Hot Date with Dan and Vicky

1992's Universal Soldier marked the first collaboration between stars Jean Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren.  The action titans play Vietnam soldiers resurrected 20 years after the war as bio-engineered killing machines with very different agendas.  It was also the first big Hollywood movie helmed but Roland Emmerich, who, based on the commercial success of this film would go on to make some th...

2006's Crank was the directorial debut of co-directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Tayloer and their approach was incredibly hands on.  One of the first film to shoot completely on digital cameras, the directors themselves manned the cameras and achieved the film's frenetic style by shooting on roller blades.  Star Jason Statham got into the spirit as well by doing all his own stunts.   Dan and Vicky...

1962's State Fair marked the third screen adapatation of the novel by Phil Stong.  As in 1945, this one was a musical but a big, colorful, expansive musical that Hollywood was so good at in the 1960's.  Starring heartthrobs Pat Boone, Bobby Darin and Ann-Margret, it's the story of the Frake family and their ambitions to win big at the State Fair of Texas in Dallas.  Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote n...

Irish film director Damian McCarthy had only made two features before 2026's Hokum but has already proven to have a distinctive style and tone.  McCarthy also wrote the screenplay which tells the story of an American writer (Adam Scott) visiting an isolated Irish Inn with a spooky past.  Shot on location in County Cork, Ireland, the film's supporting mostly Irish cast includes Peter Coonan, David...

1980's In God We Trust was the second film of a three film agreement between actor/director Marty Feldman and Universal Pictures.  Following the success of Feldman's The Last Remake of Beau Geste, In God We Trust was his attempt to call out the excesses and hypocrisy of commercialized religion.  But the film didn't connect with audiences and Universal cancelled Feldman's deal.  His co-stars in the...

1945's The Wicked Lady directed by Leslie Arliss was an enormous hit for Gainsborough Studios and is still considered one of the most popular and successful British films of all time.  The story of an unrepentant social climber, played by Margaret Lockwood,  who turns to a life of crime pushed the boundaries or propriety with plentiful veiled references to sex and enough heaving bosoms to make Ame...

Dan and Vicky head back to the movies!  This time it's the recent hit sci-fi comedy drama Project Hail Mary starring Ryan Gosling and Sandra Huller directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller and based on the book by Andy Weir.  Lord and Miller insisted that the special effects be all created practically - the most impressive of which is the character of Rocky.  The rock creature was puppeted by James...

Dan and Vicky are back with a Top Ten episode!  This time your Hot Daters discuss their favorite films made for under a million dollars that went on to make a killing at the box office.  Horror, drama, and romance all get the low budget treatment and in many cases change the landscape of film.   Dan and Vicky also discuss some recently seen including the films Scream 7 and Stop Motion and lots of...

The Driver from 1978 was written and directed by Walter Hill (Hard Times, 48 Hours, The Warriors) as a response to what he saw as coventional genre fare.  Hill was after making a film pure in intent and story without the typical Hollywood trappings.  Audiences in 1978 were not impressed but the film has since been championed by contemporary filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino and Edgar Wright as an...

The novel on which 1950's film Kind Hearts and Coronets is based treated the story of an entitled royal reject who goes to murdeous lengths to secure his place in the lineage deadly serious.  The film, however, written and directed by Robert Hamer, turns it into a pitch black comedy, perhaps the first of it's kind made in England.  The Ealing Studios release stars Dennis Price, Valerie Hobson, Joa...

The final film in director Roger Corman's Edgar Allan Poe cycle, The Tomb of Ligeia marked the second collaboration for Corman and screenwriter Robert Towne.  Towne would go on to be one of the hardest working and respected writers and script doctors in Hollywood (The Last Detail, Shampoo, Mission: Impossible, The Firm, Personal Best and Tequila Sunrise) and collect an Academy Award for writing Ch...

The late 2000's were chock-a-block with Winnie-the-Pooh projects.  In addition to this week's Hot Date 2017 film Goodbye Christopher Robin starring Domhnall Gleason, Margot Robbie and Kelly Macdonald, there was another biopic with Ewan McGregor, several animated features and numerous documentaries.   Dan and Vicky discuss the Simon Curtis directed biopic on writer A. A Milne's creation of the Winn...

1995's Little Odessa is a look inside a Russian American family and their ties to the mob in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn.  Shot over two months in the brutal cold of a 1994 New York winter, Little Odessa stars two Oscar winners, Vanesaa Redgrave and Maximilian Schell, one nominee, Tim Roth, and fresh from his success in Terminator 2, Edward Furlong.  Dan and Vicky discuss the feature film debut of di...

For her directorial debut, comedienne and writer Elaine May chose to adapt the short story The Green Heart by Jack Ritchie into A New Leaf - the story of a rich playboy who loses all his money and schemes to marry and murder a rich woman.  Walter Matthau plays the entitled Henry Graham and May herself plays the ditzy but lovable Henrietta Lowell.  The film went over budget and time, necessitating...

Four times a year, Hot Date goes to the actual movies to bring you a film playing right now!  Vicky could not let the release of Wicked: For Good go by without discussing it so we bring you the continuing saga of Elphaba Thropp and Galinda Upland, Glinda the Good and The Wicked Witch of the West respectfully, of the Land of Oz.  Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande Butero star along with Jonathan Baile...

Leslie Goodwins, director of 1943's Ladies' Day, a farcical comedy set in the world of baseball, needed a lead actress that woluld believably cause players to throw games and lose focus.  Stunning Mexican beauty Lupe Velez was just that actress; and luckily, Goodwins and Velez had a good working relationship.  She was the star of his Mexican Spitfire films, a series with Velez as the recurring lea...

Based on the story of his own mother's fight with cancer, director/writer Josh Mond made the lead character of 2015's James White a caregiver with his own addiction and commitment issues. He enlisted up and comer Christoper Abbott to play the lead and Sex and the City's Cynthia Nixon as his mother.  Set and shot in New York City, Mond scored the film with music from Kid Cudi and gave the singer a...

We've reached another Top Ten episode and this time Dan and Vicky discuss their hottest top ten actor comebacks.  Every actor has a lull in their career, either intentional or not, and Dan and Vicky are paying tribute to actors who stuck it out and came back bigger and better.  Dan takes the theme in his own direction so you'll be excited to hear how your hosts have added their own spin it. You'll...

1999's The Corruptor was the second attempt by an American film studio to make an international star out of Chow Yun Fat.  The Replacement Killers a year before with Mira Sorvino failed to thrill audiences and The Corruptor, about a New York Chinatown war between two rival gangs, didn't exactly make waves.  Ironically, it took a Tiawanese filmmaker, Ang Lee, to bring Fat world recognition a year l...

1967's The Jungle Book was Disney's attempt to adapt the series of Rudyard Kipling's books into a children's animated film.  Initial attempts to create a screenplay were nixed by Walt Disney for being too bleak and violent.  The final version of the script by Larry Clemmons, Ralph Wright, Ken Anderson, and Vance Gerry was chock a block with songs, talking animal characters, and toned down threats....

Highest 2 Lowest, out today on Apple TV +, is the latest joint from Spike Lee.  The film is the latest adaptation of Ed McBain's King's Ransom and follows in the direct foorsteps of Akira Kurosawa's version, High and Low.  Shot on the streets of New York City by frequent Lee collaborator Matthew Libatique, the film also fuses several different musical cues and genres to create the story of a kidna...

Originally envisioned as a vampire dominatrix with a dungeon to torture and feed on men, 1936's Dracula's Daughter underwent a radical reinvention to accommodate a more sensitive Production Code.  Gloria Holden's daughter is a more thoughtful, melancholy blood sucker, trying in vain to turn her back on her vampiric roots.  The only character from the original to make it into the sequel is Van Hels...

1981's Tattoo, the lone feature effort of commercial director/co-writer Bob Brooks, was fraught with pre and post production problems.  The film, about a tatto artist (Bruce Dern) unnaturally obsessed with a fashion model (Maud Adams), had it's release date pushed back after Brooks protested the edit producer Joseph Levine created without his input or approval.  Transit authorities in NY took down...

1959's It Happened To Jane was the rare Doris Day film that didn't hit with audiences at the box office.  Columbia attempted a re-release in 1961 under a new title, Twinkle and Shine, with similar results.  In the film, Day plays a Maine lobster farm owner pitted against a large railroad company when they damage her reputation and livelihood.  The comedy co-stars Jack Lemmon, Ernie Kovacs, and Ste...

A Quiet Place to Kill (aka Paranoia) was the third collaboration between Golden Globe winning American actress Caroll Baker and Italian horror and thriller filmmaker Umberto Lenzi.  Baker, disillusioned by the American studio system, moved to Europe in the late 60's with her family and formed a working relationship with Lenzi that spanned four films.  In this one she plays Helen, a race car driver...