HERE’S LOOKING AT YOU, KID. It feels like we’re in a war so why not immerse myself in war-time movies and music. Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains were a good place to start since they are outstanding in “Notorious” and “Casablanca.” These two classics form a super double feature.
WORKOUT MUSIC. Hit after Hit Today’s Top Tracks audio casette from K-Tel (1986) is an ideal soundtrack for aerobics videos like those from YMCA 360. If you like REO’s “Can’t Fight the Feeling,” Patti Labell’s “New Attitude” and more then you are on your way to wonderland.
An amazing casette from a company that was located in a nearby suburb.
(K-tel was far more than a record label. Sure, the brand made its name selling disco compilations and Hooked on Classics tapes through television ads, but K-tel also pushed a plethora of quirky products. It was a true pioneer of the "As Seen on TV" phenomenon.)
WHAT IF …. In 1947 a Hollywood studio was run by a woman and produced a film with an interracial love affair and Anna May Wong won an Oscar? That’s the story line on Ryan Murphy’s most provocative series, “Hollywood” on Netflix. (I binged on the comings and goings of Jack Costello, Rock Hudson and more this weekend. Call me crazy!)
THE OSCAR. The lead character Frankie Fane in this 1966 movie is actually a thinly veiled Sinatra. It took me two viewings of this frothy drama to figure it out, but the ironic ending when real life Sinatra accepts an Oscar is a device to divert us from the inspiration for this melodrama. It’s Sinatra, of course, in his Rat Pack days, punching out guys and being unfaithful to his wife.
WHAT IF Orson Welles hadn’t portrayed Marion Davies as a lush in “Citizen Kane”? Might Hearst have ignored the indulgence of a 24-year-old and not declared war against Welles?
By the 1950s the world had rediscovered CK through re-releases with the realization that this was a cinematic masterpiece.
And by 2011 Warner released a two-DVD set with a 4K restoration of CK and a super documentary, “The Battle Over Citizen Kane,” from PBS,
In retrospect, Welles, with his career ruined, wished he had left Hollywood after CK and pursued his writing, theater and politics.
Hearst, after destroying Welles, was remembered as Welles portrayed the “fictional” character Charles Foster Kane — an angry tyrant. Susan assembling the pieces of a puzzle is symbolic in that the Kane story is a puzzle.
1 comment:
I saw Casablanca when I subscribed to getting DVDs from Netflix. I watched a bunch of classic movies when I got the subscription and that was the one that I enjoyed.
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