Deutsche Version | March | May
April, 10th
Terence Hill … Trinità
Bud Spencer … Bambino
Farley Granger … Maj. Harriman
Elena Pedemonte … Judith
Steffen Zacharias … Jonathan
Dan Sturkie … Tobias
Gisela Hahn … Sarah
Synopsis: Trinity comes into a small town where he meets his brother Bambino again. Bambino is the Sheriff there after he accidentally shot the real Sheriff (i.e. he thought the Sheriff was pursuing him, but he wasn’t). Trinity takes the role of the Deputy Sheriff and together they help a group of Mormon settlers who have trouble with a man who wants their land for his horses.
My Opinion: Except for the early movies, Bud Spencer & Terrence Hill movies are always harmless fun. They are childhood favourites of mine and have a certain cult status here in Germany. This is mostly due to a very unique dubbing of these movies but I still enjoy them very much and I own pretty much all of them.
April, 15th
Terence Hill … Trinità
Bud Spencer … Bambino
Yanti Somer … Trinity’s girl
Enzo Tarascio … Sheriff
Harry Carey Jr. … The Father
Jessica Dublin … ‘Farrah’ the Mother
Emilio Delle Piane … Parker
Benito Stefanelli … Stingary Smith
Jean Louis … Murdock
Synopsis: Although Trinity promised his brother to go the other way, he follows him through the desert until they meet again at their parents’s house. Bambi has to promise to make an honest horse-thief out of Trinity and he really tries. In the next town they pretend to be secret federal agents and get “bribed” by the local gangsters to “look the other way”. But where money is that easy to be made there must be more money to be made…
My Opinion: I started to watch this right after They Call Me Trinity but had to pause because I had to get up early. So I finished today. My favourite scene was when they ate at that french restaurant and the Maitre D’ tried to take away the food or when he tried to flambé the dessert.
One of the side effects of that aforementioned dubbing is that the dubbers didn’t really care that there was a previous movie and they simply changed the character’s name. And often there’s even more than one german dubbing and even different german names for the same movie. Sometimes there’s a comedy dubbing and a more serious dubbing of the very same movie and sometimes there are two dubbings because East Germany and West Germany made a version of their own.
For example: In West Germany this movie is called “Four Fists for a Hallelujah”. In East Germany it was called “The Little One and the Tired Joe” which were actually their names in the first movie (“Bambino” is italian for baby or infant).
Terence Hill … Sir Thomas Fitzpatrick Phillip Moore
Gregory Walcott … Bull Schmidt
Yanti Somer … Candida Austin
Dominic Barto … Monkey Smith
Harry Carey Jr. … Holy Joe
Riccardo Pizzuti … Morton Clayton
Synopsis: A young Sir from England comes over to California after his father died there. He inherits his farm and meets three of his father’s friends. Bu they are three gunslingers who hate progress. But over time they will become friends and change their respective lives in a way none of them had anticipated.
My Opinion: This is one of my Hill favourites. I love to see him ride bicycle through a western town and to suddenly start reciting a poem by Walt Whitman or how he tried to explain how fertile the earth on the farm is by squeezing a pile of horse shit. 😀
April, 28th
Christian Bale … Bruce Wayne / Batman
Michael Caine … Alfred
Liam Neeson … Henri Ducard
Katie Holmes … Rachel Dawes
Gary Oldman … Jim Gordon
Cillian Murphy … Dr. Jonathan Crane
Tom Wilkinson … Carmine Falcone
Rutger Hauer … Earle
Ken Watanabe … Ra’s Al Ghul
Morgan Freeman … Lucius Fox
Synopsis: When he was a kid, his parents were shot by a mugger. When he had the chance to take revenge he missed it. For seven years he wandered around the globe to study crime. But it’s only when he meets Ra’s Al Ghul that his life gets a purpose again. Back in Gotham City at day he is a (drunken) billionaire who parties too much while at night he becomes the greatest fear the underworld ever had: Batman.
My Opinion: Great restart of the franchise. I always liked the first Batman movie and since I’ve never read any Batman comic I imagined that was the way Batman was supposed to be: noir and serious. Oh, I liked the 60’s show with Adam West, but one couldn’t take it seriously (“anti-shark repellent” anyone?). And I like comics in general – I don’t have that many, but I can certainly see their charm. But when it comes to a comic-to-movie adaptation I expect a bit more seriousness. I can accept super-powers of any kind and have no problems with their origin but the characters have to be “well drawn”. They have to feel like real people and not behave like a Saturday morning cartoon show. And it that regard the old Superman movies (except maybe part 2) and also Batman 3 & 4 failed.
Batman Begins then was great. The background of Bruce Wayne hasn’t really changed but the way it was told was great. I also liked that Gordon had become a three-dimensional character (no surprise when played by Gary Oldman). This is certainly a movie that doesn’t try to make puns for puns’s sake. I love it.
Let’s just hope that the third movie (that is hopefully coming) isn’t a letdown like the third parts of the recent X-Men and Spider-Man trilogies.
April, 29th
Louis Gossett Jr. … Charles ‘Chappy’ Sinclair
Jason Gedrick … Doug Masters
Tim Thomerson … Col. Ted Masters
Larry B. Scott … Reggie
Caroline Lagerfelt … Elizabeth Masters
Jerry Levine … Tony
Robbie Rist … Milo
Synopsis: Doug is a teenager about to graduate from high school but then his father gets shot down in his F-16. He is falsely accused of having violated the airspace of a north-african country. He’s trialed, found guilty and will be hanged. Doug is also a hobby Cessna pilot who has flown hundreds of hours in the F-16 flight simulator and when the Air Force shows no intention of rescuing his father, he decides to do something about it. He and Col. Sinclair steal two F-16 and try to rescue his father.
My Opinion: This movie is so bad. Seriously. It came out in the same year as Top Gun and Top Gun won. The story is ridiculous and very patriotic. But I love that movie in all its cheesiness. It has nice flying scenes and it has a great collection of songs in it, especially since Doug can’t really hit a target without listening to music. 😀 This movie was the reason that the F-16 “Falcon” was my favourite plane for quite a while.