excellent movie. The clips from the classic films are matched to modern footage to a spectacular degree and it's only because there seems to be no way of overcoming the fact that the actors are truly acting in different movies that the gimmick doesn't really work. (There are only two segments that don't have an unnatural, forced feel to them in the film--the one where Rigby calls Marlowe and wakes him up in at two in the afternoon ; where Martin and Cary Grant interact in a train compartment .) But, because the inter-cutting of the old footage so rarely feels completely natural, the film doesn't quite work.

(I also found myself wondering why Rigby kept dumping on Marlowe if he admired him so much.)

That said, Rachel Ward plays a great 1940s-style leading lady and Steve Martin is hilarious as the detective so hardboiled his shell has cracked.


"Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid' is a film that's worth checking out if you're a fan of Steve Martin, of if you love old detective movies.