tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-168958522024-02-21T20:55:42.866-08:00Cheezy Movies and MoreCommentary on a variety of topics including bad moviesDave Zarkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05121074990100087700noreply@blogger.comBlogger327125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16895852.post-75068110560650923062022-06-27T06:50:00.004-07:002022-06-27T06:50:34.033-07:00SOUTHEAST ASIAN FILMS<p style="font-family: Verdana; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY (Australia 1982)— From director Peter Weir comes a work with realism so jarring that it stands apart from other war films. Linda Hunt won a best supporting actress award for her part as Billy, the resourceful assistant to a reporter covering Indonesia’s civil unrest in the 1960s played Guy Hamilton (Mel Gibson in a breakout role.) A non-fiction Guy Hamilton as handsome as Gibson was the American reporter in Southeast Asia, Jerry A. Rose.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Verdana; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"> <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086617/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086617/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0</span></a></span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Verdana; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">THE UGLY AMERICAN (1963 Universal-Int’l) — In this fictional film based on a popular novel, Marlon Brando plays the conflicted US ambassador to a country resembling Vietnam. Brando comments about growing addicted to risk and in an outstanding performance actor Eiji Okada says inescapable poverty is “water from the moon.” <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056632/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_2"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056632/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_2</span></a></span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Verdana; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">THE JOURNALIST: The real life Southeast Asia “adrenalin junkie” immune to risks was reporter Jerry Rose, who is profiled by Minnesota writer Lucy Rose Fischer in the book “THE JOURNALIST: Life and loss in America’s Secret War.” Rose was reporting on the Vietnamese corruption and the ineptness of American diplomats and military brass in the early 1960s when the public and news media gatekeepers weren’t interested in Vietnam. By the time they got interested, their husbands, brothers and sons were coming home in body bags. https://www.mnvietnam.org/story/a-sleeping-child/</span></p><p> </p>Dave Zarkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05121074990100087700noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16895852.post-52478164621230018802022-06-18T07:19:00.005-07:002022-06-18T07:19:46.046-07:00TERENCE DAVIES British films<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">SUNSET SONG and BENEDICTION —- “Poetic realism by Britain’s greatest living auteur,” according to the DVD notes about British director Terence Davies. In Davies films characters exist out of the mainstream order living lives of quiet desperation. </span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Outstanding in the Davies collection are “Benediction” and “A Quiet Passion” with the former about poet Siegfried Sassoon which was shown this month at St. Anthony Main. In “A Quiet Passion” Cynthia Nixon is outstanding as poet Emily Dickinson. World War One is a defining moment for characters in both “Benediction” and “Sunset Song.” </span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Davies films are understated with minimal music scores while the landscapes create poetic moments. More about Davies in this attached interview:</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">https://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/benediction-interview-terence-davies</span></p><p> </p>Dave Zarkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05121074990100087700noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16895852.post-16681590672901209412022-06-17T14:08:00.000-07:002022-06-17T14:08:49.664-07:00CRY TERROR with Roy Neal at the Burbank Airport<p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">CRY TERROR (1958) — A suburban family is held hostage in their home by a crazy man (Rod Steiger) and his drug-addled accomplice (Neville Brand).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>There’s a bit of me in this story.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The crazy intruder was a popular film genre in the 50s.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Brand has a great scene when he explains his addiction to the hostage wife (Inger Stevens) who is memorable running along railroad tracks in a subway tunnel.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Likewise, the hostage husband (James Mason) appears quite anxious hanging onto a cable in an elevator shaft.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Whatever keeps you on the edge of your seat, you’ll find in “Cry Terror.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>For me I enjoyed cameos with NBC news reporters<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Chet Huntley, network news anchor, and Roy Neal who covered aeronautics for NBC TV News when I was an editorial assistant at KNBC in 63-64.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Neal, who fancied a cigarette holder, was a bit stuffy but likable.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(Rockets, missiles, satellites and space travel were big news in the 60s).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I picked Roy up in my ’61 Plymouth Fury at the Burbank airport when he returned from an assignment.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The Fury had some space age touches with an aluminum fin running the length of the trunk and very Buck Rogers illusions, mostly dismissed by car buyers and industry critics.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>As reporter Jim McLaughlin of The Idaho Statesman observed, it looked like it was going 30 miles an hour when it was sitting at the curb.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I now happily drive a Dodge Dart, a brand that found currency in SoCal with a “little old lady from Pasadena the terror of Colorado Blvd.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051501/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;">https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051501/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0</span></a></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p><a href="https://www.broadcastpioneers.com/royneal.html" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">https://www.broadcastpioneers.com/royneal.html</a> </p>Dave Zarkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05121074990100087700noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16895852.post-88018744835957360112022-06-12T09:48:00.005-07:002022-06-12T09:48:58.543-07:00JOHNNY GUITAR, CATTLE QUEEN OF MONTANA, RAIN<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">JOHNNY GUITAR & CATTLE QUEEN OF MONTANA (1954) — Forget damsels in distress because ladies on horseback rule in these big budget westerns. Middle aged ”golden era” actresses Joan Crawford and Barbara Stanwyck play powerful cowgirls who literally call the shots. Execs at Republic and RKO studios were staring into the abyss in the burgeoning TV era when they released these two dusty dramas. Crawford as the saloon owner does a strip and is aggressive in her feud with Emma (Mercedes McCambridge) while Sterling Hayden as Johnny takes a back seat to Crawford’s theatrics. Stanwyck is quite feminine in a romantic scene with incidental fading cowboy star Ronald Reagan in “Queen” while giving bad boy land grabbers a taste of their own medicine. Both were filmed in color in the Mountain West’s scenic locations and the soundtrack music in “Queen” is exceptional for a horse opera. “Johnny Guitar” is cited in the NYT book as one of 1,000 essential movies to see.</span></p>
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<p><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">RAIN (1932) — In a pre-code United Artists film, a married missionary Alfred Davidson (Walter Huston) is presumably making a tyrannical soul-saving attempt driven by lust in a sleazy hotel on behalf of prostitute Sadie Thompson (Joan Crawford).</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">Davidson’s obsession soon becomes apparent in this south seas tropical drama.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">In short, “men are men” Sadie quips for what transpires between her and the soul-saving traveler.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">The pounding rain combined with an</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">incessant disorienting jungle drumbeat heighten the sexual tension as Davidson shivers and shakes in the shadows.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">I didn’t fully understand this steamy cinema as a teen when I first saw it on an afternoon matinee in 1954 on KXLY-TV.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">It’s from a W. Somerset Maugham short story that was originally filmed with Jean Eagles and remade in the 1950s with Rita Hayworth.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"> </span> </p>Dave Zarkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05121074990100087700noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16895852.post-61356105003701993522022-05-29T07:40:00.005-07:002022-06-10T06:34:36.459-07:00TOP GUN MAVERICK, Laurel & Hardy, Scarlet St. + more<p> <span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">TOP GUN MAVERICK (2022) — Old is new again and Tom Cruise, who would be eligible for AARP membership, has been resurrected 36 years after the original Top Gun for a wild blue yonder thriller.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">I was less than thrilled.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">Junior bird men and bird women duel it out in the sky against missiles to knock out the threatening installation of an unnamed country (I assume Canada). </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">Leonard Maltin wrote that Anthony Edwards was the reason to see the original, but his character was knocked off in the ’86 Top Gun. </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">Most Navy officers after 36 years have retired to a trailer park near San Diego, but not Cruise who is cast in yet another golden oldie, a Mission Impossible sequel.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">The recycling of scripts won’t stop —at the Riverview a Jurassic Park sequel is next month’s feature.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">“It could have been a 1942 film with Cary Grant and Randolph Scott,” said Rick Notch.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMxmJam24vtFAiAS_ZOFRZnezJncj2ZP2i4TMowdHDb1Tr1Rqq327oM8wiU7zonG41U9LvKqTq-vU5fv4YYElPDJaFpnaYc_-4nahJp6SyndGjRlJrSswI3D9-TxUqeiJH8OgLzmbjpoP9bz4Pi2oGqrbAekXYHHwEorFh34hGFB9dF9mzM7A/s5152/DSC01633.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3864" data-original-width="5152" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMxmJam24vtFAiAS_ZOFRZnezJncj2ZP2i4TMowdHDb1Tr1Rqq327oM8wiU7zonG41U9LvKqTq-vU5fv4YYElPDJaFpnaYc_-4nahJp6SyndGjRlJrSswI3D9-TxUqeiJH8OgLzmbjpoP9bz4Pi2oGqrbAekXYHHwEorFh34hGFB9dF9mzM7A/w493-h240/DSC01633.JPG" width="493" /></a></div><br /><p></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Howard Hughes made his mark with aerial warfare in the 1930 “Hells Angels” and tried again in 1950 with “Jet Pilot” but it was shelved until 1957 when RKO was gone and moviegoers weren’t interested in dueling pilots from cold war countries.</span></p><div><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></div><div>A few blocks form the river in a residential neighborhood is the Riverview Theater, a 50s mid century modern design with an oval shaped auditorium. Very "modern" copper drinking fountain and furniture.</div><div><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">THE PLAYER — It was marketed as a ‘thriller” but it’s a subversive dark comedy where an unpleasant Hollywood studio executive murders a screenwriter but then who cares? Overkill with cameos of celebrities. Buck Henry is featured as a writer trying to sell the exec (Tim Robbins) on a sequel to “The Graduate” which seems like a terrible idea. Whoopi Goldberg plays the cop leading a dysfunctional investigation of the murder where a “reliable witness” identifies another cop (Lyle Lovett) as the perp. Not to be missed. <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105151/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105151/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0</span></a></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">SCARLET STREET (1945- Universal) — This is the drug of choice for film noir addicts. Fritz Lang’s classic film noir is a biblical tale of lust in the garden of evil where the prostitute Kitty (Joan Bennett) dangles her ripe fruits under the twitching nose of the lonely artist/cashier Chris (Edward G. Robinson) who takes a bite. Aided by her pimp played by a regular visitor to the dark side, Dan Duryea, they take the hapless Chris for all he has or can steal. Kitty reveals her cheapness and vulgarity in the restaurant scene with Chris where a straw carelessly dangles from her lips while she nervously talks. A contrived conversation amongst strangers on a train offers an opinion that Chris will have to pay a steep price for the wages of sin. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038057/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">THE HOODLUM (1951 Eagle Lion Classics) — Actor Lawrence Tierney was the reigning king of the bad boy genre and he hasn’t mellowed in this low budget film noir directed by Max Nossock (Dillinger). After laying waste to his family, his dying mother denounces him thusly: “What can momma do; go to the electric chair for you. I was blind. I always stuck up for you. I should have let you rot in jail. Your brothers’ girl friend died with your unborn baby in her. You are the smell. You are the stink.” <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043655/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_1"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043655/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_1</span></a></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">BENEDICTION (UK 2022) — A very sobering look at life in Great Britain during World War I, including discrimination against gays and staggering loss of lives. Showing now at the Main theater on the river in historic St. Anthony Main with the Prime Timers. Cobble streets are quaint but the Dodge Dart didn’t appreciate the ride.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6852178/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6852178/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0</a></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">SWISS MISS (1938 MGM Roach) — Laurel & Hardy are moving yet another piano in this musical but this time it’s over the alps on a flimsy rope bridge with a menacing ape. Not the best L&H but some great musical numbers including the flag throwing extravaganza and a sound stage full of dancers in town square. In a droll British moment Eric Blore and Walter Woolf King sing “I Can’t Get Over the Alps,” which infers that the “miss” in Swiss is secondary to the mountains if you hadn’t guessed. (Blore has some very amusing moments with Edward Everett Horton as a fussy butler in the 1930s Fred & Ginger RKO musicals.) In July 1963 on a steaming hot LA day before air conditioners were standard in cars I was at the Roach Studios with John Miller of Ontario and his girl friend for the auction of props from L&H films, most of which went to the museum. A sweet women on a camp stool shared L&H memories from her photo album when her husband Charles Rogers was music director at this Culver City studio — a sad movie land moment.</span></p></div>Dave Zarkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05121074990100087700noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16895852.post-31651431856467509322022-05-21T08:45:00.000-07:002022-05-21T08:45:01.902-07:00DAMN YANKEES & FOSSE VERDON, EXCELLENT CHOREOGRAPHY<p> <span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">DAMN</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">YANKEES (1958) — Weary from the Washington Senators losing ways, a middle aged fan sells his soul to the devil (Ray Walston) and is transformed into youthful Joe Hardy (Tab Hunter), an MLB all star.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">Bases are loaded with tempting Lola (Gwen Verdon), the devil’s femme fatale who chirps it’s “your heart and soul I came for.”</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"> </span></p><p><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">Meanwhile the Senators find that “you’ve got to have heart” to win games. </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">Hunter writes in his autobiography that the studio thought Verdon “wasn’t pretty enough” and they wanted to replace her with Marilyn Monroe or Mitzi Gaynor although she had won a Tony for Damn Yankees.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"> </span></p><p><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">In the cable TV series “Fosse Verdon,” Michelle Williams and Sam Rockwell are outstanding in their creative partnership that resulted in Yankees and more.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051516/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051516/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0</a></span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8746478/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></p>Dave Zarkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05121074990100087700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16895852.post-64078375619672719852022-05-20T06:51:00.000-07:002022-05-20T06:51:06.523-07:00FLASH GORDON, 1980 CULT CLASSIC TURKEY<p><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">FLASH GORDON (1980 UK) — It’s a cult classic.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">The writer of the script for this turkey (in an interview on the DVD)</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">candidly admits that the film is “campy and confusing.”</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">The Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis was only interested in making a “Star Wars” like film.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">Screen writer Lorenzo Semple Jr. said De Laurentiis could neither read or speak English so he didn’t bother with the script which is a series of unrelated confrontations with evil forces.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">Semple didn’t understand Italian so they worked through a translator who only spoke French.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">The script could have benefited from criticism but that never happened, said Semple. </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"> </span></p><p><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">Director Oliver Stone in his autobiography recalls difficulties working with De Laurentiis. </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"> </span></p><p><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">I was a teen when the entertaining 1936 Flash Gordon serial with Buster Crabbe was shown on KXLY-TV at 3 pm weekdays so I hustled home from school to see the latest installment.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">The movie is based on a 1930s comic strip. </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">In the 1980 version, credible actors were recruited for supportive roles — Max von Sydow as Ming and Timothy Dalton as Prince Barin, but the lead is an unknown, Sam J. Jones.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">Would Laurence Olivier as Flash have made a difference? https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080745/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0</span> </p>Dave Zarkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05121074990100087700noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16895852.post-65556968091138427822022-05-19T14:10:00.003-07:002022-05-20T06:51:43.701-07:00TRUMP, SUPREME COURT, SEPARATION CHURCH/STATE<p> <span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">CHURCH STATE SEPARATION.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">Protecting freedom requires a wall between church and state, which is crumbling, was the take away today (3/29) from a Univ. of Minn. Lifelong Learning class online.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">Social justice activists from Cincinatti’s Jewish Humanist Congregation</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">Beth Adam spoke. </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">Pew Research:</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">55% of Americans support separation of church and state.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">Supreme court ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby to impose</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">their religious values on employees.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">Everyone should be threatened</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">to the extent that these people succeed in breaking down the separation wall.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">Upcoming case before the Court: Wash. State related to football coach requiring players to pray; should be a decision within a few months. </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"><a href="https://www.bethadam.org/social-justice1.html" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">https://www.bethadam.org/social-justice1.html</a></span></p><p><br /></p><p style="color: #454545; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">RAGE, 2020 book, several interviews by journalist Bob Woodward with No. 45 following Woodward’s book “Fear: Trump in the White House.” The takeaway from “Rage” comes when Woodward asks Trump to define the president’s job. Trump hedges and Woodward offers this: “it’s figuring out what the next stage of good is for a majority of people in the country.” Trump responds: “That’s good.” Woodward writes: “As I listened, I was struck by the vague, directionless nature of Trump’s comments. He had been president for just under 3 years, but couldn’t seem to articulate a strategy or plan for the country. I was surprised he would go into 2020, the year he hoped to win reelection, without more clarity to his message.” Woodward wrote 189 pages of Trump goofing off before becoming surprised.</span></p><div><br /></div>Dave Zarkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05121074990100087700noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16895852.post-25972327819091586602022-05-06T08:25:00.001-07:002022-05-06T08:25:08.770-07:00Dracula, Taxi Drive, Youth v Gov and more<p> <span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">HOUSE OF DRACULA (1945) — Dr. Edelman (Onslow Stevens) entertains uninvited guests Frankenstein, Dracula and Wolfman at his seaside mansion in this 1945 Universal bit of whimsy with creepy music, great photography and super special effects.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">Dracula (John Carradine) lusts after the nurse (Martha O’Driscoll) while the gruesome trio drive the stressed out doctor to wild-eyed insanity and Frankenstein’s monster sets the mansion ablaze.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">Recently available on DVD.</span><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0037793/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0037793/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0</span></a></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">SHAMPOO (1975) — In the 70s we were in a lather over Warren Beatty playing a Don Juan hairdresser, possibly inspired by real life Hollywood hair stylist Jon Peters who became a film producer and Barbra Streisand’s boyfriend. In this film, Beatty & company attend a fund raiser for Nixon who is on TV mouthing empty rhetoric about bringing the country together. Coincidentally after watching Shampoo on tape I turned to Dick Cavett on Decades with Beatty offering support for Sen. George McGovern’s presidential candidacy. <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073692/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073692/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0</span></a></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">YOUTH V. GOV — Share, Connect, Act — that’s the message in the nearly 2-hour documentary (Netflix) on court cases brought by U.S. young people to prompt a government plan combatting climate change. Yet another attempt to get this before the Supreme Court is underway by the young plaintiffs. We need to know what are the actors in Minnesota who will advance this cause. <a href="https://www.youthvgov.org"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">https://www.youthvgov.org</span></a></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">PLATOON (1986, US) — Director Oliver Stone in his autobiography wrote that his film told only a fragment of the true Vietnam war story. Actor Charlie Sheen plays Stone who observes the disturbing actions of two non-commissioned officers. Stone’s script is based on his 1968 experiences when he drops out of Yale University and volunteers with the Army for frontline Vietnam warfare. Stone’s manuscript for his biography could have benefited from heavy editing; his phrasing lacks polish throughout, but his recollections of Vietnam are well stated. </span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">RIDLEY ROAD (PBS) four-episode drama set in a colorful but tumultuous time on <i>Ridley Road</i>, based on Jo Bloom’s acclaimed novel. Inspired by true events, <i>Ridley Road</i> is about a young Jewish hairdresser who fits right into London’s mod scene, while secretly infiltrating the British neo-Nazi hierarchy on behalf of Jewish antifascists,</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">The neo-nazi riots in London in 1958 are the subject of the 1986 film ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS featuring David Bowie, Sade and James Fox — a very stylish musical that wasn’t well received in the US but nevertheless is quite well done by director Julian Temple.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/shows/ridley-road/">https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/shows/ridley-road/</a></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">AGATHA CHRISTIE’S MURDER AT THE GALLOP (1963 MGM UK) — Classic British comedy mystery with Margaret Rutherford, Robert Morley and Flora Robson. Available on VHS tape. <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057334/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057334/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1</span></a></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">THE RAZOR’S EDGE (1946) — A returning war veteran (Tyrone Power) is inspired by a holy man and forsakes the capitalist rat race for serenity which doesn’t set well with his shrewish girl friend (Gene Tierney). I kept seeing Kathryn Hepburn as the Tierney character, but Bette Davis or Audrey Totter would have worked as well. Excellent director, Edmund Goulding (Nightmare Alley.) <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038873/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038873/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0</span></a></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">TAXI DRIVER (1976) — Martin Scorcese brought a new kind of cinema to the screens in the 70s — raw, violent and real. Robert DeNiro plays a psychotic racist gun-toting vigilante roaming the Manhattan streets. The film is relevant today. Scorcese and DeNiro got their starts at poverty row studio American International where DeNiro was the drug addicted son of Ma Barker in “Bloody Mama” (1970). In another AIP Great Depression gangster story, Scorcese directed David Carradine and Barbara Hershey in “Boxcar Bertha.” Very unsettling cinema. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075314/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0</span></p>Dave Zarkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05121074990100087700noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16895852.post-71930224886390075322022-04-13T10:39:00.000-07:002022-04-13T10:39:11.171-07:00DOUBLE INDEMNITY, SLAM DANCE and more<p> <span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">SLAM DANCE (USA 1987) — Director Wayne Wang spins a terrifying web of madness in this LA noir where Tom Hulce (Amadeus) plays an artist who slides in and out of the shadows and the prostitute’s world ruled by Bobby Nye (Millie Perkins).</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">Harry Dean Stanton is the cop, naturally, in this far out gem that may have escaped your purview.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">A local angel is salting the Blue Box movie exchange with long lost treasurers.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times;">https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0911061/?ref_=fn_nm_nm_1</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">BEVERLY HILLS HILLBILLIES (the movie) — Zsa Zsa Gabor is in a police lineup for slapping a cop and Cloris Leachman is granny in the big screen nod to the popular TV show where we learned that there’s not much difference in stupidity density between the hillbillies and the Beverly Hills snooty cliche in their Bentleys. If they remade BH today the entire clan would have been elected to Congress and protesting against gays, lesbians, women and teachers.</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">HOW THE WEST WAS WON (1962) —A ghost from cinema’s past has risen from the grave. Cinerama has been restored on Blu-ray with a SmileBox bowtie shaped image and minus the separation lines. It’s almost a 3-D sensation. IMAX is heir apparent to the Cinerama legacy, giving thrill seekers something they can’t get on their 32” Sony. HTWWW is a defining film in the careers of Debbie Reynolds and George Peppard. I never saw it when it debuted in 1962 and I was a student at the University of Wash., Seattle, where the Cinerama theater is in limbo. <a href="https://cinerama.com/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">https://cinerama.com/</span></a></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">CODA (2021 - France, US, Canada) — Oscar winner; romance, drama about uniqueness of hearing impaired families. A remake of a French film. Inspirational, entertaining. See it now at the Riverview Theater. <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10366460/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10366460/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0</span></a></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Times; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"> DOUBLE INDEMNITY — Every time Phyllis (Barbara Stanwyck) looked at her unpleasant husband she saw dollar signs and a rotting corpse. Then libidinous insurance salesman Walter (Fred MacMurray) knocked on her door and this brazen femme fatale envisioned a pot of gold and a deceased mate. But then nothing this gauche could happen in real life, huh? Events leading up to the demise of an inconvenient husband are detailed by reporter Joan Didion in 1965 San Bernardino. “This is the California where it is easy to Dial-A-Devotion, but hard to buy a book,” Didion writes in “Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream” where white suburban housewife Lucille Miller incinerates her clinically depressed dentist husband in hopes of $80,000 in insurance money and bliss with a local married attorney. https://www.criterion.com/films/30460-double-indemnity</span></p>Dave Zarkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05121074990100087700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16895852.post-20053943548234016462022-02-03T08:56:00.001-08:002022-02-03T08:56:41.908-08:00Desperate, Good Neighbor Sam, Sci Fi and More<p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">DARK CITY — A futuristic Kafkaesque thriller where reality is altered and discovering the truth can be fatal for the central character in this Australian film noir sci fi thriller.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Misguided alien/Stranger (Richad O’Brien of Rocky Horror) tries to understand humans but the central character John (Rufus Sewell) concludes that the answer lies in the heart; not the mind.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Several dark alleys are traveled and brick walls demolished before John finds serenity at Shell Beach.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118929/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0</span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">THE GIVER — In a dysfunctional futuristic utopia managed by the chief Elder (Meryl Streep) sameness is assumed to be equality. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The Giver (Jeff Bridges) informs the Receiver Jonas (Brenton Thwaites) of the truth which upsets the Elder.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>A very grim look into the future. <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0435651/"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;">https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0435651/</span></a></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">MUNICH THE EDGE OF WAR (NETFLIX):<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>You know how this story ends but the drama leading to the ill advised Chamberlain/HItler Munich agreement gave the fascists the green light to invade Europe but also gave the UK time to get ready for war.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Two young buddies, one British and the other German, working in diplomacy in their respective countries conspire to derail the Munich talks and agreement.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Very well done drama with Jeremy Lyons as the hapless prime minister Chamberlain.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQ7x8odi-OU"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQ7x8odi-OU</span></a></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">Casablanca is best scene with Munich.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Also the UK film “Darkest Hour” is instructive. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034583/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0</span></p><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">ANNIE —<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Peter Marshall, host of Hollywood Squares, is a reason to watch this unremarkable 1982 musical based on the stage play.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Marshall plays a singing NBC radio MC which is unrelated to Annie’s story.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Also catch Carol Burnett as the boozing guardian of small homeless children and Albert Finney as Daddy Warbucks who worships capitalism, power and money in that order.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>A family favorite following the success of the British musical Oliver! and followed by “Newsies.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Destitute street urchins were fun. <a href="https://www.imdb.com/find?s=nm&q=peter+marshall&ref_=nv_sr_sm"><span class="s3" style="color: black; font-kerning: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">https://www.imdb.com/find?s=nm&q=peter+marshall&ref_=nv_sr_sm</span></a></span></p><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">MY BEST FRIEND ANNE FRANK (Netherlands, 2021)<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>— Hannah survived the death camp because she was in a section where she would be “exchanged” for German POWs.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Kudos to The Netherlands for this disturbing film based on the true story of Hannah, who became a nurse in Palestine, and Anne Frank. <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10360772/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1"><span class="s3" style="color: black; font-kerning: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10360772/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1</span></a></span></p><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: #222222; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">GOOD NEIGHBOR SAM (US) — Watch this romcom for Dorothy Provine who graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in Theater Arts. Sam (Jack Lemmon) is a captive sheep in sheep’s clothing as a Frisco advertising executive who creates a dreadful billboard campaign for a local dairy with a very pious owner (Edward G. Robinson).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It starts as a sendup on the sameness of white middle class suburban life with the requisite Dodge station wagon and veers off into a slapstick mess that’s 45 minutes too long.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Sad to say, Ms. Provine’s life ended in 2010 in Bremerton, Wash. <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058153/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0"><span class="s3" style="color: black; font-kerning: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058153/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0</span></a></span></p><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">JOHNNY MNEMONIC -- In a grim future where creatures are part robot and part human Johnny is a messenger who has 80 megabites of data drilled into a cranium with 40 megabite capacity — like putting a hemi V8 under the hood of a 2018 Dodge Dart. A drug company has hired Johnny to deliver data. But then who hasn’t had similar in this world of invasive tech.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>He bonds with a compassionate female. <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113481/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0"><span class="s3" style="color: black; font-kerning: none; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113481/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0</span></a></span></p><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: #222222;">DESPERATE (1945) — A breakout RKO film noir for writer-director Anthony Mann where a sweet newly married couple (Audrey Long and Steve Brody) are pursued by the police and a very evil gangster (Raymond Burr.)</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: #222222;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: #222222;">The couple head for St. Paul (where no one will find them) and nearby Mountain City (?) to blend into the simple rural Minnesota life.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: #222222;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: #222222;">The predators are partially hidden in closeup half shadow which heightens paranoia climaxing with a dizzying chase in a dark deep staircase resembling the swirling vortex.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: #222222;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: #222222;">“Desperate” is featured prominently in Eddie Muller’s book, “Dark City.” https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0039313/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_9</span> </p>Dave Zarkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05121074990100087700noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16895852.post-38241696416116315322022-01-25T09:04:00.004-08:002022-01-25T09:04:52.796-08:00Beach Blanket Bingo, Caged, Extinction & More<p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">EXTINCTION — A sci fi drama with social justice messages — “We’re evolving and not that different from each other and if we can see that we’ll have a future after all.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I watched this on Netflix shortly after the first Zoom UMN OLLI class on science fiction and it relates precisely to that lecture about a caring society and how ethics is fundamental to a functioning democracy. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3201640/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_3</span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">HAIL CEASAR — A big wet kiss from the Coen Brothers to Hollywood’s Golden Era with a loose plot involving disgruntled screen writers and the kidnapping of a drunken has been actor (George Clooney.)<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The Channing Tatum scene with the waltzing sailors is borrowed from the 1936 Fred and Ginger musical, “Follow the Fleet.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0475290/?ref_=nm_flmg_prd_4"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;">https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0475290/?ref_=nm_flmg_prd_4</span></a></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">LIL ABNER (1958) — Filmed in a Hollywood sound stage, the movie looks low budget and is based on characters created by cartoonist Al Capp who tilted to the far right politically.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Memories are stirred of my senior year at Lewis & Clark when our class staged a Lil Abner production with John Campbell as Abner and Bonnie ? as Daisy Mae.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(I was the publicity guy, which meant I made signs advertising the performance.) <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053001/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;">https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053001/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0</span></a></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES, HAIL THE CONQUERING HERO & DOUBLE DYNAMITE<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>— Sources of our discontent are the underlying themes making these 40s films worth viewing.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Guardians of the wealth don’t bother with eye contact when hearing complaints from underserving laborers. In “Dynamite” the bank manager fiddles with a pipe when the bank clerk played by Frank Sinatra states his case for a raise in pay. That he is surrounded by great amounts of cash is little comfort to Sinatra getting paid $42 but mobsters help him realize his dreams. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Civilians show cold indifference and open hostility to veterans returning from WW2 to hyper competitive capitalism and lousy jobs in William Wyler’s award-winning Best Years.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Mob hysteria prevails when a discharged ex-marine who never fought in the war is worshiped by town folks who demonstrate in the streets and then elect him mayor in Preston Sturges’ comedy Hail the Conquering Hero. <a href="https://www.filmsite.org/besty.html"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;">https://www.filmsite.org/besty.html</span></a></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">BEACH BLANKET BINGO (1965 AIP) — The gospel according to Frankie & Annette: It may be -20 here but beautiful bodies are at Malibu now and Frankie is paying too much attention to blonde bombshell Linda Evans so Annette is making goo goo eyes at handsome John Ashley.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Jealousy!<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(Hopefully all will be resolved before the closing credits.)<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Don Rickles makes snide comments about Frankie being so short and silent era comic Buster Keaton is doing a fishing shtick in deep water.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Muscular Bonehed (Jody McCrea) has fallen for the mermaid (Marta Kristen.)<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>We’re swooning now as Frankie masters a smooth ballad with the Hondells Band doing backup.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Famed New York columnist Earl Wilson who chronicled Broadway’s golden era has a recurring bit part in Bingo.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Why?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Writer-director William Asher must have worshiped MGM musicals and adored celebrities.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Also featured is Timothy Carey who acted in the 1953 film noir “Crime Wave.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058953/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;">https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058953/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0</span></a></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica;">CAGED (US) — Hope Emerson plays a quite unpleasant prison matron in this unsettling film noir where newbie inmate played by Eleanor Parker goes from relative innocence to hardened criminal.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica;">So much for prisons as correctional facilities.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica;">Agnes Moorhead is the crusading warden battling corrupt political cronies on the prison board.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica;">Betty Grable is somewhere in</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica;">the mix of prisoners but I never found here.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica;">https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042296/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_2</span> </p>Dave Zarkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05121074990100087700noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16895852.post-79636235147619263742022-01-06T09:37:00.003-08:002022-01-06T09:37:48.018-08:00Home of the Brave, Call Me By Your Name & More<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">HOME OF THE BRAVE (2006) Spokane never looked more inviting than it does in this excellent film that explores Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome affecting soldiers of the Iraq war, with a commanding Samuel L. Jackson performance. From a vantage point, the downtown skyline is shown and there is a driving scene where I saw the Fox Theater and the Spokesman-Review tower lit up at night. Spokane — an excellent choice for Americans coming home with scars that never heal. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0763840/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_1</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">K-PAX (2001). A very understated film about a psychiatrist (Jeff Bridges) in a sanitarium who treats a mysterious vagrant Kevin Spacey) who makes a big difference in the lives of other patients in this facility. It’s pure serendipity that I found this tape in the Blue Box exchange recently. What a find! https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0272152/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">THE KINDERGARTEN TEACHER. An award-winning film featuring Maggie Gylenhaal as a teacher obsessing over a student to a dangerous conclusion. Smartly paced filmTo say more would spoil the ending. (Netflix).<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6952960/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6952960/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0</span></a></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">WONDER BOYS. Prof. Tripp (Michael Douglas) perseveres in the face of tremendous odds and an entangled love life amidst a dreary Pittsburg winter. Aside from his personal problems, he encourages a promising but confused student (Tobey Maguire) who is a brilliant writer living in the bus station and surviving on donuts. Enter the mix and important in his writing career is a whimsical gay book editor (Robert Downey Jr.) who is yet another house guest. Yet this is a diverting and amusing film and one that never gets old. <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0185014/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0185014/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0</span></a></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">THE ENDLESS SUMMER. (1965). It could be the cure for cabin fever. It’s 11 degrees in Minneapolis but the surfers in this award-winning documentary are riding Nigerian waves in 100 degree heat with 91 degree water temperature. You could boil an egg in that water. On a day like today, the search for the ideal wave makes sense to me. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060371/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">BRIDGERTON. (UK). I am watching this bit of nonsense for the second time wherein the mating game repulses Lady Daphne Bridgerton and the Duke of Hastings so they “pretend” to be engaged. One can only guess where this will lead but the regal splendor appeals to me as I look at snow piled high outside my window. (Netflix). https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8740790/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0</span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica;">CALL ME BY YOUR NAME.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica;">Prof. Perlman (Michael Stulberg), admiring the statue found at the bottom of the ocean, states that it’s the work of Paxilites, the greatest sculpture artist of antiquity.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica;">Oliver (Armie Hammer), looking at the photo, is struck by its resemblance to Elio (Timothee Chalamet).</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica;">https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5726616/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0</span> </p>Dave Zarkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05121074990100087700noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16895852.post-77767881660696936412022-01-02T14:24:00.000-08:002022-01-02T14:24:07.061-08:00MIDNIGHT COWBOY<p><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica;">It’s a film about people left behind, the Cowboy and Rizzo, and was released in 1969 amidst counter culture street protests and sexual revolutions that Glenn Frankel backgrounds in his book, “Shooting Midnight Cowboy.” </span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica;">With a bit of reluctance, some movie moguls were savvy enough to see the “writing on the subway walls” and funded “Midnight Cowboy.” Movie critic Vincent Canby of the New York Times in 1969 wrote that “it’s not a movie for the ages” but Canby was wrong; it’s a big slice of cinematic art and is listed in the Times “Book of Movies; 1,000 Films to See.”https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064665/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0</span> </p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">SHOOTING MIDNIGHT COWBOY: ART, SEX, LONELINESS, LIBERATION AND THE MAKING OF A DARK CLASSIC, a book by Glenn Frankel, journalist and former director of the University of Texas journalism school.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The lives and careers of the creative team involved in this 1969 film, from actor Jon Voight to the costume designer and more, are the guts of this exhaustive journalistic endeavor.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I recalled when movie goers lined up to see edgy films foreign and domestic in the 60s and 70s before super heroes and animation ruled today’s silver screens.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p>Dave Zarkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05121074990100087700noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16895852.post-64800991853738809802021-11-24T07:43:00.007-08:002021-12-07T07:31:10.751-08:00Thieves Like Us, LIttle Women, Holiday Affair<p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">LITTLE WOMEN (MUSICAL).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Big voices, big dreams.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Returning to live theater in Bloomington after 2 years and the orchestra never sounded better.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>A very talented cast last night for the musical version of<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>the 1933 RKO Radio film, the most successful in the studio’s history.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The musical has its moments but less would have been more; a bit long. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Very parallel<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>times; now and the Fifties when demagogue Sen. Joseph McCarthy smeared reputations of law abiding citizens with big red lies.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Edward R. Murrow was nationally respected journalist and famous WW2 war reporter (London Blitz).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>He was a voice of reason when we needed one.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Who do we have now? <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0433383/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;">https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0433383/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0</span></a></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">CINEMA PARADISO.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Ennio Morricone’s haunting theme lingers long after the movie ends.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>In the tradition of Italy’s great filmmakers, Giuseppe Tormatore has borrowed from his memories of growing up in post-war rural Italy where the local movie theater was the community’s nucleus.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Not a foreign thought if you grew up with the Terrace Theater in Robbinsdale to see it demolished to make way for an ugly HyVee grocery store a few years ago. Saw it at the Ebert film festival in Champaign Urbana. (1989 Academy Award winner, best foreign language film, HBO Video) <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095765/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;">https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095765/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0</span></a></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">TICK TICK BOOM.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Wake up and shake the nation — says writer Jonathon Larson who is portrayed by Andrew Garfield in this new film based on Larson’s autobiography.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Kudos to lin-manual Miranda who produced and directed this film that casts a magic spell.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>After seeing this I watched “Chorus Line” with a greater appreciation for theater. Larson wrote “Rent,” a musical of the AIDS epidemic. <a href="https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/tick-tick-boom-movie-review-2021"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;">https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/tick-tick-boom-movie-review-2021</span></a></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica;">THIEVES LIKE US.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica;">Adapted from the novel of the same name and a remake of the 1948 RKO classic.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica;">Very moody, dreamy version the remake and the actors Keith Carradine and Shelly Duvall look more emaciated than Farley Granger and Cathy O’Donnell in the original.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica;">But the remake is a half hour longer to dramatize the Depression’s devastation on lives, while the original is more apt to keep our interest.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica;">In a few days we will once again compare classic films with remakes when the big screen debuts “West Side Story” and “Nightmare Alley.”</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica;">The actors in the former may resemble teenagers compared to those in the original West Side Story.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica;">It will be challenging to improve on the Tyrone Power original “Nightmare Alley.”</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica;">“Little Women” has been remade several times, but only the 1933 and 1994 versions are listed in the NYT bool of 1,000 essential films. </span></p><p><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica;"></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">HOLIDAY AFFAIR.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>A favorite holiday movie going back to 1949 when cousin Stan and I saw it at the Capitol Theater in Walla Walla.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>In post-war New York a grieving war widow struggles to support her cute toothless son by working as a comparison shopper wherein she meets department store clerk Robert Mitchum who is at post-war loose ends.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>RKO boss Howard Hughes thought this film would rehabilitate Mitchum’s image after his bust for weed, but it bombed badly at the box office.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It’s a December favorite on cable’s TCM channel.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Gordon Gebbert, who plays the kid, became a professor at Columbia University after he no longer was a cute kid. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>A train for Christmas is the theme that binds the film with the ending on a crowded train on New Year’s Eve.</span></p>Dave Zarkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05121074990100087700noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16895852.post-65668550542275413692021-11-09T14:19:00.004-08:002021-11-09T14:20:48.079-08:00VIDEO RENTAL STORES, BEST BETS FOR HALLOWEEN, BLACK SUNDAY<p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5);">ADJUST Your TRACKING.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5);"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5);">Obsessive dudes with tattoos collect trashy low brow VHS tapes, paying as much at $670 for “Tales from the Quadradead Zone” and even Toxic Avenger, which I had and gave to a friend in Cottage Grove on Halloween. This fan-produced documentary includes an interview with an owner of a video store that rents VHS and also a member of the subculture that recreated a video store in his basement.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5);"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5);">I have a very small VHS collection and 3 VCRs.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5);"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5);">Some titles are hard to find on DVD. </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mu0L8i63E8M" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5);"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mu0L8i63E8M </span></a></span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">BEST BETS FOR HALLOWEEN: “Zombies on Broadway” (1945, RKO) combines two popular genres — musicals and horror with comics Wally Brown and Alan Carney who are ordered by Sheldon Leonard to find a zombie for a failing Broadway bar where singer-dancer Anne Jeffreys performs.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The hapless duo take off for a tropical island in search of zombies where (to everyone’s surprise) they stumble upon a crazy “scientist” played by Bela Lugosi.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Zombieness is catching much to the chagrin of Brown and Carney.</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">BLACK SUNDAY (1966) — a bit of witchcraft by Gothic horror master director Mario Bava where the fog machine works overtime.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The witch played by British actress Barbara Steele (Pit and the Pendulum) was paid for her efforts in wine and free lodging during the filming in Italy.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>To say it is atmospheric is a gross understatement.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>No doubt Lugosi’s Dracula inspired much of this but it’s classic Gothic horror.</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica;">Don’t say that Hollywood never made a bad movie until you see “Teenagers from Outer Space” where “teens” who look post K-12 annex earth as a food source and let loose their monsters: lobsters magnified on the rear screen.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica;">Quite unexpected one of the invaders falls in love with the rather hapless local Betty.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica;">Also, the space invaders are quite adept at driving standard transmission cars which is a task that overwhelms most of us earthlings.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica;">They also have ray guns that turn humans and pets into skeletons. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053337/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0</span> </span></p>Dave Zarkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05121074990100087700noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16895852.post-46472953078463741692021-08-30T08:26:00.000-07:002021-08-30T08:26:05.450-07:00INVENTING DAVID GEFFEN<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">He’s got that Alfred E. Newman what me worry look? about him and why should we give a rip about DG? But I was captivated by this Netflix documentary on the billionaire Geffen, the new L.B. Mayer or Jack Warner. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Dave appears in this documentary in an off-white t-shirt with a very frayed collar that he might have picked up at the Goodwill. Yet the Geffen rose from a humble start in Brooklyn, the son of struggling immigrant parents, with his heart’s desire the good life in LA. Somehow that got short circuited and he returned to the Big Apple to work in the William Morris (talent agency) mailroom in 1963 while I was shlepping news film from LAX to NBC News in Burbank. </span></p>
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<p><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">Our paths might have crossed because he returned to LA, newly minted as a freelance talent agent/manager associated with iconic folk-rock artists Joni Mitchell, Laura Nyro, Crosby Stills, Nash and Young, Jackson Browne and the Eagles.</span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue";"> </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">Before he was fired by Warner Records, a stone’s throw on Buena Vista Blvd. where I worked at NBC, he invented Asylum Records and then convinced Warners that he should be a movie producer which led to “Risky Business.”</span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue";"> </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">Some of the dollars from Geffen Inc. go to charities and he appears to be politically correct.</span> </p>Dave Zarkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05121074990100087700noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16895852.post-65976422970022353402021-05-28T14:54:00.004-07:002021-05-28T14:54:52.545-07:00MASH, EASY LIVING AND MORE<p style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">EASY LIVING, ’37 — Johnny: Mary you've got a job! Mary: What is it? Johnny: Cooking my breakfast! Not politically correct by today's standards but a zany Preston Sturges script screwball depression era Cinderella romcom wherein a mink coat thrown from a luxury penthouse literally lands on a hapless working girl. Hilarious slapstick automat scene as well. Great sendup on the foibles of capitalism pre-war.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">NIGHT AND THE CITY — Hustler Harry Fabian (Richard Widmark) is chased through the alleys and back streets of London in a memorable scene from a ’50 British film noir that may not be available. Video store operators in ’92 were offered free copies of this gritty gem if they bought 5 cassettes of the remake with De Niro. I stumbled on a promotional tape at a thrift store. Great British character actors include Francis Sullivan, Googie Withers and Herbert Lom plus American Mike Mazursky (Murder My Sweet.)</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">DR. X. When you least expect it, the monster appears in bizarre colors in the restoration of this much anticipated 1932 horror masterpiece with the same cast, crew and color process as the 1933 Mystery of the Wax Museum. Lee Tracy plays a dim witted newspaper reporter and Fay Wray warms up her vocal chords with random screams in anticipation of King Kong. Of course Lionel Atwell is the focus of the ensuing mayhem. Even the butler is super creepy. Dr. X exceeded my expectations ten fold. </span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">LABOR UNION members help save an east coast plastics factory from bankruptcy by developing a unique system for manufacturing TV set knobs in 1951 in Whistle at Eaton Falls. It may be a true story since the producer <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0211195/?ref_=nmbio_bio_nm"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Louis De Rochemont</span></a> is known for films dealing with actual events. Lloyd Bridges and Carleton Carpenter are feature. The film was streamed this week from the DC Labor Film Festival. </span></p>
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<p><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">MASH. Taking a break from writing Plan B papers in 1970, I crowded into Northrup Auditorium (U of MN) with faculty and students to see a special preview and discussion with director Robert Altman concerning his new movie MASH.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue";"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">If I would have been thinking like a journalist I would have written that "this is the movie that would define the decade."</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue";"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">But it all went before me in a blur.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue";"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">From the opening theme song, "Suicide is Painless" to the Last Supper for Painless the dentist, it was a buffet of buffoonery, irreverence and caustic commentary as the country sacrificed lives to napalm in Southeast Asia.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue";"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">It takes my breath away.</span> </p>Dave Zarkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05121074990100087700noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16895852.post-73196861930859883952021-04-17T09:09:00.006-07:002021-11-12T13:05:30.171-08:00FILM NOIR MEN: BOGART, POWELL, BEAUMONT<p class="p1" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">POWELL vs BOGIE — who’s the best Philip Marlowe, the Raymond Chandler tough guy PI in Murder My Sweet (1944) and The Big Sleep (1946)?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The Bogie-Bacall chemistry would favor BS but I like Powell’s off camera narration and interaction with Esther Howard and Mike Mazursky in MMS.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I watched both consecutively. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">Bogie has the best line in BS: “She tried to sit on my lap while I was standing up” in reference to the sexually aggressive Martha Vickers’ character.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Powell shows his disdain for conspicuous consumption in MMS when he strikes a match on the butt of a cupid statue.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Memorable in MMS is the drunken Ms. Florian character played by Howard when she advises Powell:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>“Hold on to your chair and don’t step on no snakes.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(Howard also appears in Detour as a diner waitress dismissive of the Tom Neal character.)</span></p><p class="p2" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">The Big Sleep is convoluted while MMS features Claire Trevor, a world class femfatale.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue";"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">Yet Dorothy Malone is diverting with Bogie in BS.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue";"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">Film noir moved into the mainstream with these two blockbusters from RKO Radio and Warner Brothers during the war.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue";"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">Hold onto your chair! </span><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038355/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1" style="background-color: white; font-family: "Helvetica Neue";"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;"></span></a></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue";"></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">LEAVE IT TO HUGH.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Before he was an icon of suburban domesticity as the daddy in “Leave it to Beaver,” actor Hugh Beaumont cut a rakish figure in the underbelly of film making as the leading man in low budget film noir.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Most memorable in PRC’s “Apology for Murder” is Hugh as a homicidal reporter conspiring with femme fatale Ann Savage to dispose of her husband played by Pierre Watkins. You’ve seen this before in the iconic film noir “Double Indemnity.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Versatile Beaumont in Lippert’s “Pier 23” played an Irish private eye who crosses paths with a bad girl played Ms. Savage.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>So don’t tell Jerry and Tony that dad had a past in the “dark city.”<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0037518/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_1" style="font-size: 10px;"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;">https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0037518/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_1</span></a></span></p>Dave Zarkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05121074990100087700noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16895852.post-80106022072921634412021-03-25T07:29:00.000-07:002021-03-25T07:29:11.438-07:00All American Coed, House on Haunted Hill, Across the Universe<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">PICKLE FACTORY. In a spoof involving a Bing dummy and brother Bob Crosby, the later fondly recalls growing up in SPOKANE and “working in the pickle factory.”</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue";"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">For all I know there could have been a dozen pickle factories in the vicinity.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue";"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">See the RKO 50s musical comedy Two Tickets to Broadway with Tony Martin and Janet Leigh.</span><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0044158/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0" style="background-color: white; font-family: "Helvetica Neue";"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;">https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0044158/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0</span></a></p><p class="p2" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">“Nora, I think you’re a little upset. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Would you like a sedative?” 1958 HOUSE ON THE Haunted Hill is much better than the remake.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Besides creepy gags in the theater, the movie boasted great music and editing.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Elisha Cook Jr. is memorable. <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051744/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_3"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;">https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051744/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_3</span></a></span></p><p class="p2" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">Platinum bombshell Mamie Van Doren was nearing<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>the end of her movie career in May 1966 when she married the hapless professional baseball player Lee Meyer at the Ada County Courthouse.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Fred was the police and courts reporter so he picked up the marriage data from the court records and wrote a short story that was buried in the paper.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I had been a Mamie fan for years and I thought her wedding in Boise deserved bigger play even if it involved a third rate ball player.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>No one on the copy desk seemed concern so maybe I was making a big deal over nothing.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>According to her autobiography, Playing the Field, Meyer was 25 when he died in a car crash in California — a tragic end after separating from Mamie that included an arrest in Hawaii for trying to smuggle hashish from Southeast Asia.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The Palm Springs Desert Sun thought it deserved a bigger play. <a href="https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=DS19660623.2.60&e=-------en--20--1--txt-txIN--------1"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;">https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=DS19660623.2.60&e=-------en--20--1--txt-txIN--------1</span></a></span></p><p class="p2" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">“You’re taking me apart,” Tommy, played by James Franco, screams in “Disaster Artist,” which focuses on a challenged dramatic “genius” who made a bad movie, “The Room,” for $5 million. Tommy and his Baby Face buddy played by Dave Franco sally forth to make Hollywood tremble. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Why is this funny?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I’ve watched it three times.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Disaster_Artist_(film)"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Disaster_Artist_(film)</span></a></span></p><p class="p2" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">ACROSS THE UNIVERSE:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Perfect escapism back<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>to the Sixties with Beatles soundtrack.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Camera work is flawless with scenes of the seaside, Greenwich Village and Liverpool.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>LSD trips are fun as well.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Although over 2 hours, there’s never a dull moment.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Saw it at at the Edina and bought the DVD at Target.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Also have the 2 disk soundtrack CD. <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0445922/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;">https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0445922/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1</span></a></span></p><p class="p2" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">ZANY ZEKE frat boys infiltrate an all-girls school by enrolling one of the brothers in drag into a college that bars men entirely.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Broadway star Johnny Downs is at his best in this campy 1941 musical comedy from Hal Roach Studios with Alan Hale Jr. (Gilligan’s captain) in a supporting role.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Striking similarities between All American Coed and Some Like it Hot in 1959.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Available on the Movies TV Channel and on DVD from Alpha Video.https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0033323/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_8</span></p>Dave Zarkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05121074990100087700noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16895852.post-10644921376479264062021-02-08T11:10:00.004-08:002021-03-03T08:09:48.576-08:00FIFTIES, SAFFRON AND MORE<p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">SANTA SPOILER.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Vernon Bisterfeldt, a Boise cop working off duty as a Santa, nabbed a shoplifter in 1965 at Welles department store on the Boise Bench.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I was doing rewrite on the Statesman night desk and wrote up a short story with a photo from a staff lensman.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Backlash came the next day when a reader called in to complain that I ruined the Santa story for her kids.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Sorry.</span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 11px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">I can relate to being a stranger in strange land<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>during holidays because much of<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>65-69 that was me when I was a reporter for the Idaho Daily Statesman.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>As the years went by I made friends in the community and would be invited out.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I think this has been a different kind of crazy for me with paranoia related to the virus.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>In a month of two with the vaccine that could change too.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 11px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">SAFFRON. Hats off to Moinak Choudhury, University of Minnesota PhD candidate, who is teaching the U of M OLLI class on the products of Kashmir and Assam — cashmere, saffron and tea.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Saffron sells for a mere $5,000 a pound and involves labor intensive harvesting.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>In a documentary we saw in class I now understand why it’s so expensive.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>You might use it in a chicken recipe.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I assume it’s available at better super markets.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/327017</span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 11px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">RETRO FOCUS.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Reading Eric Burns non fiction book “1957” prompted me to OD on all things from the 50s including “Rebel without a Cause,” “Untamed Youth” and “Don’t Knock the Rock.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The last two feature very talented dancers grooving to a very athletic version of the jitterbug. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(I flunked Dance 101.)<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Untamed Youth has the girl who invented rock ’n roll Mamie Van Doren in a campy calypso production number — not to be missed.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>We shook, rattled and rolled our way through the 50s with Mamie, Elvis, Alan Freed and Bill Haley and the Comets. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 11px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia;">Burns book is subtitled “The Year that Launched the American Future” or at least the ’57 Chevy Bel Air which he thinks defines that year.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia;">I beg to differ.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia;">Richie Cunningham drove a Chevy in American Graffiti.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia;">DIG IT!</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia;"> </span> </p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">SLAVE TO MADISON AVENUE. Author Sloane Wilson’s 1953 novel The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit is considered to be “prototypical of the fifties,” wrote Eric Burns in his nonfiction book 1957.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Also comedian Stan Freeburg on his 1958 CBS Radio show did a mashup of Suit and the cult horror flick I Was A Teenage Werewolf.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I concluded that Suit was another commentary on the vapidness of Madison Avenue, but actually it dramatizes the paucity of rewarding work for returning war heroes who suffer from post traumatic syndrome while trying to fit in.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Tom, the central Suit character, gets a PR job with a TV network and soon learns that the stress and demands of this work will make him crazy so he negotiates with the network chief for a less demanding job and gets it.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I find this unbelievable, having worked for less than two years in network TV news.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I also watched the Suit movie of 1955 with Gregory Peck and Jennifer Jones, who is memorable as Tom’s wife.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Family life is sacrificed at the altar of Madison Avenue in the Suit novel and movie.https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049474/</span></p>Dave Zarkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05121074990100087700noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16895852.post-53115774548828411392021-02-05T08:59:00.004-08:002021-02-05T08:59:56.948-08:00STRANGE ONE, BIG BOY, LOVE SENSATION<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">TAKE A BOW “You’re a Big Boy Now,” is one of my favorite films with the nightlife scenes in the seedier parts of 1966 Times Square. </span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue";"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">Couple that with frolicking in Central Park and you have a big wet kiss to Manhattan.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue";"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">There’s also a nod to avant-garde theater and dance clubs with go-go dancers.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue";"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">Elizabeth Hartman gets top billing as the fem-fatale heart breaker Barbara Darling but Geraldine Page playing the neurotic mom was nominated for an Oscar.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue";"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">When Sun Coast Video opened in Southdale I bought the VHS tape. </span><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061209/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0" style="background-color: white; font-family: "Helvetica Neue";"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;">https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061209/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0</span></a></p><p class="p2" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">AUTOCRAT.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Ben Gazzara is chilling in his 1957 film debut as a cunning viper out to destroy established authority at a military academy. The highly rated film also features George Peppard.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Docile fellow cadets sheep-like submit to his assumed authority.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Look for parallels with recent political events.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>On the schedule for the Movies TV Channel in your city.<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051019/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_3"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;">https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051019/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_3</span></a></span></p><p class="p2" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">LOVE SENSATION.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>A 70s disco hit from r&b singer Loleatta Holloway is my favorite morning workout music.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Feel free to share music that jump starts you in the morning. I scored the LP at the clearance basement sale at the Wax Museum in the early 80s.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Sensation</span></p>Dave Zarkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05121074990100087700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16895852.post-79908475413267154562021-01-09T12:19:00.000-08:002021-01-09T12:19:02.467-08:00Joan Didion, Master Story Teller<p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">DIDION GEM. Regarding the San Fernando Valley in the 1960s, Joan Didion wrote: “This is the California where it is easy to Dial A Devotion, but hard to buy a book.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Her article, “Lifestyles in the Golden Land,” is true crime reporting at it’s best and you can find it in a compilation of her non fiction work “We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live.” <a href="https://www.thejoandidion.com/about/"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;">https://www.thejoandidion.com/about/</span></a></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">ABOUT HUGHES.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>He was a hermit with money which gave him “personal freedom, mobility and privacy” which is what we want.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Right?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Journalist Joan Didion in ’67 wrote the definitive essay on the illusive millionaire Howard Hughes, “7000 Romaine Street,” Los Angeles. Hughes “communications center” was located.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It could have been the setting for a film noir with criminals lurking in every shadow.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Nearby was the RKO Radio Pictures at 780 Gower that Hughes once owned and mismanaged into extinction. See her book, “We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="https://www.loopnet.com/Listing/7000-Romaine-St-Los-Angeles-CA/13691826/"><span class="s2" style="font-kerning: none;">https://www.loopnet.com/Listing/7000-Romaine-St-Los-Angeles-CA/13691826/</span></a></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">Joan Didion in an essay on Haight-Ashbury referenced a song she heard on KFRC radio which was the “Flower Power” station in ‘67.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>When I lived in the Bay Area in 64-65 KFRC was MOR, playing Jack Jones and Sinatra — my favorite station. According to the Bay Area Radio Museum site: “In the mid-1960s, KFRC changed to a Top 40 rock’n’roll format, and quickly became the dominant station in the region with that format through the 1970’s, featuring the tight, carefully programmed sound developed by RKO-General’s star programmer, Bill Drake.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">In 1969 I wanted to be the guy who wrote brilliant articles about urban affairs, like Joan Didion’s 1989 article “Down at City Hall” where she highlights the inconsistencies about Los Angeles residents’ attitudes.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Most people in ’89 had enough of LA and would move to San Diego given the chance.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Most of them supported LA Mayor Tom Bradley who was mayor when the quality of life deteriorated yet he managed to hold together his Black-Jewish coalition.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>By 1993 LA would be increasingly populated by LatinX and Asians, Didion predicted, and Bradley might be irrelevant.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">When I lived in LA in 63-64 doing rewrite at UPI and answering the phones at NBC News, nominal Democrat Sam Yorty was the mayor and would take the air out of “news” by proceeding his remarks with “as I have said one-hundred times before.”</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue";"> </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">This frustrated NBC government reporter Bill Brown no end. Reference: “We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live.”</span> </p>Dave Zarkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05121074990100087700noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16895852.post-89566913718716851952020-12-27T13:19:00.000-08:002020-12-27T13:19:10.000-08:00NEWS FROM PLANET FRIGIA<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDqO2N0UBEqVAO0YHX70X6RjgHYjTxwgHgb0izQ_ZynE9ueodtTownYfQ4li6px8vDZHiSPjdODcPopYVV8jsLnoolu63mUSNNhpN_CkdyoRwwUXdZ9TSR8vyR0Aixsw15tfBPOQ/s5152/DSC01463.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3864" data-original-width="5152" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDqO2N0UBEqVAO0YHX70X6RjgHYjTxwgHgb0izQ_ZynE9ueodtTownYfQ4li6px8vDZHiSPjdODcPopYVV8jsLnoolu63mUSNNhpN_CkdyoRwwUXdZ9TSR8vyR0Aixsw15tfBPOQ/s320/DSC01463.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">FRIGIA — (An outer space adventure fraught with imminent danger.)<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Capt. Flash Zarkin reports that the expedition to the lost planet of Frigia had its anxious moments as the Electronic Stability Control (skid) light blinked wildly on the module of the Dodge space vehicle.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The air in the space capsule was quite “blue” as<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Dr. Zarkor swore never to return to this remote planet lacking “any intelligent life.” <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>But that wasn’t entirely true since Frigia’s Princess Fria was hosting at Lund’s & Byerly’s deli on France Avenue.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The normally cheerful Princess muttered something about leaving this “frozen hell hole” for a more hospitable planet where icicles don’t hang from the eyebrows.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Could that be Mongo where the crazed Ming the Merciless rules until the third week of January?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Hello Mongo, goodbye Fria! (Next chapter: Zarkor Meets the Death Ray).</span></p><p> </p>Dave Zarkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05121074990100087700noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16895852.post-38817304526196707912020-12-24T15:18:00.000-08:002020-12-24T15:18:00.386-08:00Weber Book As Related to Urban Renewal in 60s<p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">The University of Minnesota Mapping Project which documented systematic racial segregation through racial covenants and redlining has been “‘the single most important recent gift to Minneapolis,” according to Tom Weber in his book “Minneapolis, an Urban Biography.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Having been a student in a summer’s class on this eye opening topic, I agree.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Furthermore, before it was Minneapolis it was Dakota land and “we newcomers have generally been rotten guests,” he added.</span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 11px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">Urban renewal here resulted in demolition of the historic Metropolitan Bldg.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Whereas, Boise enhanced it’s ethnic downtown diversity (Basque block) and didn’t demolish any businesses that made downtown attractive. Less is more in the case of Boise vs. Minneapolis.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-converted-space">Minneapolis: </span></span>White and Black neighbors didn’t “just happen,” but were the result of long standing processes carried out thousands of local residents and overseen “by exclusive leadership in the city.”</p><p><br /></p>Dave Zarkinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05121074990100087700noreply@blogger.com1