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David Spates Sitting on the sofa Flip, flip, flip. There's George Foreman selling
his lean, mean grilling machine. Flip. Here we have an episode
of "Wings." Seems like that show is always on somewhere,
and the funny thing is I don't know anyone who watched it when
it was running in prime time. Flip, flip, flip, flip, flip. There's
that crazy Australian crocodile guy. I liked him for a while,
but his shtick got old pretty quickly. Flip, flip, flip. Here
we go. "The Shawshank Redemption." Even though it's
on TNT with scenes cut and dialogue poorly overdubbed so that
young, sensitive ears are not corrupted, it's still better than
anything else I can find on TV on a rainy Sunday afternoon. I've seen "The Shawshank Redemption"
countless times, and even with annoying commercials every 15
minutes or so, I always seem to get drawn in to watching it when
I'm flipping through the channels. Despite the fact that I own
the darn thing in its uncut, widescreen original format, I still
find myself watching Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman play their
roles as Andy and Red on cable commercials, bleeps and
scene cuts included. Some movies are just like that. Regardless
of how many times you've seen them or whether an exact copy is
sitting next to your VCR or DVD player, you nonetheless wind
up wasting 90 minutes or so soaking up the cathode rays. That's
what lazy Sunday afternoons are for, particularly when the drizzle
just won't let up. In addition to "The Shawshank Redemption"
(which, by the way, I consider one of the very, very few movies
that is more enjoyable than the book, or in this case a short
story) there are a handful of other movies that will always cause
my channel-flipping thumb to stop dead. If any of the "Star
Wars" films are on, I'll watch them. The cable network weasels
usually don't cut any scenes or overdub any dialogue in those,
which is nice, but you still have to pull yourself out of the
"Star Wars" universe every so often so that the newest
Johnny-come-lately dot-com company can hock its useless Web site
or a gaggle of twenty-something dudes can scream "wazzup!"
at each other for 30 seconds in an effort to sell mediocre American
light beer. And even though I have no less than three
copies each of "Star Wars," "The Empire Strikes
Back" and "Return of the Jedi" in various forms
of release, I still will gleefully watch the commercial-laden
version on cable TV. Why is that? These films hold absolutely no
surprises for me anymore. I can recite the lines before the actors
do, and yet there I am. Maybe it's some psychological connection
to my childhood. Maybe I'm just a geeky dork. Who knows. Almost any movie with Dustin Hoffman will
bring my remote to an abrupt halt, as will any flick starring
Kevin Spacey. You can bank on just about anything these two guys
choose to do. "Ishtar," of course, is the exception
that proves the rule. One of my all-time favorite rainy-Sunday afternoon
movies is "Jaws," or at least the last 40 minutes.
Some people like "Jaws" for the horror element
the "what's lurking underneath?" feel but the
scenes where Quint, Brody and Hooper are aboard the boat searching
for the shark are among the best in film history, and the scene
in which they're sitting in the galley comparing scars is a classic.
You could take the shark out of the picture and still have a
great movie. It seems like "Goodfellas" is on
Sunday afternoons a lot, too. And even though I've got the DVD,
I always will set the remote down to watch a few scenes on cable.
"Goodfellas" is a little different, however. Since
there is so much cursing, watching it on TV is almost unbearable
after a few minutes. These are mob guys, after all, and they
don't talk like choirboys. What makes "Goodfellas"
such a great movie is the dialogue between Robert De Niro and
Joe Pesci, but it's laced with the mother of all four-letter
words. You can overdub only so often without it becoming really
annoying. De Niro and Pesci use "the biggie"
as an art form in "Goodfellas," a skill they perfected
a decade earlier in "Raging Bull." If you ever want to stop by the Spates casa
on a rainy Sunday afternoon, you can also expect to see "A
League of Their Own," any Monty Python movie, "The
Dirty Dozen," "The Right Stuff" or anything with
Denzel Washington, Jack Nicholson or Jodie Foster. So stop in, put your feet up and relax. The rain's been falling all day. |