The Screengrab : sally field

Screengrab's Top Guilty Pleasures (Part Four)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 22:30:00 GMT

HAYDEN CHILDS' GUILTY PLEASURES:

ROCK 'N' ROLL HIGH SCHOOL (1979)

I'm generally bad at guilty pleasures lists because I'm not really embarrassed about my taste in pop culture, bad or good. However, some more serious-minded movie critics might mock my love of these movies. So, for your pleasure, instead of just laughing them off, here's why I like these movies. Rock & Roll High School is a Roger Corman film starring P.J. Soles as the world's biggest Ramones fan, Riff Randall. It's directed by Allan Arkush, who went on to helm such thoughtful, profound movies as Heartbeeps and Caddyshack II. Mary Woronov, the former Velvet Underground/Exploding Plastic Inevitable dancer, plays the tyrannical Principal Togar. And the Ramones play the most awesome and beloved band in the world. In the real world, they were indeed awesome, but nowhere as beloved as this movie indicates, which is what we in the business call "a crying shame." Anyway, Principal Togar has boundary issues and enjoys burning albums and generally overstepping her authority. So when the Ramones arrive in town, all hell breaks loose at her school. There's a subplot about a pretty nerdy girl getting the dorky jock guy, but it's slight enough to pass by without sticking to memory. What's important: footage of The Ramones in their prime. And then the school explodes (spoiler!).

HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER (1973)

I seem to love this movie, which is a mostly indefensible horror-Western starring Clint Eastwood. See, this town's got some bad mojo because they paid some bad dudes to kill off a crusading sheriff and then they double-crossed the bad dudes. And now, a few years later, the bad dudes are getting out of prison. Who could have foreseen this? Since when have prison terms come to an end? So, Eastwood appears out of nowhere at the beginning of the movie and immediately starts killing men and raping women because he's a real man, not some namby-pamby liberal who doesn't kill and rape. Naturally, the townsfolk decide that this guy is the guy to help them beat the bad dudes (this is also the reasoning behind the PATRIOT Act), and they go along with his increasingly insane demands because... uh, I don't know. One guy balks and Eastwood kills him, too, so I guess they're scared or something. Eastwood's character is never named, and the end of the movie suggests that he is either a supernatural entity or a semi-famous celebrity with a high opinion of himself. The supernatural angle ought to be some comfort to the women he raped in town, because ghost-rapes don't count. Or so says Camille Paglia. In the swinging spirit of bad '70s movies, both of the women are really into him after he, y'know, violates them anyway. Progressive! So, yeah, this movie is indefensible. And pretty dumb. And yet I watch some of it every single time I catch it playing on TV, which is pretty much every third night. Does this make me a bad person? My religion of choice says yes. Another note: the Wikipedia page for the film includes a picture of Eastwood on his horse with the helpful subtitle, "The stranger on the white horse is symbolic." Thanks, Wikipedia! You're the best.

MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON (1939)

Li'l Jimmy Stewart is a golden-hearted guy with a heart of gold. And I don't know if I mentioned it, but he's a guy. This movie takes place in the 1930s, and only white guys like Li'l Jimmy could be Senators in the 1930s. And most were! At least, those that didn't live in Hoovervilles. The upper crust, if you know what I mean. Our humble director Frank Capra believes the best of the common upper-crust man, or at least, he knows that people will pay good money to hear that they're better than those fat cats in Washington. So Li'l Jimmy (known as Mr. Smith in this movie) goes to Washington as a Senator. But those bad fat cats are up to something nefarious. Something to do with earmarks or bridges to unknown destinations or some fat-cat stuff like that. But they didn't count on Mr. Smith and his golden-hearted maverick ways! Although we don't know what party (Republican!) Mr. Smith is in (Republican!), he bucks the fat cats in a crazy, awe-inspiring filibuster. Yes, a filibuster! The parliamentary procedure whereby a legislator talks for an infinite number of hours about anything that strikes them. It's crazy and awe-inspiring, I say! And much better in montage than real time. Anyway, blah blah maverick blah. After 45 straight days of talking (while the awestruck galleries fill up with spectators, because what person in their right mind could resist an extremely privileged white guy talking about whatever comes to mind for hours upon hours? I get chills just thinking about it), Li'l Jimmy is turning into a broken shell of a man. But then! The indulgent Vice-President presiding over the Senate (or is he the Senate Majority Leader? I don't know. Or care.) smiles at him. And IT'S ON! Suddenly Boy Scout-proxies are trumpeting the news all over his state! And in the face of his waning blather, all the bad-guy fat-cats admit that their earmarks are no match for his mavericky ways and then they all cheer and elect Sarah Palin to be President. WOW! Someone give this movie an award!

Shoot, I forgot to say what I like about all this hokum. But I think the clip says it better than I could.

HOOPER (1978)

In the coveted Oscar category of Burt Reynolds Movies Involving Rocket Cars, there's little that can stand up to Hooper. Directed by former stuntman Hal Needham and starring Reynolds, Sally Field, Jan-Michael Vincent, Brian Keith, and Robert Klein, it's an attempt to recapture the successful hicksploitation (thanks for the term, Scott!) of the previous year's Smokey And The Bandit. Reynolds plays the greatest stuntman who's ever lived, who finds himself being pushed into an extensive stunt involving multiple explosions and the aforementioned rocket car. Despite the constant jokey macho bullshit in the movie, Hooper features a surprisingly tender and complex relationship between Reynolds and Field. And there's a lot of darkness in the depiction of the downside of stuntman life. Who would have guessed that constantly hurting yourself and risking danger could have potentially dire consequences? Not me.

SWEET TALKER (1991)

I've never actually seen this Aussie romantic comedy starring Karen Allen during her lost years, but the soundtrack was composed and performed by cult musician Richard Thompson. Coincidentally, I wrote a book about an album by Mr. Thompson and his ex-wife called Shoot Out The Lights and, seeing as how the holiday season is almost upon us, I thought I would mention it here. Self-promotion: the guiltiest pleasure of all!

Click Here For More Guilt From Andrew Osborne, Scott Von Doviak, Leonard Pierce, Vadim Rizov & Sarah Clyne Sundberg

Contributor: Hayden Childs

Take Five: Labor Day

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 20:30:00 GMT

Usually, the Screengrab's Take Five feature is inspired by some new release coming out the day we go to press. However, sometimes, if the raft of new releases in relatively uninspiring or inappropriate, we go with a different sort of them, and since today is the start of Labor Day weekend, what better time to salute organized labor? After all, some of us are union men ourselves (hey, the National Writer's Union is too a real union! We're part of the United Auto Workers for some reason!); and what with the writer's strike earlier this year that brought the movie business to a near-halt, and the possibility of an actor's strike later in the year coming along to finish what the writer's strike started, America hasn't been this aware of what organized labor is up to in years! Unfortunately, unless Vin Diesel's mercenary Thoorop in Babylon A.D. happens to be a dues-paying member of the International Brotherhood of Hired Killers & Machinegun Operators, there's no new released this holiday weekend that are even remotely about unions or the labor struggle. But that doesn't mean we can't dip back into our video vaults and come up with five fine flicks about working-class struggle for your Labor Day enjoyment. (And, as a special treat before you go back to work on Tuesday, take a few hours to watch Barbara Kopple's masterful Harlan County U.S.A., referenced in last week's Take Five.) Happy Labor Day, readers!

MATEWAN (1987)

Possibly John Sayles' finest film, Matewan depicts -- with the heart of a union man and the eye of an artist -- the brutal struggle to unionize among the West Virginia coal miners of the 1920s, one of the bloodiest periods in the history of organized labor. Based on the Matewan Massacre of 1920 and featuring breathtaking cinematography by Haskell Wexler, Matewan' s powerful story is bouyed by wall-to-wall terrific performances by Chris Cooper, David Strathairn, James Earl Jones, and a young Will Oldham, in his pre-rock star days. Essential.

NORMA RAE (1979)

Martin Ritt's feel-good hit about a scrappy female textile worker who takes on the burden of being the point woman for unionizing the clothing mill in the deep South that employs her hasn't held up particularly well -- it's got a handful of good performances (and won star Sally Field an Oscar), but at times it comes across as a bit hokey. But it still stands as a testament to one of the last flashes of union glory in the U.S. before Ronald Reagan's Republicans started their unrelenting war against organized labor in America. Worth watching as a document of its day.

ROGER & ME (1989)

Sure, nowadays, it's pretty easy even for liberals to make fun of Michael Moore. His insistence on making himself part of his stories has gotten out of hand, and in many ways, he's become the caricature lefty the right has always accused him of being. But in 1989, when he launched his quixotic quest to have just a few words with General Motors CEO Roger Smith and ask him to look at the massive devastation wrought by his moving manufacturing jobs out of Flint, MI to avoid union costs, he seemed like a true breath of fresh air and a voice for the voiceless.

THE GRAPES OF WRATH (1940)

It's almost impossible now to overestimate the impact of John Steinbeck's finest novel and the stirring masterpiece of a film that John Ford made of it. With the sting of the Depression fresh in the minds of millions of viewers -- and with labor conflicts so intense that big agricultural interests in California sought to have the movie banned, just as they removed copies of the book from California libraries -- the gorgeous, moving film was no stolid classic then, but an urgent cry for justice and decency at a time when the country was in its direst of straits.

AMERICAN DREAM (1990)

By the time Barbara Kopple finished her disturbing, heartbreaking documentary about a strike by meat packers at the Austin, MN Hormel plant, Reaganism's determination to crush unions wherever they could be found had already made its tragic story about the slow, tangled dismantling and destruction of a labor negotiating unit a familiar one all over the country. A far more ambiguous work than her Harlan County U.S.A., American Dream nonetheless shows the unremitting sadness of the direction our country took when it allowed ideologues to launch an assault on the hard-won gains of the working class.

Summer of '78: "Hooper"

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Each Thursday this summer we’ll hop in the Screengrab time machine and jump back thirty years to see what was new and exciting at the neighborhood moviehouse this week in…The Summer of ’78! I’ve been on vacation, so this week we’re catching up on the past few Thursdays.

Hooper

Release Date: July 28, 1978

Cast: Burt Reynolds, Jan-Michael Vincent, Sally Field, Brian Keith, Robert Klein, Adam West

The Buzz: “It just ain’t summer without Burt!” (That is, assuming Jimmy Carter is still the president.)

Keywords: Stuntman, Driving Backwards, Rocket Car, Bar Fight, Person on Fire

The Plot: Sonny Hooper (Burt Reynolds) is the greatest stuntman alive, but some fear he’s getting a little long in the tooth. His latest gig is doubling for Adam West, star of The Spy Who Laughed at Danger. (The notion that West would be headlining a big action movie as late as 1978 is one of Hooper’s more implausible elements.) During a barroom brawl at the Palomino, Hooper bonds with up-and-coming golden boy Ski (Jan-Michael Vincent), who is also working on the film. They develop a friendly rivalry on the set, with each trying to top the other with ever more outrageous stunts. This does nothing to help Hooper with his escalating dependence on painkillers, nor his deteriorating relationship with long-suffering girlfriend Gwen (Sally Field). Hooper’s doctor informs him that one more big jolt could paralyze him for life, but that doesn’t stop Hooper from taking on a risky rocket-car gag that could end his career. Take a wild guess if it does.

The Test of Time: Who knew what a cornucopia of embarrassing admissions this Summer of ’78 feature would turn out to be for me? I’ve already copped to owning novelizations of all the Omen movies as well as the Heaven Can Wait Fotonovel, but I can probably top all of that with the admission that I also had the Hooper soundtrack album. At least Smokey and the Bandit featured songs by Jerry Reed; the title track from Hooper is performed by someone named Bent Myggen and is perhaps the only song in recorded history to feature the line “Set him on fire, it will amuse him.” Of course, this latest revelation of mine comes as no surprise to the bazillions of you who keep copies of my book Hick Flicks within reach of your toilet seats. (And if you aren’t one of them, why not buy a copy today? Come on, people, I’m currently ranked # 1,090,823 on Amazon. Help me out here.) As far as the Burt Reynolds/Hal Needham southern fried ouvre goes, Hooper falls short of Smokey but finishes far ahead of Stroker Ace and the Cannonball Run collection. Allow me to quote myself from my magnum opus: “What sets Hooper apart is its insider’s view of a working class subculture within the motion picture industry. The stuntmen are a tight-knight group, clowning around on the set and playing bumper cars on the freeway en route to their favorite watering hole. They know they’re the workhorses of the picture, but even though they’re basically blue collar guys, they’ve got show biz hearts. They do impressions of stars like Jimmy Stewart and Gregory Peck to crack each other up, and get together to drink beer and watch their stunt reels for the thousandth time. There’s an improvisational spontaneity to such scenes; a “morning after” sequence in which Reynolds and Brian Keith slowly roust themselves from hangover oblivion is particularly well-observed.”

Quotable Quote: “I'm gonna find the guy who invented Zylocaine and kiss his ass on Hollywood and Vine!”

2008 Equivalent: This is a tough one, but I’ll give it to Hancock. Like Burt in the '70s, Will Smith is our current Mr. Summer, with a similar “It’s me, your buddy!” persona winking through every role. Plus Hancock is a two-syllable character name title starting with H – just like Hooper!

Previously on Summer of '78: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

Yesterday's Hits: Forrest Gump (1994, Robert Zemeckis)

Paul Clark — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 19:00:00 GMT

What made Forrest Gump a hit?: A number of factors that played a significant role in making Forrest Gump a success. To begin with, there was the storyline, which placed a Pilgrim’s Progress-style narrative in the context of the second half of the twentieth century. Forrest (played by Tom Hanks) meets many of the most significant people of the fifties, sixties, and seventies, while bearing witness to or even playing a part in a number of important events from the same period, all the while acting like it’s no big deal. And not only does he survive the journey, but he becomes an unlikely success, armed with only the sage words of his Mama (Sally Field), his undying love for Jenny (Robin Wright), and his own good nature.

In his re-creation of recent historical events, director Robert Zemeckis combined cutting-edge effects with good old-fashioned nostalgia, giving the audience a chance to see a fictional character interact onscreen with such key figures as John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, and John Lennon, instead of having actors portray them. In addition, the storyline combined a sincere celebration of hearth-and-home values with the ironic touch of making its uncannily lucky protagonist a simpleton with an IQ of 75. Forrest Gump became a monster word-of-mouth hit due to these factors as well as the iconic performance of Hanks, a well-liked (and Oscar-winning) actor who cemented his status as Hollywood’s favorite Everyman with this film. It was the #1 hit of 1994 and took home six Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director, plus a second consecutive Best Actor statue for Hanks.

What happened?: As is often the case when a movie becomes a surprise smash, Hollywood took the Gump brand and rammed it down the throats of America. Soon after the film became a hit, Paramount commissioned a volume entitled Gumpisms: The Wit and Wisdom of Forrest Gump, which basically consisted of folksy quotations from the film. Other tie-ins soon followed- posters, cookbooks, even a chain of Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. restaurants. Eventually, the majority of people were more or less Gump-ed out.

In addition, the fall of 1994 brought the year’s other big word-of-mouth hit, Pulp Fiction. Tarantino’s film was as cool and edgy as Gump was warm and fuzzy, and the two were quickly positioned as pop-culture polar opposites. While this assessment is somewhat unfair to both films- even Tarantino acknowledged as much- Pulp quickly came to symbolize the future of movies, while Gump was the establishment. Even today, Pulp’s critical rep remains intact, while Gump’s has fallen quite a bit- witness the former’s #1 status atop EW’s recent “New Classics” list, while the latter failed to crack the top 100.

Does Forrest Gump still work?: Sort of, although it’s not without its problems. The combination of sentiment and irony that Zemeckis tries to pull off here is a tricky one, and I don’t quite think he succeeds. There’s no small irony in Forrest’s situation- in a tricky time, he becomes a success largely because he doesn’t know any better than to live according to his nature. He doesn’t know better than to do as he’s told and be loyal to those closest to him, which helps him to become a star football player, a war hero, a table tennis champion, a successful shrimp boat captain, and a philanthropist, all with an intelligence level that wouldn’t have allowed him to enroll in public school without the (ahem) intervention of his Mama.

The trouble is that the irony of the situation only really works if we believe Forrest is slow-witted, and I never quite did. The trouble has less to do with Hanks’ performance as it does with the literal nature of film. On the page, Winston Groom sketched out the character of Forrest using only language, and despite the book’s numerous other flaws, we believed its hero was an idiot. Not so in the film. Hanks does a fine job with the role as written, but too much intelligence flickers behind his eyes for us to believe he’s as simple as the film says he is. In addition, screenwriter Eric Roth often falls back on impeccably written monologues to allow Forrest to express his deeper feelings, a tendency which runs contrary to the character’s nature. Such soliloquies would require no small amount of thought, and if there’s one thing Forrest Gump isn’t, it’s a thinker.

When viewing the film again recently, I also found the film’s treatment of Jenny to be fairly ugly. Forrest Gump uses Jenny as a counterpoint to Forrest, a woman whose background is considerably more unfortunate than Forrest’s. Unlike Forrest, Jenny is intelligent enough to think for herself, but the choices she makes for herself- posing for Playboy, shacking up with the leader of the SDS at Berkeley, getting into drugs- invariably get her into trouble, and time and again Forrest has to bail her out. This just doesn’t sit well with me- Forrest coasts on the tide of fate and is rewarded by meeting three presidents, seeing the world, and becoming independently wealthy, while Jenny uses her free will to get kicked out of college, abused by her revolutionary boyfriend, and turn into a junkie, before rebounding in time to die of a mysterious “virus”? I’m not sure whether this counts as misogynistic or simply anti-thought, but either way, I don’t like it much.

There are a few other elements that didn’t work for me. That extended sequence of Forrest running back and forth across the country serves little discernible purpose besides giving us picture-postcard shots of the American landscape, throwing a couple of nostalgia jokes into the story, and filling up a few years of Forrest’s life before Jenny calls again. And I became annoyed with the film’s tendency to use the most obvious soundtrack choices, especially during the scenes set in the late sixties. “Fortunate Son”? “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers In Your Hair)”? “Let’s Get Together”? Check, check, and check.

In spite of these flaws, much of Forrest Gump remains quite effective, beginning with Zemeckis’ use of special effects. Much was made at the time of the way the film placed Forrest into old newsreel footage, but while those effects have grown dated, other instances of CGI in the film are far more impressive. The most obvious example of this is the still-convincing removal of Lt. Dan’s legs, aided in no small part by Gary Sinise’s performance. But even in less obvious special effects scenes- the football games, the demonstration in Washington, D.C.- Forrest Gump remains a standard-bearer for photo-realistic CGI, which is a testament to Zemeckis and his effects teams’ attention to detail.

But in the end, it’s the human element that’s the heart of Forrest Gump. I’ve always been a fan of the way the film handles the complex dynamic between Forrest and Lt. Dan, as well as how their relationship between the two men evolves over time. I also found the simplicity of the friendship between Forrest and Bubba (Mykelti Williamson) to be surprisingly touching. And on the occasions when the screenplay gives Forrest dialogue that actually sounds like it might come out of the mouth of a man with a 75 IQ (rather than a screenwriter who’s trying to “write dumb”), Hanks’ performance is deserving of the love that was bestowed on it at the time. I especially liked the following exchange between Jenny and Forrest, which does a better job of getting to the heart of Forrest’s character than any Oscar-friendly monologue ever could:

Jenny: Why are you always so good to me, Forrest?
Forrest: You’re my girl!

Yesterday's Hits: Smokey and the Bandit (1977, Hal Needham)

Paul Clark — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 19:00:00 GMT

It may be hard to remember now, but there was a time when Burt Reynolds was the biggest star in Hollywood. Throughout the seventies and early eighties, Reynolds sold millions of tickets using mostly his easy grin and patented good ol’boy charm. And no Reynolds movie made more money than 1977’s bootlegging comedy Smokey and the Bandit. Yet, as Reynolds aficionado Larry Aydlette said in his recent Burt Reynolds blogathon, Smokey has lost a lot of its luster today. Many critics look upon it with scorn, and more importantly the film has taken on the air of a movie that’s more often remembered than revisited. So where did the love go?

What made Smokey a hit? The easy answer is Reynolds, but there was more to the film’s popularity than Burt. The seventies saw a rise in movies marketed to Southern audiences- a rise that helped to contribute to Reynolds’ box-office success- and Smokey and the Bandit came along at just the right time to benefit from this movement. But Smokey was a big hit all over the country, not just down South. Audiences loved the character of Bandit, the legendary outlaw truck driver who was smooth and confident but also life-sized. The movie also benefited from the era’s CB radio craze, and contributed more than a few colorful expressions to the vernacular. Smokey and the Bandit had something for everyone to enjoy- comedy, vehicular mayhem, anti-authority sentiments, a little romance, Bandit’s iconic Pontiac Trans Am- and as such it reached a broad base of moviegoers who made Smokey the second-biggest hit of 1977 (after Star Wars) and kept the film in some theatres for years on end.

What happened? Reynolds may have been the era’s biggest draw, but his biggest downfall has always been an unfortunate inability to discern quality from junk. While Reynolds occasionally leveraged his Smokey popularity to take on more adventurous projects (1979’s Starting Over, 1981’s Reynolds-directed Sharky’s Machine), more typical were the rash of Smokey sequels and ripoffs designed to piggyback on the original film’s success. So began a string of Bandit-like cocky showoff roles for Burt, most of which are indistinguishable today. By the mid-eighties after Burt had made three Smokeys, two Cannonball Runs, and many other movies in this vein, audiences decided they’d been to this well too often, and Reynolds’ popularity went into free-fall.

Does Smokey and the Bandit still work? That’s a big 10-4 there, good buddy. The plot is simplicity itself- Bandit (Reynolds) and best pal Snowman (regular Reynolds costar Jerry Reed) take a bet that they can make a round trip from Atlanta to Texarkana, Texas and back in 28 hours, bringing back 400 cases of (then-illegal in Georgia) Coors beer for Big Enos and Little Enos Burdette (Pat McCormick and Paul Williams). But after they’ve picked up the beer and started heading eastbound and down towards home, Bandit picks up a runaway bride who he christens Frog (Sally Field), and in doing so runs afoul of Texas Sheriff Buford T. Justice (Jackie Gleason), the father of Frog’s betrothed.

OK, so Smokey and the Bandit will never be mistaken for great art- as far as onscreen cross-country drives go, it’s no Two Lane Blacktop. But in the intervening three decades, the movie has lost almost none of its charm. Much of the film feels like a live-action Bugs Bunny/Yosemite Sam cartoon, with Bandit smooth-talking his way out of scrapes while the rootin’ tootin’ Sheriff Justice fulminates about his ever-slippery quarry. However, the film is made with real style and wit, and even if the film hits every note we expect it to- there’s even a short romantic interlude where Bandit and Frog take time out from the drive to do a little offscreen he-in’ and she-in’- it’s pretty darn irresistible.

The key to the film rests in the performances, which for the genre are first-rate. At the center of the film is Reynolds, who gives the best star turn of his career. It’s tempting to say that Reynolds was only playing himself, but to do so would be to underestimate the comic verve and star presence he brought to the film. Whether he’s trying quips over the squawk box with Snowman or pissing off Justice, Reynolds makes it all look easy.

For her part, Field makes a funny and surprisingly romantic counterpart for Reynolds- a talky, insecure, very seventies leading lady who’s a far cry from the damsels in distress and one-dimensional sex symbols that populate most movies of this sort. In addition, she and Reynolds have a palpable chemistry (which later translated into an offscreen romance between the two), and it’s this comfort level between the two that really sells their scenes together, most of which consist primarily of two people talking in a car. And Jackie Gleason remains, as ever, a treasure, giving a blustery performance that’s as agreeably salty as a bag of pretzels. Sheriff Justice may be a sumbitch with a badge, but darn if Gleason doesn’t make the guy lovable.

Like its star, Smokey and the Bandit is an unassuming movie with no ambitions except to show audiences a good time. It’s what you might call cinematic comfort food- there’s nothing new or bold about it, but it’s highly satisfying all the same. Thirty years down the line, Smokey also evokes a bygone era in movies, both in terms of its pre-CGI car chases (courtesy of stunt driver turned director Needham) and its pre-irony iconography. Nowadays, it’s hard to imagine a big-screen hero sporting a cowboy hat without so much as a wink to the audience, but it’s a testament to the enduring appeal of the film, and of Burt Reynolds’ performance, that Bandit can still pull it off with ease. And of course, that Trans Am is as awesome today as it ever was.