A Movie Nearly Every Night: It's a triple feature!

8 1/2 (1963)
Dir. Federico Fellini
Starring: Marcello Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale, Anouk Aimee, Sandra Milo

Ice Station Zebra (1968)
Dir. John Sturges
Starring: Rock Hudson, Ernest Borgnine, Patrick McGoohan, Jim Brown

Don (1978)
Dir. Chandra Barot
Starring: Amitabh Bachchan, Zeenat Aman, Pran

Ques es mas macho?

The weekend started Friday with a media night featureof 8 1/2 and the man movie theme just seemed to carry over naturally thanks to Turner Classic Movies and Netflix. As I've already admitted on the post about The Dirty Dozen, I like boy movies, mostly for the boys, but also because there's a comfortable security in films about men bonding as brothers to take down Nazis, invading Arab troops, gangsters, etc... This doesn't mean that I let go entirely of my feminist mindset. Movies like The Departed still leave me angry and frustrated with their treatment of female characters in film ---- take out the psychiatrist in The Departed and you'd still have a coherent movie, but take out the cell phones ... well ...

Guido's medicinal spa sighting of Claudia Cardinale

With that in mind, I'm a fan of Fellini because he tells you up front where women rate in his films. Some say he treats women like objects, but what's nice about this movie (and others) is that it states plainly how important that object is to guys like Guido/Fellini. Women have influenced everything Guido has done and it's sweet how open this movie is about that -- yes, even as it skirts a little too close to misogynist territory when the older women are banished to the upstairs. But this idea, starting a revolt at first and until it's eventually accepted by Guido's dream harem, also carries over to the male characters. Look at the poor set designer who has a hell of a time making the spaceship and cries about how he's too old to do it anymore. Everyone is facing age and death and loneliness and in the end they join hands and circle around their inevitable end together. That's really sweet.

(not so) secret agent,"Mr. Jones" in his man fur
(thanks to Retro Daddy on opensalon.com for the photo)

Alistair MacLean on the other hand dispenses with women altogether and leaves out the messy feminist anger. It's boy movie all the way with marines in a sub and cold war espionage on the ice. And Patrick McGoohan is always a treat with his scowling growl -- does he ever play a happy man? The men wear the fur coats (and thank God or you wouldn't be able to tell them apart when they're covered: McGoohan wears brown, Rock Hudson wears blue, etc...) and have somewhat charged emotional moments (like girls). But, God! when the sub is going down under the ice ... dude ... I almost had to leave the room. I can't imagine being in a submarine at all let alone one trapped under ice and sinking. I'd cry and wet my pants.

Not your little sister's Don

Don is a whole other boy picture entirely. The cousin/roommate remarked how it starts off like a Beastie Boys video (wild, wacky graphics of car chases in crazy orange and yellow negative fabulousness) and then slows a bit and then picks up and then gets silly, but it's entertaining throughout and the female lead, Roma, knows judo and kicks just as much a** as the boys do. Say what you want about male dominance in the east, but I've seen more equality in a Bollywood picture than I have in an equal number of western-made films. Women aren't tied into that "journalist out for a story" or "single mom hooker" character-stamp that we have here, and the men sing just as many goofy songs as the women do. And, unlike the women who look good all the time, Amitabh has to try and pull off being a tough gangster while wearing a bow tie. Try that Tom Cruise. Anyway, this is far superior to the 2006 Shah Rukh Khan remake, which has its moments (and Shah Rukh) and updates the songs and makes some interesting plot changes, but I'll take 1970's Hindustani funk soundtrack over modern electronica any day of the week.

Look to the heptagon for it is there...

When we were kids my brothers and I saw this creepy movie more times than I can remember --- but not enough times to remember the name of it. Thank God for YouTube. It's Rod Serling's masterpiece Encounter With the Unknown (1973) and it must have been on every Friday night up through the 1980's. My little brother and I like the first part in particular with the college kids and the curse laid on them by "the seventh daughter of the seventh son":

"Listen you well to my word. One by land. Two by sky."



It's part Hammer Horror, part Ed Wood, which makes it both fantastic and a little slow and dreary. Still ... "Seven times around go the three of you." How can you ever get that out of your head?

Facebook? Yeah, sometimes it's pretty cool

This picture was posted by a friend of a friend, "Washboard" Breezy Peyton (of The Rev. Peyton's Big Damn Band -- check them out). It's from a wall at a music venue in Seattle:

Breezy, if we ever meet, I owe you one.

A Movie Nearly Every Night: JCVD

JCVD (2008)
Dir: Mabrouk El Mechri
Starring: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Francois Damiens, Zinedine Soualem

"aware"

Honestly? Honestly ... it was slow in some spots. It's a robbery/hostage story and that has limited possibilities and they've all been done somewhere else. But, honestly, this stretches into some new territory if you stick with it and that saves it. Although, honestly, what really saves it and makes it satisfying is Jean-Claude Van Damme. He made me cry. Mickey Rourke didn't make me cry in The Wrestler. JCVD makes me cry in JCVD. How Mickey got a nomination at the Oscars and Jean-Claude didn't equals robbery with no hostages.

Honestly.

Would I recommend it? I don't know. I like Jean-Claude, but if you don't like him ... well, sure you might still like this. Why not? Good is good.

Weak

Sorry, just not getting around to the blog lately. Last week was our busiest week at work, which means more sales, which translates into a larger percentage of people who "want to speak with a supervisor" because the internet is run by witchcraft and shysters out to screw you.

There's also the general line of wackos that show up all year 'round and just have more of a presence this time of year, like the guy complaining about how Sharpie pens roll of his desk and can we fix that (and calling one of our customer service reps a F***NG C**T because we couldn't) or someone who wanted me to apologize for telling her something I didn't tell her (not fix the problem -- just put "in writing" that I told her the thing I didn't tell her) or the guy who's kid was sniffing markers and was that dangerous or why do we keep putting things on Bob's computer???????? stop!!!!!! Stop!!!!! Stop!!!! (I'm paraphrasing that one, but his name was Bob).

Anyway, we've watched portions of movies last week, but nothing substantial because sleep happens suddenly. We have managed to watch a couple of discs of Knot's Landing and, friends, scoff all you want, but that is one entertaining little program. We laugh and laugh, and the commentary by Joan Van Ark (Val) and Ted Shakelford (Gary) is priceless. (Did they get ideas for stories out of Ladies' Home Journal and Redbook? Like when Karen kills her husband?) I wish they would release the later shows, the ones with William Devane and Michelle Phillips because those are over the top fantastic.

So if people are barking at you all day and you reach that point (God knows I've reached it a few times last week) where if one more person barks at you you're going to snap --- put in a little 80's television, sit back and make it all better.

Avatar

Look, I'm getting a lot of pressure to go see Avatar. People at the office, people on Facebook, Manohla Dargis --- they all keep saying how great it is and how it's the best movie ever, but when I ask why, with the exception of Manohla, the responses are less that satisfying.

"It's awesome." "It was so good." And my favorite, when questioning the film's ham-fisted message: "Maybe I don't want to think all the time. When I go to a movie sometimes I just want to be entertained." To me that's like excusing heroin addiction or alcoholism -- I just want to block out everything for a while and not have to think about things. Watch Intervention and tell me if I'm wrong. And, yes, I realize that I had said that about Bollywood spectacle cinema, but I don't tell anyone else that they have to see it in order to justify my guilty pleasure in watching it. It's good at what it does, but it's not for everyone, and, above all, I noted that Bollywood spectacle doesn't preach. Not so with James Cameron. You're being fed his take on social inequality (and the "boo-yah! love conquers all with rocket fire" solution) whether you realize it or not.

Now, I generally like Manohla's New York Times reviews, and I trust her 90% of the time. Her review of Avatar touts the visuals ("eye-popping detail," "slender hips, a miniature-apple rear"), but it doesn't give me any hope that the rest of the movie backs up the eye candy: "on occasion losing you with some of the comically broad dialogue. He's a masterly storyteller if a rather less than nimble prose writer." I'm not going to argue against the visual aspects of the movie, which appear to be really impressive, expensive and gorgeous to look at. But what I can't get passed is the Sociology for Dummies aspect of the story, which is "less than nimble."

The same can be said for Titanic, yet another James Cameron film that everyone told me to go see and, in that case, I listened. Yes, the ship breaking apart in Titanic was fantastic, and the visuals were stunning, but sitting through DiCaprio saying "I reckon" to show he's American and watching Billy Zane hit Kate Winslet to show he's bad was torture. It's everything that's right and wrong with cinema: using technology to paint a picture and dumbing everything else down to the level of a 3-year-old's mentality to make sure we all get the message. I'm not a complete idiot and I hate being treated like one, especially by someone who appears to be a bigger idiot than I am.

I can't tell from the reviews, word of mouth or the trailer that Avatar is any different in essence from Titanic, and the idea of handing that jerk $8 of my money on top of having to see him jump around on stage at the Oscars again after stealing 3 hours of my life ... dude ... it's more than I can bear.

So quit buggin' me.

A Movie Nearly Every Night: Chaplin

Chaplin (1992)

Dir: Richard Attenborough
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Geraldine Chaplin, Paul Rhys, John Thaw, Moira Kelly, Anthony Hopkins

My parents went to see the new Sherlock Holmes last weekend and loved it. Since I don't like going to movies alone I stayed at home and put on an older Downey picture. We just watched Tati's Playtime (that I will post about as soon as I can get the dvd and take screen shots -- the Bluray is brilliant on the tv; bad for the pc), so I figured I'd watch Chaplin as a kind of Downey-clown cercle rouge. I don't think I'd seen it all the way through since the theater, so, like Harry Potter, it was kind of new to me to watch it with hindsight, knowing what would come later for Robert Downey Jr.

But weirder still is thinking of what he'd done before this movie. I mean, honestly, Less Than Zero is probably the biggest role and it's such a silly, neon mess (with the exception, as always, of the cool and stylish Spader) -- how did he get this big job in the first place?

But he's so naturally Chaplin, from the start, and it's not his voice or that his hair looks like Chaplin's or any of the outer trappings, but it's how he moves through Chaplin's ages and experiences, making each stage subtle through gestures and body language (regardless of how rubbery the makeup gets in the later years).

Old man fidgeting and insecurity shines through the latex

Like the way he watches movies for the first time in a barn in Montana. It's one of those bio-movie pivotal moments (although Attentborough wisely holds back on the swelling music until it's done, thank God), but it could easily be over acted. Let's face it, bio-movies are by genre obvious and over done because they have to throw 80 years of a person's life at you in 2.5 hours. But Downey slows it down. He plays it with an expression of subtle fascination and almost scientific interest, and this little thing he does with his hat, as though to protect himself from revealing too much or taking too much in, like a geisha hiding behind a fan.

Charlie and Stan Laurel (Matthew Cottle) take in the flickers

Narratively, he's watching a short moment of film again and again, but he still raises his hat at "the best part" and covers the lower part of his face. Stan tosses it off with "I've seen it -- you've got a telegram." Chaplin's seen it too, but no matter how often they run it it's still drawing him in and making him react with that shield to protect himself, like he's going to let out a shout each time. It's an unspoken, entirely acted, revealing moment in the character, showing us the feeling Chaplin seemed to want to reproduce later in his own films.

Sure, again, bio-pic, so there are plenty of obvious moments ("people are poor ... I'll make Modern Times"), but when he comes up with The Great Dictator it's better than the other "pivotal" moments. Chaplin tells his brother (Paul Rhys) that he wants to make this movie because he "understands" Hitler ("I know you, you bastard," he says) and that they're very similar: born the same year, 4 days apart, etc... It's a few lines of dialogue that can be tossed off in a hurry to move the scene along, but it's played with this middle-aged intensity from a guy who was, what, 26 when this movie was made? But Downey is driven, charismatic, embodying the role of Chaplin as Chaplin embodies the role of the dictator, because he understands him. It's film about film, character as character as character (for more on that see Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, another interesting character movie with the Downey Jr. and, yes, Val Kilmer ... it's good. Better than you think. Okay, you just have to trust me).

Of course, Chaplin's not the only great character in the movie. Kevin Kline makes a dashing and complex Douglas Fairbanks. I love Doug. I have the above picture in a frame over my desk because they all look so happy and they're all getting along so well. It's a very pleasant moment, even though it's posed. It's like they're about to fall off his shoulders and Doug's the only one who doesn't seem to think that will happen.

Doug in retrospect

He was a larger than life man who couldn't handle things falling apart --- love, his physical shape, the movie business -- and Kline plays him big, but adds the little sad moments, like catching his reflection in the murky bartop and knowing that Laugh and Live is a great name for a book, but not a perfect philosophy in the end.

A Movie Nearly Every Night: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001)
Dir: Chris Columbus
Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Richard Harris, Maggie Smith

Teens, always trying to get attention

Teen lit is an interesting genre. It's basically the same basic story: Coming-of-age, dealing with adult feelings in child bodies, etc... and the characters usually are special in some way to set them apart from "normal" teenagers: The poor boy gang fighting for humanity and recognition in The Outsiders; Twilight has vampires dealing with teen lust (virgins, blood, repression - you do the math); and Harry Potter has wizards dealing with ... well, oddly enough for a book about starting your adult life, these kids are constantly dealing with death.

I don't think I'd seen this first film since it was in the show and it was interesting to watch it again with the benefit of knowing what goes on later. What gets me about this series is how the emphasis is always on making these characters children. They are constantly referred to as children (especially in The Order of the Phoenix, where it's so constant as to become distracting) and they are treated as children by the single, somewhat sexually stifled members of the Hogwart's teaching staff. But rather than encouraging these children to grow into adult wizards with responsibilities and their special talents focused and controlled, the adults continue to treat them like pawns while reminding them always that they're going to die. Sucks for you, children.

A lot is made of death in the 4th book/film -- I remember when it came out and all the hush talk about which character was going to die and, God! I hope it's not Ron and that kind of thing -- but it came as something of a shock to hear gentle old Dumbledore announce to the students on Day 1 of the first film that students who visit one of the floors of the castle could die. Not detention, but death. Ghosts of the dead roam the school, Voldemort (whose name, not to be mentioned, includes "death") wants to kill Harry, and, of course, a lot revolves around Harry's dead parents and how they died and why.

So why do they keep calling these pre-teens "children," even after their voices change and they come to school in suits? Remember, children, adults make the world a risky place for you (how is it no one has fallen to their death on one of those moving staircases?) so know your place and keep it. It's like Hogwarts is preparing them not to be adult wizards with any kind of power to do anything, but killing their spirits to make them nameless clerks in the muggle civil service --- special and yet not special enough to have responsibility -- and though they fight against this by proving they're capable of saving the world or whatever the story calls for at the time, based on what the other wizards have grown up to be, is there really any hope that they will be any different than those sad, empty wizard professors? If they're special, won't they die like the Potters or Gary Oldman? Or, if not, if they live to be responsible adults, will they be tramping down future pre-teens who walk through the doors of Hogwarts? Makes you wonder.

It's a crazy world these wizards have. By the way, kind of weird that a couple of dentists would allow their daughter to study there, but, meh, muggles are just as crazy as wizards, I guess. So much for specialness.

Li'l Holidays

While I sit here at work listening to my cubicle neighbor play Christmas Classics by the World War II Russian POW Choir, I'm reminded again of what a special and wonderful time of year this is for all God's righteous children.

A time of year when there is only one day when you can give or get a gift. A day or two early or late and the holiday is ruined until next year. Plan accordingly. Spend well. And, remember, loose lips sink gift ships.

A time of year when I don't ever get tired of hearing the words "you people" or "cheap Chinese crap." It's especially nice when the phrases are thrown together: "You people sold me cheap Chinese crap and it won't even get here in time for Christmas!"

A time of year when people think that an office supply company not only does gift wrap, but will wrap a hand sanitizer dispenser for their fiancee to open on that magical Christmas morn'. (Whoops, we had to tell you it would a few days late and he heard the voicemail message? And now you're refusing delivery because there's no surprise? "You people" ruin another holiday.)

A time of year when I drink too much, eat too much and sleep way the hell too much, but will wake in bliss deep into the Winter of our Discontent.

Happy Holidays, my children ... all are welcome ... all are welcome ...

Good Times

Just to update -- I don't have swine flu. It was a steroid rush. No wonder I felt like Hunter S. Thompson.

Buckaroo Medicine - Natural Healing

Friday I broke a blood vessel in my eye. You know in Alien 3 when Sigourney Weaver first lands on the prison planet/ship with the entire catalog of male character types from UK Actor's Equity? It looked like that. This constitutes "strange bleeding" to me, so I call the blood guy and he gives me a prescription for steroids -- 10 a day for 4 days -- to up my platelet count to heal the thing. It would heal on its own, but in normal people this means a couple of days. In me it would mean a couple of weeks of monster eye.

No big. 4 days. I can do it. So I start taking them, go out Saturday to finish shipping stuff off and take care of an embarassing error with a security tag at Fred Meyer (I didn't know it was still on there when we walked out the door -- Why didn't anyone stop us?) and Sunday I wake up feverish with this weird sunburn rash on my face and neck. What the? This isn't on the list of side effects! Where's my steroid euphoria??

Turns out steroids kill your immune system, which means you can catch just about anything floating around out there. Yeah, isn't that great? Even the hyped swine flu or whatever the hell else people are breathing on you -- touch it and it's yours. So I filled up on soup, tomato juice and brussel sprouts, and things are coming around today, although I'm still a little out of body balance. Stupit pills.

Although, honestly, the real healing came from watching Zanjeer (1973) yesterday.

Oh Amitabh ... is there anything he can't do?

600

Raarrrrrrrrrrrrr --- sorry, trying to do my double 300 battle cry, but I don't think it comes across well in text. This is post #600. Hooray for the internet.

I don't have anything special planned for this post, so there's no big deal really. We didn't watch a lot of movies this weekend because I was mostly sleeping, shopping or watching Quincy, M.E., Flight of the Conchords, and The Office. I'd review television, but there's only so much you can do in 30 or 60 minutes. It's a punchy sort of medium.

By the way, I've never actually seen 300. But I've seen United 300. Isn't it the same thing? (the ad at the bottom goes away with a click on the little x in the corner -- it doesn't come back)

A Movie Nearly Every Night: Partners

Partners (1982)
Dir: James Burrows
Starring: Ryan O'Neal, John Hurt, Kenneth McMillan

Benson (Ryan O'Neal) and Kerwin (John Hurt) are ... well ... partners

My mom and I love this movie, but it's been years since I'd seen it. We caught some of A Man For All Seasons on Turner last week and the cousin/roommate remarked on how young John Hurt was in it. I've been a huge fan of John Hurt since I was a kid. There's something both trusting and sinister about him -- like you'd want to hang out with him because he'd know how to steal cigarettes from the corner store. But it's mostly because he's not afraid of any kind of acting: alien coming out of his chest, licking a woman's face, sleeping with his sister (and cutting the baby out to eat it like a god) or being the Elephant Man. Stuff other people won't do he'll not only do it, he'll master it.

You can guess the story without too much trouble: Ryan O'Neal is Benson, a macho cop who gets partnered with fey records clerk Fred Kerwin to go undercover to solve a homosexual murder. The premise is somewhat silly and offensive, but, honestly, the movie walks a really fine line that keeps it from being as silly and offensive as it could have been, and I think a lot of the credit goes to John Hurt and, yeah, I'll say it, Ryan O'Neal. He's good in this. I don't normally like him, but I he makes Benson a decent guy.

It's a comedy, so there are some moments of obvious stereotype, but just when they get close to caricature (Kerwin keeps house; Benson oggles breasty women) it backs off just enough to keep the characters real. There's no great and sudden transition from macho jerk to sensitive understanding male. Ryan O'Neal's Benson is uncomfortable with his job, but he does it with a minimum of bitching. I'll say it again, he's a decent guy, and he's usually very careful around John Hurt's gay Officer Kerwin, who is equally uncomfortable with the job. Kerwin knows he's being "promoted" not because he's a good cop but because of his sexuality, and it bothers him just as it bothers Benson to wear leather, and yet both settle in with only a few moments of awkward silliness.

potentially awkward silliness, but handled with a minimum of idiocy. No, really.

It helps that during the silly moments that there is no goofy incidental music to send it over the top. As Ryan O'Neal walks past a line of people (coincidentally waiting to see La Cage Aux Folles, written by Francis Veber who also wrote Partners) there's no dopey "wah wah wahhhhh" music to echo his steps. This keeps Benson from coming across as a jerk or asking us to sympathize with his discomfort, because in the end he's a cop doing a job and that's how he plays it. We can laugh at him or not, but that's entirely up to us. There's nothing forcing the laugh, which is interesting considering this was directed by James Burrows, the sitcom king. (Although not entirely surprising since James Burrows also directed the best episode of News Radio "Smoking.")

The story doesn't shy away from showing the cops as homophobic louts either. Benson and Kerwin only investigate one case, but it turns out that there have been a number of murders that the police have ignored because the victims were gay. There's also a scene in jail that shows Benson what it's like to be on the other side of his fellow officers (and why Kerwin has kept in the closet) and it's not played for laughs. Balance that against Kerwin having a queen moment at a stake out, and you have a somewhat steady picture.

So, comedy, yes, but offensive? I'd argue no, not so much, or there's enough on each side to keep things even. It's an interesting movie played by interesting actors. With anyone else, it would be complete disaster, no doubt about it.

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.)

Halloween is coming

(picture of Ema Johnson courtesy of Jo Johnson)

that is all.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I'm a Cook

Gather 'round little ones. I've just purchased www.lilhateful.com.

Google, you make me feel, mi-ghi-ty real.

No, really, we'll watch a movie now and post about it. Although last night I did watch Life of Brian again, but there's no need to review it. But it reminded me of how my parents told us we could never see it because it was blasphemous and now they can quote whole sections of it.

It's..............

Sorry, haven't watched a movie since we sent back The Wrestler because we've been watching the Monty Python documentary every night on IFC. It's sometimes interesting and sometimes really, really irritating --- because who really gives a f*** what Russell Brand has to say? He's totally clueless and covers it up with a lot of useless noise and wild gesturing, like "I'm going to say something! Something really pertinent! Because I know it! I know ... um ... yeah, so ... about me --- HA HA HA." But Steve Coogan does a perfect Piranha Brothers sketch and I would never have guessed that Eric Idle was the one to organize everything. (That Michael Palin is a very nice person is not so big of a shock.)

Anyway, in the second segment they ask a list of comedians to name their favorite sketch from the show and they falter ---- edited faltering I think, because the cousin/roommate and I came up with one right away:



"I told you to lay off the beans, you whore!"

My Cat, Veda

I just want everyone to know this in case some day in the aliens drop down and erase my blog.

Veda, my Siamese cat, used to have 3 soft red balls that she would throw in the air and chase around the living room. One by one, the balls disappeared. When we moved last year and pulled the futon away from the wall, we found this:

All three red balls in a triangle. I showed it to friends, so it's somewhat documented, but we had a good laugh (beer was involved in the moving process) and blew it off.

Here, at the new house, the balls have again disappeared, so she has new ones: a blue one, a yellow one, and a rolled up bit of plastic in the shape of a miniature mouse. This morning we had this in the hallway:

Blue to mouse to yellow to blue.

The pictures aren't all that great because I haven't figured out how to make them great because I suck at it (I shrunk it while drawing in the lines -- whatever), but you get the idea.

Conclusion: She's cute as a little old button, but Veda is clearly not of this earf.

A Movie Nearly Every Night: The Wrestler

The Wrestler (2008)
Dir: Darren Aronofsky
Starring: Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood

The Ram vs. The Ayatollah -- Sunday SUNDAY Sunday

Photo courtesy of Fox/Searchlight Pictures

Mom and I used to go to a little library book sale in Lake Arrowhead every Labor Day. I'd mill around the fiction tables in the S section (Stevenson, Stendahl, Sterne...) and listen to housewives paw through the rainbow-colored Danielle Steele books trying to remember which ones they'd read: "The story sounds familiar, but I don't know..." They'd flip through the pages and it would all look like something they'd seen before, but they just weren't sure.

That's how I felt watching The Wrestler. It all happens just the way you'd expect it to happen, to the point where I really thought I might have seen it before: he's not going to do that -- hmpf, yeah, I guess he is. Marisa Tomei manages to take it out off the broken record whenever she's in it, like she knows that her character is cliched, but she's going to do it one better. She's interesting. Not so lucky Evan Rachel Wood who plays the Ram's hysterical dramatic daughter. One minute soft - one minute crying and yelling - the torture of being the neglected child ... yah yah yah.

But, it's true, Mickey Rourke is amazing. He looks like hell, but there's a good actor in there somewhere, and he plays it the way he's supposed to play it, but he makes you want to break into him a little bit more. He's not an asshole and he's not a good guy. I liked him.

I used to think Mickey was hot in the Diner days. You get to see his a** in this, and, actually, it was a little troubling. Then he put a needle in it. This is now one of those movie images, like Warren Oates having a towel fight with Ernest Borgnine in a steam room in The Wild Bunch, that I will never get out of my head.

Thanks. Thanks a lot.

A Movie Nearly Every Night: Star Wars

Star Wars (1977)
Director: George Lucas
Starring: don't act like you don't know

Head in sharp irritating sinus+neuralgic pain for the past 3 days, which has put a damper on movie analysis (including the long-play essay on Poltergeist ... honestly, Filmtank, I'm working on it). What do you watch when your head hurts? Well, unless you own a lot of Winona Ryder movies (which we don't ... odd) you put on something comfortable and safe, like Star Wars.

It's a silly fairy tale --- bad guys in black; good guys in white; guys somewhere in between in brown --- but, by the same coin, it's also not a challenge to tired gray cells. It's like putting on slippers and a Snuggie. And, like any decent movie worthy of analysis, each time I watch it I find something new to love, like this scene:

Obi Wan has just done the impressive disabling of the tractor beam and is sneaking out. He's going to use the Force, but he doesn't really need to because these guys aren't paying attention to him anyway:

Stormtrooper 1: You seen that new VT 16?
Stormtrooper 2: Yeah, some [unintelligible] guys were telling me about it. They say it's ... quite fancy.

Made me feel kind of sorry for them when the Death Star blew up.