Retro Movie Alert: MACHETE Opens This Weekend

Robert Rodriguez does it again with a grainy, early-70’s style badass movie, MACHETE.

Machete is a story of deceit and revenge. Like all fo Rodriguez’s work, it is highly stylized and promises to be one hell of a flick. There’s sure to be plenty of blood, guns, knives, violence and laughs. And web sources say that Lindsay Lohan will be mostly naked onscreen, which is A-ok with me.

Plus…
DIG THIS CAST!

Danny Trejo
Robert De Niro
Jessica Alba
Steven Seagal
Michelle Rodriguez
Jeff Fahey
Cheech Marin
Don Johnson
Lindsay Lohan

Yes, I’m not kidding. De Niro in a film with Steven Seagal and Cheech Marin. And Don Johnson. And Lindsay Lohan. And Jessica Alba. And…ok, you get my point.

For you retro style fans, get ready to bask in the orangy faded glow of low-budget funk-era cinema. Taking his cues from movies like Dual, Vanishing Point and Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill! Rodriguez will certainly not disappoint with this period-style flick.

It’s times like these I wish I still had my 1973 Chevy Caprice Classic with the wire caps, dual spotlights, diamond-plate fender skirts and ’49 Packard hood ornament. That low-slung beaut would have been perfect to cruise up to the theater in for this flick.

Here’s the Trailer for Machete, opening this weekend:

And here’s the official site: http://www.vivamachete.com/

-Tiki “Mack the Knife” Chris reporting from the arsenal in the shed behind the Tiki Bar.
Tiki Lounge Talk, the fun Tiki Talk Blog for kats & kittens who dig cocktails and retro groovyness.

Mod Movie Monday Time! This Week, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, 1970

Here’s a truly Mod movie for Mod Movie Monday…What do you get when you mix late ’60s Hollywood with stacked chicks, Russ Meyer and a young Roger Ebert? Just what you’d expect…a classless, confusing, wild and oh-so-fun-to-watch flick with a cast of hot chicks and a good old fashioned X rating.

Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls

from 1974 is NOT a sequel to The Valley of the Dolls. In fact, other than some shared costumes and Manson-style murders, there’s nothing to do with Valley of the Dolls. But hey, everyone was juiced up on acid in 1970 so who cares, right? Diggit.

I’m not even going to try to explain the plot of this movie beyond four hot, mod chicks in a rock band decide to head out to LA to make it big, and everything goes nuts from there. The girls get naked a lot. There’s ’60s-style lipstick lesbian sex. Kool cars. Drugs. Music by the Strawberry Alarm Clock. Crazy swingin’ Hollywood parties. Styles, decor and music that will send you far out, baby. It’s the scene. It’s also funny (intentionally) and has some wacky, out-there scenes (especially the ending) that writer Roger Ebert (yeah, the thumbs guy) and director Russ Meyer cooked up on-set. (Funny note: Russ Meyer didn’t know the film was getting an X rating, which is pretty much equivalent to an NC-17 today. He said if he’d known it he would have added a lot more sex and nudity to the film).

Dinner & Cocktails: There’s actually a drink called LSD, which I think is fitting for this flick:

0.5 oz  Banana Liqueur
0.5  oz Vodka
1 wedge  Lemon
1 sprinkle  Sugar
0.25 oz  Sambuca

Pour banana liqueur and vodka into shot glass. Place lemon wedge over shot glass. Sprinkle with sugar and add float of Sambuca.

Sounds kinda disgusting, but who knows. Maybe it’s better if you do the real LSD first. As for food…anti-establishment all the way! You have to fight the man…the chef..man…and go against the grain of society to make your own voice heard, baby…put a hot dog on a hamburger bun…eat your steak with your hands…radical ideas like that. You know where I’m comin’ from, brothers and sisters. Lay down that groovy flower power. Or something.

Anyway while you’re enjoying your hippiefest I’ll be at the Tiki Bar having a Zombie. Later kids!

-Tiki Chris P, like, sitting in the center of the cosmos, listening to sitar tunes and watching the pretty swirly colors of the tropical flowers.

Tiki Lounge Talk features a new Mod Movie Monday every week. Check it out, kats  & kittens!

Tiki Drink for the Weekend: The Sweet Caroline

Ok, I know I’m a little slow on the draw this week for your Tiki Drink Recipe. Sometimes part of living the Tiki Lifestyle means sleeping until 2pm for no reason.

I made this one up, but I’m sure I’m not the first to mix these ingredients together. I call it a Sweet Caroline. It’s got a nice sweet taste, with citrus kick. Kind of like this girl named Caroline I used to know.

1 oz Midori
1 oz Amaretto
1 oz Sour Mix
Fill with Orange Juice

Pour over ice in a large glass and stir. Garnish with an orange slice and a cherry. Pretty simple, very tasty! The sugars seem to make the booze hit your head faster than you’d think, so be careful with this one, kids.

-Tiki Chris reporting from under the table at Tiki Lounge Talk

The Cotton Club from 1984 for Mod (Retro) Movie Monday at Tiki Lounge Talk

The Cotton Club, 1984

Sometimes the Mod Movie Mondays don’t come until Tuesday. Most of the time they’re not really Mod, but it sounds good in the title. This week we have a retro-tastic movie that captured the 1920s in a way they could only do in the 1980s. From Francis Ford Coppola and Robert Evens, here’s

The Cotton Club

from 1984 starring Richard Gere, Diane Lane, Gregory Hines, Bob Hoskins, James Remar, Nick Cage, Maurice Hines, Lonette McKee, Lawrence (Larry) Fishburn and Fred Gwin.

Wow! With a cast and management like that, plus a $42 million buck budget at the time, there’s no way this movie couldn’t be one of the best, most entertaining, most award-winning and amazing flicks of all time, right? Right?

Well..er..

Ok, back in 1984 the movie got panned pretty bad. People expected a lot more from the guys who brought you “The Godfather”. Well kids, this flick was plagued with problems from the start, including money troubles and an actual murder. But 26 years later no one really remembers much of that. What we remember was a movie that looked incredible, with hot flappers and Richard Gere actually playing the coronet. We remember a movie that took Duke Ellington’s music and recreated it with some of the best jazz session musicians available at the time, some playing antique instruments to get the right sound. We remember Herman Munster playing a gangster, and not one but TWO 80’s montages. And, of course, in true mid-80’s fashion, there was a music video (Ill Wind) inserted neatly into the middle of the flick. And yet not one note of the score was played on a DX-7.

What I’m getting at is The Cotton Club is really a damned good movie, not matter what the critics at the time had to say (dig this: Time Mag has the original 1984 review posted online! See it here).

Why you should watch this movie: Beautiful sets, incredible music, terrific dance sequences. Fantastic characters drawn from Lena Horne, George Raft, Bix Beiderbeck, The Nicholas Brothers and pretty much every gangster from New York to Chicago. Gregory Hines tap dancing with his brother, Maurice. Bob Hoskins trying not to look like his character from Roger Rabbit. Diane Lane looking hot as hell. Pretty good Cab Calloway impersonator. Wacky Hollywood ending which lets you in on the big secret…which is don’t take this movie too seriously. It ain’t the freakin’ Godfather.

Dinner and Drinks: For dinner, why not choose from the Cotton Club’s menu? As for drinks, if you can get your hands on some bathtub gin, go for it. If not, I’d say Manhattans and champagne cocktails are in order all around.

My Take: As a young swinger just starting to learn jazz clarinet and sax, and just recently discovering the great riffs of the masters such as Ellington and Calloway, hearing this music in stereo and seeing performers play it and dance to it on the silver screen was a really big deal for me. This movie combined all the things I liked: Hot Jazz, hot flappers, gangsters, classic cars and big-brimmed hats. I learned all the songs on the album and could play all the solos by age 15. It was one of the first movies we recorded off HBO using our new-fangled video tape recording machine (The one with the top loading tapes and the remote with the wire on it), and I watched it over and over again. I dressed like the gangsters (including the hat) and incorporated their style into my first writings. Yeah, that’s right kats, even back then I was into the scene, into the retro thing long before it was labeled ‘Retro”. Dig? Yeah man, that’s a solid five.

-Zoot Jackson filling in for Tiki Chris, reporting from a smokey basement speakeasy somewhere in Harlem.

Catch a new Mod Movie Monday every week (sometimes even on Monday) here at Tiki Lounge Talk, the hepcats’ joint for jumpin’ and jivin’.

Tropical Storm may squash weekend plans in Cocoa Beach

If you follow me on Twitter or The Retro Tiki Lounge on Facebook, you’ve probably heard we’ve been planning a trip to the Space Coast, Cocoa Beach for this weekend. It’s been an up-and-down/on-and-off-and-back-on-again krazy kind of plan. We were originally going to swing up to Orlando (with a stop in Cocoa) on a work/trip, but the work part got canceled. We managed to rescue the Cocoa Beach part of the trip, but several events in the last week (flat tire, sudden influx of rescue puppies and kittens, dates moved on paying gigs with the little lady, etc etc) have severely screwed things up.

As of yesterday, we were all set up for a cruise up to Cocao today. Then this goofy Tropical storm, which is all the way down in the Caribbean, decided to fling itself into a big mess of rain clouds and shot some rain all the way up the East Coast of Florida. So as of now, 10:30 am on Friday, here in Fort Lauderdale is a big soggy wreck of a day, and our sources north tell us Cocoa Beach isn’t much different.

One thing you should know about Florida: The best stuff to do is outdoors. Even the Tiki Bars are all either open-air, on the water (Like Islamorada) or have great tropical gardens (like the Mai Kai). So zipping around in the rain is maximum dullsville.

Cocoa Beach is full of kool old ’50s motels and Tiki-ness. It’s like you can’t get drunk and fall over without hitting a Tiki. There are great Tiki Carvers up there, and lots of fun beachy stuff. And the plan was to take lots of pix and post a report on this seaside Tiki lovers’ getaway. But I’m afraid this TS-Bonnie is going to squash the plans on this foray into vintage-meets-neo tiki culture. It’s no fun driving three hours on I-95 in buckets of rain, even in the sleek little Cruiser with the aquatreds, especially if it’s to spend most of the time sitting in the motel room waiting for the rain to stop. So, we’ll see how it plays out today. If Bonnie bows out by tonight, we’ll swing up tomorrow instead of today. If not, this weekend will be a great time to catch up on some writing.

More to come…

Later Gators.

-Tiki Chris, soaking wet and not packed yet, reporting from under the overhang of the lanai at Pirate’s Cove Tiki Bar. Tiki Lounge Talk, The Tiki Culture Blog for Hep Kats and Swingin’ Kittens.