Thanksgiving = Tradition

And in my house, that tradition means watching Mystery Science Theater 3000 and remembering how mom would groan at the prospect of another marathon. This is way better than The Twilight Zone...



Happy Holidays everyone!

A Movie Nearly Every Night: The Hunt For Red October

The Hunt For Red October (1990)
Dir: John "With a Vengeance" McTiernan
Starring: Sean Connery, Alec Baldwin, Scott Glenn, James Earl Jones -- in short, men. All men. Every man-jack one of them.

Ramius bids do svidanya to fishing in Polyarny.

To help me with this man movie today is the cousin/roommate.

How many times have we seen this movie? -- cuh ... I have no idea. Oh, you know, 20 times? -- So this time, keeping in mind that we're looking for meaning, we watched it with a different viewpoint. Specifically: What was really going on here? What was this movie really talking about? We decided it was about fear. -- Well, yeah ... it's pretty much using the rules, going by the regular rules, but a lot of it is driven by fear. -- It all starts with fear. -- Yeah. -- Ramius is afraid of nuclear war and steals the Red October. Alec Baldwin is afraid of flying. The guys in the war room are afraid of everything they don't know or think they know. Even James Earl Jones is afraid Jack is saying too much. I love how he puts his hand on Jack's arm to calm him down in that soft, fatherly way.

"I told you to speak your mind, Jack, but Jesus..."

The only one who isn't really afraid of anything is the senator. -- Without him it wouldn't go anywhere. -- I wonder why he's not afraid. -- That's a good question. It's because he's a sandman. He knows he's not going to live past 30. -- Yeah, half the guys in the room are late for Carousel. No wonder they're edgy.

the analyst and the guy who kisses babies and steals their lollipops

Man we need Logan's Run on Bluray.

But it's interesting that in a movie with so much machismo and procedural male organization, that fear plays such an important role in how they react to each other. Everyone's afraid that everyone else will over-react or react incorrectly, and it's not until they master that preconception of reaction that they succeed. -- Or how they manage other people's fear, like with the radiation. -- Oh right, that's how they get them off the boat, by making them afraid of it. -- Or with the officers, they're more afraid of dying than of being captured. They're well-motivated because they'll die if they don't follow Ramius. --

Yeah, yeah ... see? It's knowing what the other guy is afraid of and using it to your advantage, all the while knowing that you're also afraid of stuff. What if you meet a buckaroo? What if the chopper crashes in the icy North Atlantic? What if you can't beat Tupolev at chicken? (Dude, his sub ... honestly, who the hell would want to work on it?)

But, I think the most important thing and we both agree on it, is that the engineer on the Red October is the best character. Hands down.

Yeah. Or the best cigarette ad.

Pros & Cons of Owning a Kitler

Pros:
Endless source of amusement
Lots of nutty blog posts
A full array of names: Adolpha, Eva, Mrs. H, Meine Furrier

Cons:
The dictator factor - will she try to conquer Siam?
Lots of nutty blog posts
It was hard enough to get 1 cat to not piss on the Christmas tree

Decision: sometimes one pet is better than two

And it's only November

Winter hasn't even really started yet --- at least no snow and the temperatures haven't gone below 35 --- and I already have SAD. I know it, because I'm lethargic and depressed over stupid things like the cousin/roommate not wanting us to adopt a cat that looks like Hitler. You know, he's right, Veda is a one-cat pet and if it looks like Hitler, well chances are it will want to take over the house, maybe even the house next door. The cousin/roommate is right. But it bums me out. That and our non-traditional Thanksgiving plans, which were my idea because I like Indian food and the restaurant we go to has the best, but ... wah, no turkey with family ... and Christmas will be alone --- see? stupid stuff that last week I was totally fine with, this week, with the gloomy dark weather I'm just like mush on the couch. Meh, everything sucks.

So what better than to rent some great television shows from Netflix! Yesterday we got Taggart (although it's the new, non-Taggart/non-Jardine shows, so we haven't watched them yet because I don't want to be ... well, depressed about it, I guess) and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.

The first couple of episodes were lackluster, with the exception of the giant jellyfish that sucked in the Neptune submarine, because that was kind of cool, but the stories were sort of blah. Then we watched an episode called Doomsday.


Wow. Crisis of conscience and executive error leading to nuclear war --- far out! I felt better already!

Admiral Nelson (Richard Basehart) turns the key on the fail safe

Some guy is getting glass picked out of his eye while enemy cruisers drop depth charges on the Seaview; Lt. Commander Corbett struggles with the reality of launching missles -- DUDE, it had everything but the bloodhounds nipping at their rear-ends. It even had this delightful little moment where the "polywogs" are initated into King Neptune's realm.

In fact, the first few minutes are tense with a countdown to zero and everyone sweating bullets, and you figure on an episode called Doomsday that something really heavy has happened or will happen, and it turns out that it's a countdown to crossing the equator. My grandfather did it on the Indianapolis with Roosevelt leading the ceremony, so it was kind of sweet for me to see the television crew going through it on the Seaview. They don't complete the ceremony because of the alarm bell and one of the polywogs is the guy who can't fire his missle ... what do you suppose that means...?

The last episode, The Invaders, was a little dreary apart from the special guest star, Robert Duvall (his name spelled as "Duval" on the credits), who played this alien? ancient mystic? founder of Atlantis? I don't know, because I kind of lost interest early into the show. It was just not up there with Doomsday for excitement.


But Duvall was awesome in his skull cap and white makeup. No part too small for the full fisted performance of a thesbian master. He made the others look a little silly --- I know! and he's the one in the skull cap and funny clothes and they look silly! Crazy.

A (Hindi) Movie Nearly Every Night: Shakti

Shakti (1982)
Dir: Ramesh Sippy
Starring: the double-star-whammy of Dilip Kumar and Amitabh Bachchan (with special guest star Amrish Puri, who went on to rip people's hearts out 2 years later in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom)

Police officer or father ... well, that's the story, isn't it?

When it's dark and gloomy out, I don't know about you, but I like to put on a little Amitabh Bachchan to make myself feel better. He's smoking hot. I mean, really, who cares what the story is? Just put him in suits, preferably suede, and let him talk.

Not everything he does is solid gold, sure. This was a fine movie, not great, but fine. It was not as much fun as Amar, Akbar and Anthony, but it was certainly way better than Ganga Ki Saugand (with the exception of the gold bustier). But they can't all be Sholay. It doesn't matter much anyway, because it's just a pleasure to see him work his baritone-voiced cinema magic.

Shakti also has little moments that make me adore Ramesh Sippy. I know, how can my love grow? But it does. If you remember back in August I talked up Sholay (produced by G.P. Sippy, but directed by Ramesh), and what a fantastic shock to see the shot-for-shot homage to Once Upon a Time in the West. There are a few Leone-like shots in Shakti, but it's the scenes at the airport that made me hop around the couch cushions like a monkey. It's not shot-for-shot, but it is absolutely, 100%, without a doubt inspired by Bullitt.

Vijay as vigilante in a crowded airport hallway -- go, brother, go

And that, my friends, is awesome.

In an industry where artists churn out 2 - 3 movies a year, Ramesh Sippy doesn't do very much, but when he hits the mark it's choice.

I Will Gladly Pay You Tuesday...

Hey, who's got 500 bucks they can loan me?

Actually, maybe more like 2 g's, because I've got to fly down and it's $1,200 for all 4 days of the Turner Classic Movies Classic Film Festival. I don't know what they're showing, but with 50 movies on the plate some of them are bound to be good. I'm only guessing, of course. I'm sure it's one good movie and 49 crappy ones, because the reality is I'm going to have to stay home and miss out because it's too flippin' expensive to really be there and it's not worth it, it's not! so screw it. Who needs it anyway? It's going to suck.

Nuts.

A Movie Nearly Every Night: Paranormal Activity

Paranormal Activity (2009)
Dir.: Oren Peli
Starring: Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat, Mark Fredrichs

The happy couple (before the eeeeeeeeee-vil.)
courtesy of www.red-carpet.org

That's right, I went out to the show. I left the couch, got in the car, met up with some girlfriends and took in a real picture on a real movie screen. Don't believe me? I've still got gummy fruit snacks in my purse.

Sure, it was scary. I had chicken skin for some of it. Some of it is a little ponderous, and that's kind of okay when you're building up for scary, but I wouldn't want to sit through it again knowing when stuff happens and when it doesn't -- or I'd see it again while baking cookies so I could go out and come back. It might be a good knitting movie. Katie knits in the movie, so it's like a stitch-n-bitch in a way.

The best parts (without ruining anything) are definitely the fire and the no-credits credits. Blank screen. And we sat there for 2, 3 minutes waiting for something and nothing happened. No stars, no editing, no best boy -- nothin'. In an age of credits that last longer than the movie, that's pretty cool and that we were willing to wait for it is kind of a credit to a movie that makes you wait for everything. The other stuff, the home-made video idea, was already sort of blown with The Blair Witch Project, which was fun in its way, with the sounds separated from the action depending on where the microphone was. Here it's all got the aura of having been done before, which makes it hard to buy completely into the "this was a true story" extra spice that might have made it scarier.

Mostly, though, I liked it for the couple. Watching two isolated people bump around a closed space for 90 minutes is kind of interesting.

whoa - what the...

I've made some new friends over at Warner Bros. --- my people, let me tell you a little story about Marketing folk. Maybe you think they seem kind of dingy or that all they want is the money and selling themselves or someone else to get it, but they're good people. Kind people. People of the land, if your land is made of shiny bits of things that have come off of other things, but were the best part of the other things.

What I'm saying is, I've got some friends at Warner Bros Marketing, and because I helped them out with a deal they said I could have a movie poster. So I says to them, I says, "My grandmother danced in 'Footlight Parade' do you have anything from that?" They emailed me this:


Is that Grandma holding Jimmy Cagney? Or at the front? If that's her in front it goes a long way in explaining why she didn't talk much about those days. It's a scandal to the jaybirds what they made them wear, let alone how to dance in it without ... well I guess it's all coming out anyway, dancing or not. Naughty naughty Busby Berkeley.

A Movie Nearly Every Night: Kaagaz Ke Phool

Kaagaz Ke Phool (Paper Flowers) (1959)
Dir: Guru Dutt
Starring: Guru Dutt, Waheeda Rehman, Kumari Naaz

Director starring as director

Okay, so not all Hindi Cinema is happy-go-lucky spectacle cinema. The New York Times turned me onto Guru Dutt when they did a review on a retrospective of his films last month. He was an interesting man, both as an actor of spectacle and as a director defying the superficiality of the same puff cinema that made him popular. Kaagaz Ke Phool was a failure when it was released, probably because it isn't puffy and things don't all turn out okay with a song, but the story was intensely personal to Dutt and the visuals are absolutely stunning.

Shanti and the ray of light ...

... which brings her together with Sinha.

The story is about a director, Suresh Sinha (Dutt), and his relationship with Shanti (Waheeda Rehman), a poor girl who gets hired as an actress when she comes to return his overcoat --- I was about to type "it's a long story," which already makes it well above any typical Bollywood movie, and when it focuses on itself as a film about film it's at its most interesting. Fame is brilliant white with frames filled of crowds of chanting faces and failure is filled with dark, angry faces and then empty isolation.

Sinha coming to the end of his movie

What fascinated me most was how Dutt and cinematographer V.K. Murthy use lighting to create flim reel backgrounds out of windows and ladders in scenes depicting important moments in the director's life. At the end the elderly Sinha descends a film reel staircase as he finishes reflecting on his declining life ("Intellectually, you are finished. You can't make hit films anymore," his producer has told him), and when he first meets Shanti it's under a banyan tree brilliantly backlit by a row of windows echoing the light and dark of film frames.


Amazing, stylish, touching, passionate, poetic, lovely lovely cinema.

It was the first Hindi film in Cinemascope and that alone should generate more interest in its preservation, but, whatever it takes, Criterion Collection, you need to make some space for this and Pyaasa. No excuses. (and please, someone, print up Mr. & Mrs. '55.)

A Movie Nearly Every Night: Grease

Grease (1978)
Dir: Randal Kleiser (yeah, what's he done for us lately?)
Starring: John Travolta, Olivia Neutron-Bomb, Stockard Channing, Jeff Conaway

The chicks will what???

Wow, what a lot of surprises. I forgot this movie had a beginning at the beach. For the past 30 years I've only watched it on television and usually starting at the girls' night when Marty Marachino is writing her love letters to her marines. Danny and Sandy meet at the beach ... oh yeah ... (heh -- her name is Sandy and they met at the beach hee hee hee)

On Bluray it was very pretty. I could almost see my old apartment in Los Feliz through the smog at the end (Whoo! John Marshall High School rules!).

So, let's face it, this movie is meant to inspire nostalgia, and it does. I wasn't alive in the '50's, but I was in 1978 and I sat on the couch in my pink Snuggie sipping Amareto and watched this movie that reminded me of junior high and made me feel like an adult all at the same time. It was a lot more adult than I thought. Kenickie's condom breaks because he bought it in the 7th grade?!? No wonder Rizzo thought she was up the pole. But they imply that a lot of sleeping around went on ("Cha Cha" the best dancer at St. Bernadette's with the worst reputation; Rizzo singing that at least she's not a tease), but Kenickie clearly hasn't had any action since he was 12. So did Rizzo and Danny have a "thing" and what was it? Doesn't seem like they went all the way. Or they did and it only took 15 minutes? It's crazy that we watched this as kids.

Which brings me to the Bluray sound: Like everyone else in 1978 we had the soundtrack, but I didn't really pay attention to it. Not like now. You hear everything on Bluray. Did those girls on stage at Sowers Middle School know that they were singing about a "pussy wagon" when they recreated Greased Lightning at the talent show? Not that it would make any more sense to them than "four barrel quads" and "chrome plated rods" but what about this: "With new pistons, plugs and shocks, I can get off my rocks."

Dude.

Anyway, always a pleasure to see Joan Blondell and Edd "Kookie" Byrnes. Kookie, Kookie lend me your comb...

A Movie Nearly Every Night: Children of Men

Children of Men (2006)
Dir: Alfonso Cuaron
Starring: Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, Clare-Hope Ashitey and the ubiquitous Michael Caine

Photo courtesy of k-punk.abstractdynamics.org

We had to watch it over 2 nights because it was making us manic and nervous. In fact, we started it on Sunday and just got through it tonight, which gives us a night off and I still had to talk the cousin/roommate into putting it back on --- not because it's bad, but because we weren't sure we could take it anymore.

The flu pandemic of 2008? Infertility for 20 years? Homeland Security putting immigrants into cages? Maybe it's the future and maybe it's the present exploded into extreme possibilities. There are plenty of people like Theo (Clive Owen) around now, going through the motions with their coffee and hippie escapist friends, trying to forget the past in a troubling and useless present. Sure, maybe things aren't to this point yet, and maybe they never will be, but what punches you in the gut is how close we are to it in mentality if not actuality.

That and when Theo is looking at his cousin's fancy works of art that have been looted from countries going into the toilet (Picasso's Guernica hangs on the wall) and says "A hundred years from now there won't be one sad fuck to look at any of this." Cahhhhhhhhhhh jaysis it killed me.

I cried like a little girl.

"We all come out like it's Halloween!"

It all started with pumpkin carving and media, featuring a classic episode of Starsky & Hutch...

John Saxon loves you. A lot.

... and some actual carving of pumpkins.

We call the big one Blighty

In preparation for Friday, we watched a little Star Trek on Bluray...

Carving table and Spock preparing to mind-meld with the pizza monster in the background

... because it was a Sci-Fi theme this year. Our hostess was The Corpse Bride.

Our host was Khan.


Which made things a little difficult when the cousin/roommate showed up as Kirk.

Kiiiiiiiiiiiiiirk --- KHAN!

I was a red shirt -- nameless, first to die, etc... My space-age backup is Leela (Professor Fransworth is in the background).

What Sci-Fi theme is complete without The Matrix? I think we all agreed that this was the best costume of the night.

There were cocktails that tasted like Kool-Aid, which led to my all but tipping the punch bowl into my mouth, only to find out from The Corpse Bride that she kept getting distracted while adding the vodka so she wasn't sure how much was in it.

By midnight, things were not pretty.

Yep, that's a corn cob tobacco pipe. I smoked it. I felt it the next day, you betcha.

For more photos check out Wuh Haecker's Flickr link on the right. Eventually I will post ours on the Mine link. (I'll get around to it. I will.)