Ocean's Eleven
The Basic Plot in the Form of a Haiku:
Frank and his Rat Pack
rob five Vegas casinos
shoo be doo be doo.
My Basic Ramblings: Chris and I were going to see this at the Dryden Theater (attached to the George Eastman house here in Rochester; they show old movies every weekend), but they were showing it in conjunction with this 50's party that neither of us wanted to attend, and tickets were $15 instead of the usual $4. So, we said, "ferget that", went to FYE!, and bought it on tape. (It wasn't available on laser.)
This movie is from that swingin' time of the late 50's-early 60's, when men were men, women were dames, and orange fuzzy V-neck sweaters were all the rage. Danny Ocean (Frank Sinatra) and the rest of his army buddies (Dean Martin, Peter Lawford, Sammy Davis Jr., Joey Bishop, Henry Silva, Norman Fell, and a whole bunch more) decide to rob five Las Vegas casinos in one fell swoop on New Year's Eve. That's all you really need to know to go into the movie. It's got a few nice twists at the end, Dean Martin sings, Sammy Davis Jr. sings, there's bunches of drinks and cigarettes. Angie Dickenson and Shirley MacLaine are visible in relatively completely pointless cameos.
I've gone to a casinos twice in my life: Circus Circus in Lake Tahoe (but I was about 14 and couldn't do anything except play the carnival games) and the Casino Niagara at Niagara Falls, back in January, as part of a holiday trip offered by the place where my husband works. The whole true gambling experience generally sucked. I got carded going in (the minimum age is 19), then I spent $20 US (which turned into $27.50 or so Canadian) at the quarter slot machines and didn't hit any sort of jackpot. At the machine next to me, though, the people always won relatively big (and this wasn't at just one machine; I travelled the floors and always ended up next door to the winners). My husband's boss won $250 on his first try, or something insane like that. I generally decided that if I wanted to pick up an addiction to replace the smoking one I dropped about three years ago, it wouldn't be gambling.
The casinos here look awash in neon and glow outside, with big marquees proclaiming their names (which appeared in every establishing shot, to the point where Chris and I were like "Oh, do you think The Flamingo is in this movie? They just showed it on the screen for the fifteen millionth time, but I'm not quite sure..."), but on the inside they look to be a small movie studio set with maybe three slot machines and a blackjack table and a big stage with goofy performing acts. I was hoping for Siegfried and Roy to come out and chat with Dean Martin after one of his songs, but alas they did not.
If you put a pointed stick next to my head and forced me to come up with my favorite Rat Pack member, I'd have to say Peter Lawford. Why? He was cool, his son played Charlie Brent on All My Children, and Angus Macfadyen (from Braveheart) played him in the recent HBO film on the Rat Pack, and I'm in the midst of cultivating a little crush on ol' Angus.
Those've you who've seen The Manchurian Candidate will probably be expecting Henry Silva and Frank Sinatra to erupt into a huge fight, crashing through Laurence Harvey's apartment. They don't.
I'm quite surprised that this movie hasn't been remade. It seems like the kind of movie that screams "REMAKE ME! PLEASE!", especially with the revival that time period's making, what with Swingers and that Gap commercial and all that friggin' swing music that alternative radio stations are playing lately. But it hasn't, which is probably a good thing at this point. It'd probably be a Leonardo DiCaprio/Matt Damon/Ben Affleck/Vince Vaughn tour de force, employing CGI effects to multiply the four of them to the necessary twelve. There'd probably be lots of guns and swearing and it would just generally suck. Leo wouldn't look as good in a fuzzy orange sweater as Frank did.