tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-326859682024-03-18T17:04:43.404-07:00Can't ExplainJeff Pikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17148737647138431543noreply@blogger.comBlogger2805125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32685968.post-24633086895925565522024-03-18T04:49:00.000-07:002024-03-18T04:49:48.436-07:00Altered Reality (2024)<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPgqzkE7-aKt47buXA72Yt8aCkgNWvMq5UiywzqX8lubz1reL1Gnf17Bj6wW4vYhvTq-nusO-Ht-R72wFyot6uGMLlwc68TcNaxHoDAp8TyYqqvUeNZExYOilmhLpRDBvCBl0DbMCzY87eTJc5dThxwYF_Q5UxKs24iYe64TOgQRQniUyXw94Q/s3000/alteredr.jpg"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPgqzkE7-aKt47buXA72Yt8aCkgNWvMq5UiywzqX8lubz1reL1Gnf17Bj6wW4vYhvTq-nusO-Ht-R72wFyot6uGMLlwc68TcNaxHoDAp8TyYqqvUeNZExYOilmhLpRDBvCBl0DbMCzY87eTJc5dThxwYF_Q5UxKs24iYe64TOgQRQniUyXw94Q/w266-h400/alteredr.jpg" width="266" /></a></div>In <i>Altered Reality</i>, the reality that is altered is only the movie’s artificial reality, a tongue-in-cheek noir melodrama thriller, with time travel and “Jack” (Lance Henriksen), who is kind of a science fiction ghost, living outside time as we understand it. For him it’s a flat circle. I think that’s how Billy Pilgrim tried to describe it too? Jack is likewise unstuck in time (not the movie’s term). Then there are the noir folks, starting with the Cook family, Oliver (Charles Agron) and Caroline (Alyona Khmara) and a young daughter who disappears <i>tout de suite</i>. Tragic. There’s a whole drippy sentimental thing about how the Cook family goes to a park called Spring Manor twice a year. That’s where Jack hangs out and Oliver often goes looking for him when he’s there. Jack is like an old family friend to Oliver. Oliver doesn’t understand why Jack doesn’t age. Spring Manor is where the daughter disappeared. There’s also Oliver’s business manager, Cooper Mason (Tobin Bell), and the femme fatale he picks up—or more like picks him up—Alex Parker (Krista Dane King). She is a very sexy and terrible person. I liked the gently mocking tone enough to stick around but I was honestly expecting something a lot more trippy given the title, something more like <i>Brainstorm</i> maybe. I kept waiting for the reality to alter, but the only things that changed were history as per certain time travel story rules, though admittedly it’s an impressive plot point. Henriksen is great as a grizzled seen-it-all eternal being—hits all the right notes. Agron is good too playing tormented good-guy Oliver with a certain gullibility. I spent part of his scenes wondering if that was actually his forehead or a prosthetic. He is a great genius, you see. The details are there to be discovered—the picture has some neat surprises. I definitely got some Alfred Hitchcock vibe circa <i>Vertigo</i> out of this. The music by Andrew Morgan Smith seemed to be going for something like that or even <i>Psycho</i> in some of the duller patches. The movie is not boring—the dull patches are like the dull patches in many noirs. They occupy space. Sometimes they add to the suspense. You sit there and watch. I cannot recommend <i>Altered Reality</i> whole-heartedly but it’s an interesting curiosity, somewhat reminiscent of <i>Choose Me</i>.Jeff Pikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17148737647138431543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32685968.post-5671620477832530922024-03-17T06:34:00.000-07:002024-03-17T06:34:46.755-07:00“The Stolen White Elephant” (1882)<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYMEmNPySvGGAmFwdKmC_M5_jDgRZRvUzOAEnQGRKjr0hpWyej8VfwJYgznZohiCNL9Fra4PjRpCLw_ui9w5xcsf6-ZxDbT960sJji2RpmQKbmuqVnwKghZCHEjYbHzHrqw2wQtLUBxqWKM02iTRS77R1_bNgdxD25kk9pdJQ25Px9GEm7X4z4/s600/twaihumo.jpg"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYMEmNPySvGGAmFwdKmC_M5_jDgRZRvUzOAEnQGRKjr0hpWyej8VfwJYgznZohiCNL9Fra4PjRpCLw_ui9w5xcsf6-ZxDbT960sJji2RpmQKbmuqVnwKghZCHEjYbHzHrqw2wQtLUBxqWKM02iTRS77R1_bNgdxD25kk9pdJQ25Px9GEm7X4z4/w251-h400/twaihumo.jpg" width="251" /></a></div>Mark Twain sets his sights on cliches of detective fiction, even before Sherlock Holmes was around to explain everything. “The Stolen White Elephant” is obvious and probably longer than it needs to be, but I think it still works. Humor pieces are so hit and miss, among the hardest to do, that you can’t ever guarantee anything for anyone about them. Perhaps I should be less critical of the various miscues because he can also be pretty good at this. The case involves a white elephant that is a gift from Siam to Queen Victoria. The storyteller accompanied the elephant on the voyage, which for some reason requires a layover in New York. The elephant is put up in New Jersey but stolen in due order. Thus begins the investigation and the parody. First, a detailed description of the elephant is required by police investigators. It’s not enough that the elephant is white and an elephant. One of their questions, for example, is “Parents living?” A team of detectives descends on the case, all with many different theories. The side of the barn where the elephant was kept has been destroyed, but none of the detectives think that’s how the elephant was taken. Most of them, in fact, think the broken-down wall is a ruse intended to distract them. And so forth. They refuse to believe anything credible but eventually find the carcass of the beast. And yet, even still, some of them stay on the case. One tracks footprints across the North American continent into Canada. He’s still working the case as the story ends, reporting in from the road. So that’s how it goes. Twain is once again mocking literature, but this time it’s mystery fiction instead of Romantic literature, his usual hobbyhorse. He is prolix about it. It’s another era and a much slower pace. And he’s obvious, for example with the cretinous police demanding a detailed description of a white elephant. But this piece does go on a long time. Every good comic element is protracted and tortured within an inch. I’d still call it a good one. Twain’s voice carries it when nothing else does. He often stays in character well and the jokes land because it can all be so deadpan. Worth remembering for any dips into Twain you may be contemplating.<br /><br /><a href="https://amzn.to/4632nrU" target="_blank">Mark Twain, <i>Humorous Stories & Sketches</i></a><br /><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3181/3181-h/3181-h.htm" target="_blank">Read story online.</a><br /><a href="https://youtu.be/T_YKXmptONI?si=zNczAywnLc2rkdFQ" target="_blank">Listen to story online.</a>Jeff Pikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17148737647138431543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32685968.post-15966064117125935212024-03-16T05:42:00.000-07:002024-03-16T05:42:11.490-07:0021. Demon Fuzz, Afreaka! (1970)<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-gst7JqdWfUlIEhdJVI1i32K29aWJ5vEzX3QsodcGCk_yHh3N0FDL6Pj8WnhNDZBi_kpnhFirT6ZHvKVH1CHC9QKTLX4zX5TkgLhY3H2ZtXT4YjdDmZKuY0WSSbAwvkVjb9seiq4slz6rDtZFIbXatgVJjzahIsXypub7cihgnZoTUfGqAn08/s1024/afredemo.jpg"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-gst7JqdWfUlIEhdJVI1i32K29aWJ5vEzX3QsodcGCk_yHh3N0FDL6Pj8WnhNDZBi_kpnhFirT6ZHvKVH1CHC9QKTLX4zX5TkgLhY3H2ZtXT4YjdDmZKuY0WSSbAwvkVjb9seiq4slz6rDtZFIbXatgVJjzahIsXypub7cihgnZoTUfGqAn08/w400-h400/afredemo.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>I did not catch up with the strange and wonderful Demon Fuzz and their only LP <i>Afreaka!</i> during the classic psychedelic period of 1966 to 1970. They came up for me instead in this century, during the short-lived (too short!) downloading era. But I knew what I had right away—jazz-rock with horns and a potent voodoo drone at the bottom, driving relentlessly. Details online about the band still seem scarce. The members moved to London in the ‘60s from otherwise mostly unspecified “Commonwealth countries,” which I take to be remnants of the UK empire. The band’s name has something to do with police brutality. At least one principal, Paddy Corea (saxes, flute, vibes, congas), is from “the Caribbean.” Indeed, they may all have been from the West Indies originally, but there’s little about the band that sounds like calypso, ska, or reggae. Instead, their self-declared primary influences, from a sort of crossroads trip the band took, come from Morocco. I can also hear strains of an obscure British jazz-rock band I did know circa 1971, named If—that’s mostly in the horn arrangements and the way they are fitted against a rock band. “Another Country” is typical of what Demon Fuzz is selling. It’s over eight minutes long and starts with a bit of horn-driven throat clearing and some verse-chorus sing-songy pastiche (Smokey Adams gets the vocals credit). At about 2:20, it settles into its methodical monster groove of choice. The tempo slows, bassist Sleepy Jack Joseph plays a simple hypnotic figure. Ray Rhoden plays an uninterrupted chord on the organ, quiet but forceful. Corea takes out his sax and cobbles up a solo—it’s jazz, but the droning bottom carries the mood, somber, exalted, alluring, menacing, beatific. On the album opener “Past, Present, and Future” (9:56) they get down to business even more quickly. And they carry on similarly all over—“Hymn to Mother Earth,” “Mercy (Variation No. 1),” “Fuzz Oriental Blues.” Generally the longer songs are the better songs, and you can skip the Screamin’ Jay Hawkins cover. I wouldn’t say they understand the song. <i>Afreaka!</i> is a bit up and down perhaps, dated or conventional in certain ways (their management also handled Mungo Jerry, if that tells us anything). But at its highest points it’s nearly as high as anyone can get.Jeff Pikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17148737647138431543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32685968.post-77878932023891656942024-03-15T06:12:00.000-07:002024-03-15T06:12:53.117-07:00The Philadelphia Story (1940)<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_rEcpiAU-nXA1Xp6OVcF9mGq_DbZ4ZKIhavPbDUNkWkJhMor4f7uu_Jh-LQaANWGLN6IcQ2SfssRw0iQ3Qpl3XdKXtHRQi3HlBWLvLe6dXvJQ1W-UOVNbovcuxlQqZdnM8E4xUwJzFmlTuqKS49aVcnJaf7meFaH90ALbHp1LMwjctgo5pb1b/s500/thephila.jpg"><img border="0" height="293" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_rEcpiAU-nXA1Xp6OVcF9mGq_DbZ4ZKIhavPbDUNkWkJhMor4f7uu_Jh-LQaANWGLN6IcQ2SfssRw0iQ3Qpl3XdKXtHRQi3HlBWLvLe6dXvJQ1W-UOVNbovcuxlQqZdnM8E4xUwJzFmlTuqKS49aVcnJaf7meFaH90ALbHp1LMwjctgo5pb1b/w400-h293/thephila.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><b>USA, 112 minutes</b><div>Director: <b>George Cukor</b></div><div>Writers: <b>Donald Ogden Stewart, Philip Barry, Waldo Salt</b></div><div>Photography: <b>Joseph Ruttenberg</b></div><div>Music: <b>Franz Waxman</b></div><div>Editor: <b>Frank Sullivan</b></div><div>Cast: <b>Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, James Stewart, John Howard, Ruth Hussey, Virginia Weidler, Mary Nash, Roland Young, John Halliday, Henry Daniell</b><br /><br />I first saw <i>The Philadelphia Story</i> quite a long time ago, on early missions to collect all the various Hollywood classics of the late ‘30s and ‘40s. The first thing that struck me coming back to it again was what a phenomenal amount of star power it has, with not one not two but three major players: Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, and James Stewart. Plus the great Hollywood director George Cukor (<i>Little Women</i>, <i>Holiday</i>, part of <i>Gone With the Wind</i>, <i>Gaslight</i>, <i>Born Yesterday</i>), a specialist in romantic comedy arguably at the peak of his powers. That’s the view from now anyway—interestingly, Hepburn at the time was considered box office poison for some reason, so when Grant demanded top billing in this one he got it. Hepburn had also flopped on Broadway a few years earlier, making it something of a low ebb for her career, though of course she is remembered now as a steady-glowing superstar.<br /><br />In fact, <i>The Philadelphia Story</i> started life as a vehicle written for Hepburn by playwright Philip Barry. Talk about star-studded: in the Broadway production, Joseph Cotten had Cary Grant’s role and Van Heflin had Stewart’s. And it was a big hit, so I’m not sure what the Hollywood moguls were worried about. But I’m sure there’s a story. At any rate, the film version is bracingly modern for its times, acknowledging the reality of embittered marriages and divorce. On the other hand, it reverts more to the form of its times by making a joking matter out of routine domestic violence. It’s given as funny that C.K. Dexter Haven (Grant) “socked” his then wife Tracy Lord (Hepburn) (no apparent relation to the porn star). This movie loves the word “sock.”<br /><br /><span><a name='more'></a></span><br /></div><div>I don’t particularly hold that against <i>The Philadelphia Story</i>—after all, it’s “the times, the times.” Equally typical is the resolution to the divorce, which I won’t give away even though it’s 100% predictable and the picture is over 80 years old. Also typical is the delightful presence of character player Roland Young and his somewhat less delightful habit of pinching the bottoms of attractive women. What struck me more as somewhat odd about this picture is how similar the arc of Grant’s character is to another role of his, in <i>His Girl Friday</i>, released that same year. In both Grant is at work winning back an estranged wife and in both he is ruthlessly manipulative, as comical element and otherwise.<br /><br /><i>The Philadelphia Story</i> breaks out in domestic scenes that serve up more vanilla versions of those in Edward Albee’s <i>Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?</i> But even if they are milder, much milder, and the humiliations are only threatened, they are remarkably candid in their quiet ways, uncomfortable and surprisingly close to feeling real about domestic fracases. It’s also droll and can be very funny, most often in Grant’s scenes where he will say things like, speaking of Tracy’s fiancé George Kittredge, “To hardly know him is to know him well.” John Howard as George is the designated Ralph Bellamy in this picture.<br /><br />Hepburn gets some choice lines too. “South Bend [Indiana],” she cackles lightly when she meets the tabloid reporters Macauley “Mike” Connor (Stewart) and Ellizabeth “Liz” Imbrie (Ruth Hussey playing it reminiscent of Mary Astor) and learns where they are from. “It sounds like dancing, doesn’t it?” Hepburn does not get top billing but she is thoroughly the star of the show. Macauley is a frustrated short story writer with a lot of talent—all the principals in this movie seem to know his one published collection well. Stewart plays him effectively enough in his low-gear mode, but the boy scout routine is somehow less convincing here and can be annoying. But I’m dutybound to report that he won an Oscar for this performance. Per IMDb, he thought Henry Fonda deserved it that year for <i>The Grapes of Wrath</i>, saying he thought the award was "deferred payment for my work on <i>Mr. Smith Goes to Washington</i>."<br /><br />There’s a good deal of discussion about class conflict and such here, but I don’t believe it for a second. Macauley has a lot to say about it but later, in a drunken swoon, he is seen carrying Tracy in his arms and singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” (which reminds us this is an MGM picture). It doesn’t look like it would take long for Tracy and her family wealth to bring Macauley “Mike” to heel. As romantic comedies go, <i>The Philadelphia Story</i> is not the best, even for its era. I’ll take <i>Holiday</i> and <i>His Girl Friday</i> before it for Grant, <i>Woman of the Year</i>, <i>Holiday</i> again, and even <i>Stage Door</i> before it for Hepburn, and <i>The Shop Around the Corner</i> and all the scenes with Donna Reed in <i>It’s a Wonderful Life</i> before it for Stewart. And while we’re on the compare and contrast thing, note that director Cukor also directed <i>Holiday</i>. It’s the one to see! But <i>The Philadelphia Story</i> is a good one to get to, it’s entertaining enough, and the big stars are fun.</div>Jeff Pikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17148737647138431543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32685968.post-84756358092064230372024-03-14T02:59:00.000-07:002024-03-14T02:59:14.559-07:00“Mackintosh Willy” (1979)<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3SnGv7ipf81wYXal7jAKHkg6vuMZ2nLsWT9tFxRyhhFY5q6fspMxRu0inGvY75S4N7g2YJmVsLVVlnYl-wDiViokKDFyFPfFGdd2T3K4v_kAT29zaLrT5id-mo7QoFsxcJnOwnLTse3juLErgDL00F90XZGZcIvw1zrhY2f3IyVysZBNHRjg6/s1000/campmack2.jpg"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3SnGv7ipf81wYXal7jAKHkg6vuMZ2nLsWT9tFxRyhhFY5q6fspMxRu0inGvY75S4N7g2YJmVsLVVlnYl-wDiViokKDFyFPfFGdd2T3K4v_kAT29zaLrT5id-mo7QoFsxcJnOwnLTse3juLErgDL00F90XZGZcIvw1zrhY2f3IyVysZBNHRjg6/w264-h400/campmack2.jpg" width="264" /></a></div>By way of something like due diligence I note first that this Ramsey Campbell story won a World Fantasy award for best short fiction. Huzzah! But I’m not sure of it myself. I may have to face that UK writer Campbell, now I’ve read some dozen or more of his stories, is a blind spot for me. My complaint is that his stories are generally way too much into a kind of cerebral “restrained horror” vein, where everything is quite normal, except one or two things are slightly off. The idea is that you notice these one or two things and their implications and then you spin off into rabbit-holes where the terror only enlarges. If only it worked so well. This story offers up a memoirish incident from childhood remembered by an adult. Mackintosh Willy might be a homeless person surviving in a ramshackle abandoned shed in a public park, or he might be a figment of a boy’s imagination, or he might be something more sinister, otherworldly, and evil. Campbell tries to tilt the story in the direction of the last, but my money is on the first—a homeless person, mocked, feared, and reviled by visitors to the park like the boy and his friends. Campbell is so circumspect that anything unsettling about the incidents simply does not come off for me. There’s an intimation that one boy may have mutilated Mackintosh Willy’s corpse, but it’s very uncertain, as is Willy himself. I struggle because <i>The Dark Descent</i>, which includes it, is largely reliable, “Mackintosh Willy” won that award, and Campbell has a perfectly respectable reputation as among the best horror writers of his generation (born in 1946). Indeed, <i>Dark Descent</i> editor David G. Hartwell waxed rhapsodic about Campbell in 1987, calling him “perhaps the most important living writer in the horror fiction field” and praising his abilities across the totality of horror, “from the Lovecraftian to the Aickmanesque.” That’s a heavy burden of expectations to lay on readers (not to mention the writer himself) and, in another century, sadly, I am not seeing it bear out. In the case of this story, I think I get that it’s the very uncertainty of Mackintosh Willy’s existence at all that is intended to be unsettling, but it seemed like a pretty slender reed to me on which to hang the whole thing. The good news about cerebral writers like Campbell and this restrained style of horror is they’re often quite lucid. The less good news is they don’t always seem to understand the main points of writing horror and thus the stories don’t always really land. Perhaps needless to say—and I’m not done with Campbell yet—YMMV.<br /><br /><a href="https://amzn.to/4ceGwkq" target="_blank">Ramsey Campbell, <i>Alone With the Horrors</i></a><br /><a href="https://amzn.to/2Y08o55" target="_blank"><i>The Dark Descent</i>, ed. David G. Hartwell</a><br /><a href="https://amzn.to/3SVS1V8" target="_blank"><i>A Century of Horror 1970-1979</i>, ed. David Drake</a><br />Story not available online.Jeff Pikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17148737647138431543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32685968.post-35636827183047038082024-03-10T05:39:00.000-07:002024-03-10T05:39:55.146-07:00R.E.M.’s Murmur (2005)<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjgwoFfI1r1lGU5ucZiqt1dkt6xV3ge26SZgvwCwdVg9PbWkIOaySreqZMZMB8XEPTBKhVKH-ctkmxm3T6L-FLbE319WDp-D2PsPONuLz_PuDjFvwWbQu1h5RrHc0hdULbu5erOfa1IVJSbiTqziZo7sIMfL9bwb8fkciUGegUjzj5KVp0pAyA/s1000/niimrems.jpg"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjgwoFfI1r1lGU5ucZiqt1dkt6xV3ge26SZgvwCwdVg9PbWkIOaySreqZMZMB8XEPTBKhVKH-ctkmxm3T6L-FLbE319WDp-D2PsPONuLz_PuDjFvwWbQu1h5RrHc0hdULbu5erOfa1IVJSbiTqziZo7sIMfL9bwb8fkciUGegUjzj5KVp0pAyA/w293-h400/niimrems.jpg" width="293" /></a></div> J. Niimi’s 33-1/3 entry departs in some interesting ways from the usual in this series. His track-by-track rundown is more abbreviated and his history of the band is a bit of a rush job. <i>Murmur</i> is R.E.M.’s first full-length album, though they had already hit by then with a first single in 1981 (“Radio Free Europe,” an alternative version of which kicks off <i>Murmur</i>) and followed it with an equally auspicious EP in 1982, <i>Chronic Town</i>. The album was thus eagerly anticipated and for many fulfilled all expectations. Niimi sprinkles in some personal details of buying it when he was a young teen and how much it meant to him. He bought the cassette tape from a store in greater Chicagoland. But he seems more interested in exploring the lyrical strategies of the album, the singer, and the band. Full disclosure, <i>Murmur</i> has always been mostly lost on me though I’ve come to make my peace with it. In this book, written around 2004, I wish Niimi would have written more about what followed for R.E.M., because what interests him most about the album—the (enduring) mystery of its indeterminacy—is something that changed across the band’s career. Niimi passes along, with a straight face, a story about how the title <i>Murmur</i> was chosen because someone in the band (I think it was singer Michael Stipe) read somewhere that it’s one of the easiest words in the English language to pronounce. Fair enough, and ha ha ha, but let’s also look at a dictionary definition: “a soft, <i>indistinct</i> sound made by a person” (Encyclopedia.com, emphasis mine). The indeterminacy of the lyrics is mostly what Niimi is focused on here. He’s read reasonably widely in semiotics and such and has the wit to pull in both David Johansen and Wire as influences on either side of Stipe in terms of lyrics. I’m generally dubious about the project of focusing on lyrics over anything else in rock music. Niimi has some balance and perspective, but the mystery of the lyrics remains his defining quest with <i>Murmur</i>. I more hear an interesting variation on Earth, Wind & Fire’s “September Song” or the Cocteau Twins, who came after R.E.M. All those syllables come across to me like blank slates on which to project. Nearly as often they sound like people who ran out of time or inclination to say anything distinctly. I like <i>Murmur</i> now, but it has never sounded or felt profound to me. If you feel another way about it then this book might be just what the doctor ordered.<br /><br /><a href="https://amzn.to/42BdDL7" target="_blank">In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.</a>Jeff Pikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17148737647138431543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32685968.post-1686471480466331312024-03-08T04:47:00.000-08:002024-03-08T04:47:47.089-08:00Small Axe (2020)<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiV_9W9NEToAGd64pr4XJpEh-hd2CyGpVwrjWwCYE3GNCykGOiCTqhLzYF8u2lVG28rMzeJD-Q6WHRxwa6T76j6P8vP-P9Xmo1xmsMNWDgyVixLLg3iC8WBr9ZVKTKTn6XuZ8Hh371bsPGgwixZyO5XBf4PDFSqafXCKPJOEUa_hpKBP1NmQgl7/s3900/smallaxe.jpg"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiV_9W9NEToAGd64pr4XJpEh-hd2CyGpVwrjWwCYE3GNCykGOiCTqhLzYF8u2lVG28rMzeJD-Q6WHRxwa6T76j6P8vP-P9Xmo1xmsMNWDgyVixLLg3iC8WBr9ZVKTKTn6XuZ8Hh371bsPGgwixZyO5XBf4PDFSqafXCKPJOEUa_hpKBP1NmQgl7/w400-h266/smallaxe.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>[<a href="https://pkcantexplain.blogspot.com/2021/06/small-axe-2020.html" target="_blank">Earlier review here.</a>]<br /><br /><b><i>Mangrove</i>; <i>Lovers Rock</i>; <i>Red, White and Blue</i>; <i>Alex Wheatle</i>; <i>Education</i>; UK, 407 minutes</b><div>Director: <b>Steve McQueen</b></div><div>Writers: <b>Rebecca Lenkiewicz, Steve McQueen, Alastair Siddons, Courttia Newland</b></div><div>Photography: <b>Shabier Kirchner</b></div><div>Music: <b>Mica Levi</b></div><div>Editors: <b>Chris Dickens, Steve McQueen</b></div><div>Cast: <b>Letitia White, Shaun Parkes, Malachi Kirby, Rochenda Sandall, Gershwyn Eustache Jnr., Gary Beadle, Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn, Micheal Ward, Shaniqua Okwok, Francis Lovehall, Kedar Williams-Stirling, John Boyega, Steve Toussaint, Antonia Thomas, Tyrone Huntley, Sheyi Cole, Robbie Gee, Jonathan Jules, Elliot Edusah, Fumilayo Brown-Olateju, Kenyah Sandy, Sharlene Whyte, Tamara Lawrance, Josette Simon, Ryan Masher</b><br /><br />“Small axe” is a reference to a Bob Marley song of the same name, with the line “If you are the big tree, we are the small axe.” It’s another way of talking about incrementalism, in line with Martin Luther King’s “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” And just so, director Steve McQueen with screenwriters Courttia Newland and Alastair Siddons have examined that arc closely as it applied to West Indians living in Britain in the late ‘60s, ‘70s, and early ‘80s. You might think the British are immune from racism, too genteel or something, but <i>Small Axe</i> and the five distinct films clustered under that banner beg to differ. They remind us not only that the British are the authors of a specific type of racism but that in large part the US digested it whole. The police brutality in <i>Small Axe</i>—one of the few constants across these stories—looks a lot like the police brutality we see in the US. It’s one of our inheritances from Britain, however much we rebelled against it in other ways.<br /><br />The favorite of these stories in <i>Small Axe</i> by acclaim is almost certainly the second (though they do not need to be looked at in any order), <i>Lovers Rock</i>. In all the episodes music is a saving grace, a lifeline, and a solace and true source of joy, but nowhere is that emphasized more than in <i>Lovers Rock</i>, which is a straightforward depiction of a house party and its motley of attendees. The prep takes all day. The food looks amazingly good, most are dressed up in their best, and the music is everything. Two scenes—one involving “Silly Games” by Janet Kay and the other an unidentified dub rave-up played over and over—illustrate the point.<br /><br /><span><a name='more'></a></span><br /></div><div>The music is provided in the Jamaican sound system style, with a crew in a living room spinning 45s through a set of homemade speakers. In both cases they stop playing records entirely at a point and the crowd carries on without them. In the case of “Silly Games” they sing the chorus multiple times. It sounds like an eerie chant and they are not afraid to go for Kay’s high notes—operatically high notes. In the case of the dub, it’s all men on the living room dance floor. It’s late in the party. The DJ plays the instrumental three times and the dancers never flag, even between. Though <i>Lovers Rock</i> comes as close as any to a pure expression of joy, it has dark and troubling undercurrents as well.<br /><br /><i>Mangrove</i> is the first and the longest of the five, running over two hours. Most of the rest are closer to an hour. Based on the case of the Mangrove Nine, <i>Mangrove</i> tells the story of systematic police harassment aimed at a particular restaurant owner, who becomes as radicalized as a person can be who wants to do business uninterrupted in London at that time. But his restaurant becomes a community gathering place for people to talk over their problems (usually involving police), share support, and discuss how to deal with them. When they demonstrate publicly, they are set up for charges by the authorities and <i>Mangrove</i> turns into a courtroom drama. One thing I like about <i>Small Axe</i> is that you can often feel how steeped McQueen is in cinema, turning to its devices as necessary. <i>Mangrove</i> is as exciting, dramatic, and satisfying as any courtroom drama.<br /><br />Police behavior in <i>Small Axe</i> is always infuriating, but perhaps not more so than in the third piece, <i>Red, White and Blue</i>. In this one a naïve but sincere young man elects to join the police force and try to change things from the inside. He announces these aims more often than he should, but even if he had been more discreet about it we see quickly he never had a chance. The white policemen he works with do not support him in any way, scrawling ugly words on his locker, abandoning him in dangerous situations, and smirking at his anger. The worst of all could be the police chief to whom he reports. McQueen and Newland create a depressing portrait of how deeply these problems with police run.<br /><br /><i>Alex Wheatle</i>, the fourth episode, is about the real-life Wheatle, an outcast even among West Indians who was arrested and jailed for participating in the 1981 Brixton riot. Later he became a noted author of novels and YA novels as well as a one-man play, <i>Uprising</i>, based on his Brixton experience. This episode focuses on his time in prison, where he met a man, his cellmate, who influenced him to pursue an education. I like the way McQueen uses tried and true biopic strategies, but biopics are not my favorite and <i>Alex Wheatle</i> may be the weakest piece here—although that’s not such a criticism in this company and it has many fine points, usually, for me, associated with Wheatle’s interest in music.<br /><br />The last piece, <i>Education</i>, takes on another time-honored cinematic tradition in an advocacy story that crusades convincingly for social justice. In this case it’s about a systematic practice in British public education of the time to shunt children of color off to “special schools,” or, as they were institutionally referred to, schools for the “educationally subnormal.” In these schools the children can be unsupervised most of the day. The teachers come and go. In one scene that is almost as comic as it is astonishingly inappropriate a teacher sits on his desk in front of the kids, smoking a cigarette and running through multiple verses of “The House of the Rising Sun.” In the tradition, <i>Education</i> lets you feel the outrage of the issue at hand and then the balm of an empathetic resolution.<br /><br />My one complaint about <i>Small Axe</i> at the moment is that producers Amazon Prime have recently seen fit to include ads with the streaming version, and they are not the kind that are thoughtfully inserted. You’re watching <i>Small Axe</i> and, sometimes in the middle of a sentence of dialogue, the ads come busting in. I have the somewhat expensive DVD so I can escape that if I really want, but it just seems like a poor choice on Amazon’s part. <i>Small Axe</i> was one of the best things to come out of the pandemic and that whole terrible period. The music is always great, and each piece is close to coequal with all the others.<br /><br /><b>Top 10 of 2020</b><br />1. <i>Small Axe</i><br />2. <i><a href="https://pkcantexplain.blogspot.com/2021/12/the-history-of-seattle-mariners-2020.html" target="_blank">The History of the Seattle Mariners</a></i><br />3. <i>Nomadland</i><br />4. <i>Shiva Baby</i><br />5. <i>Never Rarely Sometimes Always</i><br />6. <i>Batman: Death in the Family</i><br />7. <i>Minari</i><br />8. <i><a href="https://pkcantexplain.blogspot.com/2020/12/the-queens-gambit-2020.html" target="_blank">The Queen’s Gambit</a></i><br />9. <i>Possessor</i><br />10. <i><a href="https://pkcantexplain.blogspot.com/2021/06/the-social-dilemma-2020.html" target="_blank">The Social Dilemma</a></i><br /><br />Other write-ups: <i><a href="https://pkcantexplain.blogspot.com/2021/01/borat-subsequent-moviefilm-2020.html" target="_blank">Borat Subsequent Moviefilm</a></i>; <i><a href="https://pkcantexplain.blogspot.com/2022/02/the-boy-behind-door-2020.html" target="_blank">The Boy Behind the Door</a></i>; <i><a href="https://pkcantexplain.blogspot.com/2021/12/eurovision-song-contest-story-of-fire.html" target="_blank">Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga</a></i>; <i><a href="https://pkcantexplain.blogspot.com/2021/02/the-hunt-2020.html" target="_blank">The Hunt</a></i>; <i><a href="https://pkcantexplain.blogspot.com/2020/09/ill-be-gone-in-dark-2020.html" target="_blank">I’ll Be Gone in the Dark</a></i>; <i><a href="https://pkcantexplain.blogspot.com/2021/04/the-last-dance-2020.html" target="_blank">The Last Dance</a></i>; <a href="https://pkcantexplain.blogspot.com/2020/12/lovecraft-country-s1-2020.html" target="_blank"><i>Lovecraft Country</i>, s1</a>; <i><a href="https://pkcantexplain.blogspot.com/2021/09/relic-2020.html" target="_blank">Relic</a></i>; <i><a href="https://pkcantexplain.blogspot.com/2022/09/riders-of-justice-2020.html" target="_blank">Riders of Justice</a></i>; <a href="https://pkcantexplain.blogspot.com/2020/10/shirley-2020.html" target="_blank">Shirley</a>; <a href="https://pkcantexplain.blogspot.com/2023/11/signs-of-psychopath-s1-6-2020-2023.html" target="_blank"><i>Signs of a Psychopath</i>, s1-6</a>; <i><a href="https://pkcantexplain.blogspot.com/2021/10/tenet-2020.html" target="_blank">Tenet</a></i>; <i><a href="https://pkcantexplain.blogspot.com/2021/03/zappa-2020.html" target="_blank">Zappa</a></i></div>Jeff Pikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17148737647138431543noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32685968.post-41205974853213929902024-03-04T05:02:00.000-08:002024-03-04T05:02:00.129-08:00True Detective: Night Country (2024)<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGN5UaqRJC7bvDXlr94o43GQ4JJreRtuLtKhBYghU7-g_p5TPESeQaSnspbjDYUD1xMEHuMHs53izDLYQDSI2nG8hC6EhaVZE1rrs2plnniL_zrPLfmGci0dbu1rX_IiTuyfCoCwgRaCy9mD5-MTRobmSdn7kOFfyhgbHCo1iiay_nw8p2yeI6/s800/truedete.jpeg"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGN5UaqRJC7bvDXlr94o43GQ4JJreRtuLtKhBYghU7-g_p5TPESeQaSnspbjDYUD1xMEHuMHs53izDLYQDSI2nG8hC6EhaVZE1rrs2plnniL_zrPLfmGci0dbu1rX_IiTuyfCoCwgRaCy9mD5-MTRobmSdn7kOFfyhgbHCo1iiay_nw8p2yeI6/w400-h400/truedete.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div>Lots of things to like about the latest HBO <i>True Detective</i> season, <i>Night Country</i> (they seem to be burping them up now at about the rate of every five years): a solid cast, featuring Jodie Foster with Kali Weiss, John Hawkes, and more good players. A terrific setting in Ennis, Alaska, within the Arctic Circle, at the time of year (late December and Christmas) when there is no daylight. And an interesting, bizarre, and unsettling mystery, in which all the scientists in a remote research post have gone missing. Some great music too. There are ultimately a lot of moving parts to the story, chief among them strands from a nearby environmentally damaging mining operation and Alaskan Natives opposed to it. A lot of history stalks the tenuous relationships in Ennis. In the early going <i>Night Country</i> throws off vibes from John Carpenter’s 1982 version of <i>The Thing</i> and it often flirts with the supernatural, settling into indigenous spirituality. For once I caught wind of the series in time and/or in the right mood to follow along with the whole thing real-time. I did some of that with <i>Succession</i> too last spring, although that was prefaced with binging the first three and a half seasons. From the two experiences I have to say binging may be the better way to go for me. <i>Night Country</i> has lots of twists and turns, lots of intricacies in the personal relationships as well as the mystery, and lots of red herrings and confusion. Six episodes may not be enough to build momentum, although that’s kind of a TV series perspective. Let’s face it, it’s six hours. Maybe I just wanted it to go in some other direction. But I ended up underwhelmed by <i>Night Country</i>. It has a pretty good windup and payoff, I could see that, so I’m wondering if I just should have waited and binged it. Pretty weak recommendation, I suspect. Maybe you could binge it and report back how it looks. I saw a lot of good in it that might have cohered better if it were more concentrated instead of spread out across weeks. But now in a way I’m complaining about the terms of TV entertainment itself.Jeff Pikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17148737647138431543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32685968.post-22397988399552905142024-03-03T06:12:00.000-08:002024-03-03T06:12:18.555-08:00Me, the Mob, and the Music (2010)<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1pbPD66g0-TVo1jb_jV50HxsoIoFkSGUN4uh3Rvxq62FwfpADYyTvaPmHHa3Zo-vWRMCNp4Buh6qksAdMYWPfxLlNTnKQJQnaR8JQyNhhtvd2T3O0J6ltOnClefu1RP3WInpC1dSqum2ntwetB2Iet4mwrzhTyOxCSXs_EhXXnW3XwaGMYb_H/s1000/jamemeth.jpg"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1pbPD66g0-TVo1jb_jV50HxsoIoFkSGUN4uh3Rvxq62FwfpADYyTvaPmHHa3Zo-vWRMCNp4Buh6qksAdMYWPfxLlNTnKQJQnaR8JQyNhhtvd2T3O0J6ltOnClefu1RP3WInpC1dSqum2ntwetB2Iet4mwrzhTyOxCSXs_EhXXnW3XwaGMYb_H/w254-h400/jamemeth.jpg" width="254" /></a></div> I enjoyed this memoir by Tommy James, written with Martin Fitzpatrick. All the “Mob” portions were interesting, I suppose—a key reason James waited so long to write it was waiting for certain figures to die. Most notably that included his kinda sorta mentor Morris Levy, who died in 1990, operated the Birdland nightclub, ran the Roulette label, and never paid James a fraction of the royalties he owed him. I was more interested in Tommy James the teenybop star because he was an absolute favorite of mine in junior high days. He played his first gig (a high school talent show) at the age of 12 and was playing professionally a year later with his own band. For many years he had to worry about being underage in the venues he played. The amazing story of “Hanky Panky” is told here, one with many twists and turns that broke open his career. In retrospect, he was at his rock ‘n’ roll purest with “Hanky Panky” and, later, “Mony Mony”—raw blasts of infectious power. But as a kid I was more infatuated first with the hothouse teen drama of “I Think We’re Alone Now” and then with the faux mellow psychedelia of “Crystal Blue Persuasion,” which I had not thought of for years and then played six times in a row the other day. Beauty! I know it’s plastic, inauthentic, and all that, but I just love it. The stories of all James’s hits and more are covered here, along with his three marriages, drug adventures (mostly speed and booze, he may never have taken a hallucinogen), and eventual substance abuse recovery and turn to Christianity. I could have done with a little less of the latter, though he never goes overboard. For me he’s not that likable, more of a hypocritical hedonist and general opportunist. But there’s no question of his talent. He got his break in 1966 and rode it into the ‘70s and beyond. He wrote and/or recorded some great songs I will probably never stop liking. The organized crime angle of this memoir is interesting and no doubt part of his success. He indulges a little “I’m cool because I hung out with gangsters” attitude, but reading between the lines it’s apparent it caused him a good deal of pain. When he hired a lawyer at some point who used forensic accounting to uncover Levy (and/or the Roulette label) owing James $40 million in royalties, Levy threatened their lives and they backed off. Full of strange and harrowing anecdotes, James’s memoir is thoroughly enjoyable, informative, and compulsively readable.<br /><br /><a href="https://amzn.to/482fr0E" target="_blank">In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.</a>Jeff Pikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17148737647138431543noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32685968.post-77335031935448162252024-03-02T03:39:00.000-08:002024-03-02T03:39:23.387-08:0022. Meat Puppets, Up on the Sun (1985)<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOqdeKbI2NKfYILK37KixMXhDKbvxb-lMAL4UBjR0Dzui-LW6cwv6kTDYOCcpMxKZnWlukUkcx665Bh6MNNP4b7d7gxFrHyuAUbJ6SdsnxA4jdLKbQej_2uJh0qvKq4aDcICEG09UBAKqH22FMXk1hECKzRyGMSrzepSfu7NVyAtst5A-W4gpc/s1000/meatupon.jpg"><img border="0" height="395" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOqdeKbI2NKfYILK37KixMXhDKbvxb-lMAL4UBjR0Dzui-LW6cwv6kTDYOCcpMxKZnWlukUkcx665Bh6MNNP4b7d7gxFrHyuAUbJ6SdsnxA4jdLKbQej_2uJh0qvKq4aDcICEG09UBAKqH22FMXk1hECKzRyGMSrzepSfu7NVyAtst5A-W4gpc/w400-h395/meatupon.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>[<a href="https://pkcantexplain.blogspot.com/2012/11/meat-puppets-two-rivers-1985.html" target="_blank">2012 review of “Two Rivers” here.</a>]<br /><br />Surprise—it turns out the Meat Puppets have a much bigger catalog than I remembered, including the 1987 <i>Huevos</i> which I’m sure I owned at one time. I count at least six or seven albums before Kurt Cobain reached down and gave them a hand back up in the ‘90s. It’s possible I lost track because I never felt the need to go far beyond this album—in many ways beyond just the song “Two Rivers,” which hits like sunlight glinting on water. I can feel the heat of the desert and the glare makes me want to reach for sunglasses. Stepping back on more recent revisits it’s not hard to make out the psychedelic intentions across the length and breadth of <i>Up on the Sun</i>, starting with the cover art, reminiscent of pre-psychedelic visionary Van Gogh’s naked lunch style. <a href="https://youtu.be/QhmTtSMiiK4?si=kBImm6YpwILdIXEJ" target="_blank">A more recent video on youtube</a> of the gentle, rambling title song, created by the Australian video artist SPOD, updates the vibe to this century (and emphasize the psychedelia). So you know, at the moment there’s a certain parade of Meat Puppets rereleases going on. Make Record Store Day special this year. If you’ve always been curious, now is the time. The Kirkwood brothers Curt and Cris, MP mainstays, hail from Phoenix, Arizona, but their hearts seem to lie in a canny blend of country strains ever so slightly inflected by hallucinogenic experience and distant memories of hardcore punk. They sing off-key, miss notes all the time, but the play of guitars is rich and intricate. The mood is somber and soaring at once, as if on a quest for a spirit animal. The songs are short like punk (their origin) but they warp at will as if the recording itself has a tremolo bar attached. I see this compared to the Byrds—sure, I’ll go along with that, but the country is more fully absorbed and the Byrds never had much punk in them. But this is equally the place, eight miles high, where the sights and the sounds may become overwhelming. Sometimes you sense the music is just a dim echo of the sources, of what was experienced. In this case, a dim echo might be as much as you need.Jeff Pikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17148737647138431543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32685968.post-75550501262576444132024-03-01T04:48:00.000-08:002024-03-01T04:48:23.172-08:00Imitation of Life (1959)<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw_U_MQ_3mg5KXL9A2yiU3j_6oRQJK3MG6r0h5a1qGUR3-Pz-qdiFgGIWUsbqdnM_5vIivuXii1SUJjQsAaIMB4OGpKJ7bDiHuQZTSQSeMA4MXWCd0dsCt-6OhYEXpO5V4s4eZMxLDA0lQjiyUgrCFDK55Y2bVrWFDm2t22ZNhuFRZeAJQNGL3/s1432/imitatio.jpg"><img border="0" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw_U_MQ_3mg5KXL9A2yiU3j_6oRQJK3MG6r0h5a1qGUR3-Pz-qdiFgGIWUsbqdnM_5vIivuXii1SUJjQsAaIMB4OGpKJ7bDiHuQZTSQSeMA4MXWCd0dsCt-6OhYEXpO5V4s4eZMxLDA0lQjiyUgrCFDK55Y2bVrWFDm2t22ZNhuFRZeAJQNGL3/w400-h226/imitatio.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><b>USA, 125 minutes</b><div>Director: <b>Douglas Sirk</b></div><div>Writers: <b>Eleanore Griffin, Allan Scott, Fannie Hurst</b></div><div>Photography: <b>Russell Metty</b></div><div>Music: <b>Frank Skinner, Henry Mancini, Earl Grant</b></div><div>Editor: <b>Milton Carruth</b><br />Cast: <b>Lana Turner, Juanita Moore, John Gavin, Susan Kohner, Robert Alda, Dan O’Herlihy, Sandra Dee, Mahalia Jackson, Troy Donahue, Elinor Donahue, Jack Weston</b><br /><br />Double feature seekers may be interested to know that the 1959 <i>Imitation of Life</i> directed by Douglas Sirk is actually a remake of a 1934 picture. This was news to me and I found they make an interesting and entertaining comparison. Both are based on a 1934 novel by Fannie Hurst (all three go by <i>Imitation of Life</i>), which might be worth tracking down itself. I don’t know anything by the bestselling author, now largely forgotten. Highly popular in the 1920s and 1930s—at one point among the highest-paid US writers—Hurst was what we’d now call a social justice warrior, taking on feminism, race relations, and more in her novels and stories from that roiling period of change. The 1934 movie was directed by John Stahl (<i>Leave Her to Heaven</i>), and it is more out to make you cry and generally successful at it. In that version the Black maid, Delilah Johnson (Louise Beavers), has a pancake recipe which enables the white widow lady, Beatrice Pullman (Claudette Colbert, winning as always), to open a restaurant and escape the economic severities of the time. Some great character actors show up along the way.<br /><br />In Sirk’s version the Black maid, Annie Johnson (Juanita Moore), is merely a maid (albeit the glue that holds this unusual family together, as much as it stays together). The white widow lady, Lora Meredith (Lana Turner), has aspirations to be a serious actor in The Theater. There’s an interesting tension here between the themes and Sirk, whose reputation is for an artificiality that goes to comical extremes (later the German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder would carry the torch even further). Lora Meredith is routinely decked out in spectacular gowns and jewelry, for example. Everyone looks stunningly great, with the possible exception of the meek and mild Annie, who goes through life with her humble clothes on. She prefers shawls. Everything else is immaculately antiseptic verging on sterile. Yet the story feels personal, and it is searing.<br /><br /><span><a name='more'></a></span><br /></div><div>It’s quite a balancing act that Sirk’s version pulls off. Very plainly part of what it is doing is making fun of people buying unconsciously or otherwise into the whole racial coding system. Yes, it’s rather different from today’s prevailing coding system, but the dynamics are the same. Where today we have turned “woke” into a radioactive term (“woke” basically, as used, simply meaning an awareness of racism and how it operates), in the 1950s the subtle oppressions could run to much greater extremes, as Sirk shows in sometimes harrowing ways. One relatively minor example is that when Lora has a gathering of VIPs (agents, producers, and such), I noticed that her daughter Susie could come out and mingle but Annie’s daughter Sarah Jane was not allowed out of the kitchen. Neither was Annie, except to serve food and drink. We also see that Lora has multiple Black servants but they don’t have lines. Is this a good thing?<br /><br />Not surprisingly, the 1934 <i>Imitation of Life</i> is even worse on the score. No one is bothered at all that the pancake recipe is Delilah’s (an old family secret) and Delilah does practically all of the labor (whereas the white widow lady Beatrice wheels, deals, and wheedles the financing). The only real credit Delilah gets is an Aunt Jemima type of appearance on the restaurant sign and later product logos. Beatrice is good-hearted and looks out for Delilah’s long-term interests, but she didn’t have to, and history shows that, most of the time, people in her position wouldn’t. These points, I’m pretty sure, are more Hurst’s—I’m frankly surprised Hollywood in the 1930s would give a Black character like Delilah even as much dignity as this movie does. Prevailing conventional wisdom in this picture is obviously still that Black people are inferior, however soft the soap with which it is peddled.<br /><br />There are similar problems in Sirk’s version, but the thorn that Hurst planted in the side of the narrative is Delilah’s and Annie’s light-skinned daughter (Peola in 1934 played by Fredi Washington and Sarah Jane in 1959 played by Susan Kohner). “Passing” may not be the issue now that it was then (although I guess we could talk to Nikki Haley about that), but it is a profound encapsulation of racism and frankly bracing even in the earlier <i>Imitation of Life</i>. This girl does not want to be Black, that’s the heart of it. She wants to be white—she says so repeatedly. She is ashamed to her core by people’s reactions when they meet her mother, such as when she shows up at a classroom to bring her something. That scene is in both pictures.<br /><br />I think Sirk ultimately has a much better sense of racism and how it works, which is somewhat at odds with what I know about him by reputation. I feel like I have to be on an “irony alert” with his movies because they are pitched at such swooning levels it feels like he’s treating things like a joke. But his <i>Imitation of Life</i> is much more nuanced about its story, leaning into the most melodramatic elements with a lot of skill. It seems to be sincerely taking on difficult issues of class, gender, race, and more. Those issues are not funny and Sirk does not treat them as if he thought they were. But the artificiality as aesthetic worries me, seems to undercut the point. <br /><br />I haven’t even got to the gender and class issues that populate Sirk’s version. Steve Archer (John Gavin) appears first and early as a perfect boyfriend, but the minute Lora has any kind of professional success he snarls at her, starts trying to order her around, and generally becomes extremely unpleasant. No one, in fact, is supportive of Lora’s ambitions—to a shocking degree. What the hell is wrong with her loved ones? I have to wonder how normalized this kind of stuff was even in the 1950s.<br /><br />Sirk’s version, with screenplay by Eleanore Griffin and Allan Scott, is full of knockout lines. “How do you explain to your child that she was born to be hurt?” Annie says at one point. Or Sarah Janes, saying it plain: “I want to have a chance in life. I don’t want to have to come through back doors, or feel lower than other people, or apologize for my mother’s color.” And this recurring line, heard many times from multiple characters: “please try to understand.”<br /><br />In the end, I admit I am somewhat flummoxed by the later <i>Imitation of Life</i>. The 1934 original is a tearjerker plain and simple, and pretty good at that. It’s fairly called benighted, though its heart may (or may not) be in the right place. But there’s so much more to the 1959 remake, which is much bolder and forthright and almost, you sense, mocking about its intended audience and social themes, notably racism—mocking the audience for its fatuous presumptions. It was the last picture Sirk made in Hollywood before returning to Germany and Europe for the rest of his life, dying in 1987. In fact, it was practically the last picture he ever made at all. His <i>Imitation of Life</i> is an amazing, puzzling, and profound movie—a great one to go out on.</div>Jeff Pikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17148737647138431543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32685968.post-20560382725092585972024-02-29T02:54:00.000-08:002024-02-29T02:54:23.750-08:00“The Rockery” (1912)<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBmbBXXQDCYrJOxJUnkLi2wCxxuljJGEmn9xa1XvdE12rDtM5glm2BjYvLw1mz9cXMXJvSR0Zd1vdPEeFQaMB1Xq8w_KGA2rF9G3xGlACFmQwiWfpBHrKrTtVl3q5tnvie6lrbyDDPH3rajJeU4EBckyWlA2_vfWf1lnrDUNC2cACx6_YLt4zh/s1400/swaither.jpg"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBmbBXXQDCYrJOxJUnkLi2wCxxuljJGEmn9xa1XvdE12rDtM5glm2BjYvLw1mz9cXMXJvSR0Zd1vdPEeFQaMB1Xq8w_KGA2rF9G3xGlACFmQwiWfpBHrKrTtVl3q5tnvie6lrbyDDPH3rajJeU4EBckyWlA2_vfWf1lnrDUNC2cACx6_YLt4zh/w400-h400/swaither.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>E.G. Swain was a cleric and a colleague of M.R. James. Swain wrote his own collection of ghost stories, <i>The Stoneground Ghost Tales</i>, where “The Rockery” comes from originally. I got a kick out of this one. The characters are so oblivious they are in a vampire tale that it reads to me like a lampoon of the trope. Mr. Batchel, a vicar with a small estate next to the church (a “glebe”?) and its churchyard, takes great pride in and fastidious care of his garden. At one edge of it is “a cluster of tall elms … and about their base is raised a bank of earth, upon which is heaped a rockery of large stones lately overgrown with ferns.” Mr. Batchel finds it unsightly and determines to have it removed. Swain is humorously cynical about the relationship of Mr. Batchel and his gardener. Mr. Batchel thinks of the work as a “we” project, but it is the gardener who labors. Among the stones they find architectural debris of columns and capitals and such, as if perhaps a temple of some kind had collapsed or been destroyed. It’s a fantastic afternoon’s work and here is where we can start to feel Swain winking at us: “One detail, however, must not be omitted. A large and stout stake of yew, evidently of considerable age, but nonetheless quite sound, stood exposed after the clearing of the bank. There was no obvious reason for its presence.” <i>Au contraire, Sherlock!</i> we want to cry. It's really quite obvious, and I suspect, in 1912, that Swain knows that exactly. A lot of time and effort (all by Mr. Batchel’s gardener, of course) subsequently goes into removing the stake, which includes finding a plate of copper nailed to it, bearing a message punched in with hammer and nail: “MOVE NOT THIS STAKE, NOV. 1, 1702.” Does this stop our industrious pair? It does not. You know where this is going and you are correct, not to be too spoilery about it. This vampire, once released, is more the beast type. But even that got me thinking. Maybe, after two centuries of being buried under tons of rubble with a stake through its heart, it’s going to take a while for the beast to get its bearings and get back up on its legs and create that life of leisure and sophistication and seduction we know so well. Count Dracula, in his castle and tuxedo, etc. It takes some time to put that undead life together again. I’m interested in reading more by Swain.<br /><br /><a href="https://amzn.to/2QgPfZU" target="_blank"><i>Vampire Tales: The Big Collection</i>, pub. Dark Chaos</a><br /><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/44581/pg44581-images.html#VI" target="_blank">Read story online.</a><br /><a href="https://youtu.be/55hSo1VPcXI?si=6JtbuYmfvQ75gDd3&t=9000" target="_blank">Listen to story online.</a>Jeff Pikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17148737647138431543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32685968.post-44349479463442592222024-02-25T06:03:00.000-08:002024-02-25T06:03:09.140-08:00“Out of Season” (1923)<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5iPIhASFFS7I-LO-tejZnXUM0YF2SyCvvCjO-aDIazQYxV_v66rfbwtdFwG-UyxmXopSQO8nkycCh0VK5aBQ8oCCciw_VKVeCxmtXgmeTxIUHPxvPYIo7teSAn3DAmbrtocngaHl1qE9qoqMfW7HW0HTV1Dg2QNGPcuIwF8ptZLuvaehMOwnC/s1000/hemingwa.jpg"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5iPIhASFFS7I-LO-tejZnXUM0YF2SyCvvCjO-aDIazQYxV_v66rfbwtdFwG-UyxmXopSQO8nkycCh0VK5aBQ8oCCciw_VKVeCxmtXgmeTxIUHPxvPYIo7teSAn3DAmbrtocngaHl1qE9qoqMfW7HW0HTV1Dg2QNGPcuIwF8ptZLuvaehMOwnC/w278-h400/hemingwa.jpg" width="278" /></a></div>This story by Ernest Hemingway is possibly his first under influence of Ezra Pound and Pound’s “imagism,” which attempts to use omission to strengthen the impact or meaning of a poem or story. It’s an intriguing and very Poundian idea. Look at him go in perhaps his most famous poem, “In a Station of the Metro”: “The apparition of these faces in the crowd: / Petals on a wet, black bough” (that’s the whole thing; let it tumble in your mind). In many ways Hemingway is just the man for imagism. This story is also the first that Hemingway reconstructed after a suitcase full of manuscripts was stolen. He claimed later this story came back to him quickly. There is some sense in it of laboring to exhaustion (natural enough as he is recreating it), but for the most part I think it works pretty well. Set in Italy after the Great War, it involves a local, Peduzzi, who has signed on to take an American married couple on an illicit fishing expedition. The incidents are fragmented yet potent with suggestion: Noticing a “Fascist café” sets the historical era vividly and economically. Peduzzi, the guide, is working to make the outing as easy for himself as possible yet he also hopes to make as much off the Americans as he can, including, perhaps most importantly, drink. There is tension between the couple. It’s not clear she’s interested in fishing at all, as she lags well behind the two men, carrying the fishing rods and saying very little. The townspeople observing this group seem sullen, as if resenting how the Americans can break the rules with impunity, or perhaps they are envious of Peduzzi. Hemingway is obviously working out his technique. It’s often not subtle or effective at all that things are missing. Yet just as often these things can be felt through the gaps. This story first appeared in a 1923 privately published edition, <i>Three Stories & Ten Poems</i>. By the time it made it into the 1925 edition of the <i>In Our Time</i> collection it was accompanied by vignette paragraphs that alternate with the stories. I don’t always understand the relation of these vignettes to the stories—it’s art, it’s poetry—but “Out of Season” is preceded by one about bullfighting. The first time I read this story that vignette annoyed me and colored my reaction some. A later second reading (minus the vignette) won me over more. A tremendous amount is communicated here by the shattered minimalist approach. It seems strange to me that someone so resolutely masculinist—it’s arguably Hemingway’s greatest influence, and not a good one—is also so tender and studied about his aesthetics.<br /><br /><i><a href="https://amzn.to/4aISiCR" target="_blank">The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway</a></i><br /><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/59603/59603-h/59603-h.htm#OOS" target="_blank">Read story online.</a><br /><a href="https://youtu.be/6fpzpmptqdM?si=NNKmdalYzMYGo0ic" target="_blank">Listen to story online.</a>Jeff Pikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17148737647138431543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32685968.post-51788262505808508572024-02-23T03:38:00.000-08:002024-02-23T03:38:36.655-08:00Scarface (1983)<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_zfEPr0keRJEOkjek_xFbeJWORm6ccTlRmUoQZo20CQsq6qIO9qwPzSxgt34JyW8fSe9JXh14yHM7GhTSxcvM0LEU0nYOBIMYTqrPZKq-zNHaSg7VzNgp-JICEr0v9QPcvZNZkFsPl5ejJModKwzC2AAZta1q0RpA3aYfelJ6JPnla5rFjWpd/s1360/scarface.jpg"><img border="0" height="165" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_zfEPr0keRJEOkjek_xFbeJWORm6ccTlRmUoQZo20CQsq6qIO9qwPzSxgt34JyW8fSe9JXh14yHM7GhTSxcvM0LEU0nYOBIMYTqrPZKq-zNHaSg7VzNgp-JICEr0v9QPcvZNZkFsPl5ejJModKwzC2AAZta1q0RpA3aYfelJ6JPnla5rFjWpd/w400-h165/scarface.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><b>USA, 170 minutes</b><div>Director: <b>Brian De Palma</b></div><div>Writers: <b>Oliver Stone, Howard Hawks, Ben Hecht, Armitage Trail</b></div><div>Photography: <b>John A. Alonzo</b></div><div>Music: <b>Giorgio Moroder</b></div><div>Editors: <b>Gerald B. Greenberg, David Ray</b></div><div>Cast: <b>Al Pacino, Steven Bauer, Michelle Pfeiffer, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Robert Loggia, Paul Shenar, Harris Yulin, F. Murray Abraham, Miriam Colon, Richard Belzer, Dennis Holahan, Michael Alldredge, Mark Margolis</b><br /><br />I was surprised, perhaps 25 years ago, when I noticed that director Brian De Palma’s 1983 homage to Hollywood gangster cinema had a lot of fans. <i>Scarface</i> appeared to be significant for bro wannabe gangsters, no surprise—but also cineastes of various stripes. Glenn Kenny just published a book about it, for example. For a long time I wondered how they could all be so wrong. My first impression was not a good one. My takeaways (and pretty much all I focused on) were a gruesome early scene involving a chainsaw in a motel shower, and then the last hour of a picture that runs nearly three, where the operatics and scenery-chewing reach various spectacular yet ludicrous climaxes. Yes, this includes Tony Montana (Al Pacino) sitting in his monogrammed chair at his desk piled with a mound of cocaine, into which he periodically bobs his head and comes up with a frosty powdery nose-tip. The emptiness of gangster life, as always, is appalling. But making it so buffoonish is something else again. Hoo-yah!<br /><br />It took me this long to get back to <i>Scarface</i>, such was my recoiling reaction, even given that I might be a little more indulgent of De Palma’s prolific work than some others I know. But a lot of serious people continue to have a lot of serious things to say about <i>Scarface</i>, so I made a point of looking again. And yeah, it’s not bad—certainly stands up to gangster pictures of the ‘70s and ‘80s as well as the originals from the ‘30s. Not that, full disclosure, I really like gangster pictures as such that much—it seems to be kind of an overachieving genre. But <i>Scarface</i> fits, it belongs—it’s the story of a rise and fall, with the usual self-serving moral qualms. The chainsaw scene now seems more like the kind of wanton ultraviolence we are more used to as entertainment. I’m not saying that’s a good thing, and I am saying it’s still hard to watch, but the scene does what it’s supposed to do in this movie, in terms of plot and character development. And the last hour—well, we’ll get to the last hour.<br /><br /><span><a name='more'></a></span><br /></div><div>Once I realized Oliver Stone wrote the screenplay, my first impulse was to blame the excesses on him, because the record largely shows he doesn’t seem to be able to help himself from overdoing things. But De Palma has much the same problem, mitigated perhaps with some propensity for cheese. Giorgio Moroder’s <i>Scarface</i> soundtrack largely sticks to inserting his productions of Elizabeth Daily, Debbie Harry, Amy Holland, and others into the scenes of late-disco early-‘80s Miami nightclub land. Open shirt bare chest is the fundamental aesthetic. When called on to deliver the cheese, Moroder is at least as good as De Palma’s frequent collaborator Pino Donaggio, with a suitably dark and swoony “Tony’s Theme” or the treacle served up when we first see gangster moll Elvira Hancock (Michelle Pfeiffer).<br /><br />At one point Tony Montana sees a blimp flashing an airline advertising message: “The World Is Yours.” This, of course, is a lift from the original 1932 <i>Scarface</i> with Paul Muni, directed by Howard Hawks (and Richard Rosson) and written by Ben Hecht (and others). De Palma’s version is based on it and mimics it in terms of structure but is rarely actually reminiscent of it (and I only looked at it again a few weeks ago). The setting in this <i>Scarface</i> is Florida in the ‘80s, and the gangsters are from the 1980 Mariel boatlift, in which Fidel Castro emptied his prisons of some of the worst to mix with fleeing refugees. A lengthy disclaimer at picture’s end sanctimoniously notes that not all Cuban refugees are like Tony Montana and his crew. De Palma is at pains to honor gangster cinema of the ‘30s and dedicates his picture to Hawks and Hecht.<br /><br />At the same time, the picture is dotted with any number of hey-that-guy figures familiar from TV: Robert Loggia (with appearances in <i>Police Woman</i>, <i>The Rockford Files</i>, <i>The Six Million Dollar Man</i>, <i>S.W.A.T.</i>, and others), Harris Yulin (<i>Barnaby Jones</i>, <i>Little House on the Prairie</i>, <i>Police Woman</i>, <i>S.W.A.T.</i>), Dennis Holahan (<i>Dallas</i>, <i>General Hospital</i>, <i>The Love Boat</i>, <i>The Rockford Files</i>), Michael Alldredge (<i>Alice</i>, <i>The A-Team</i>, <i>Barnaby Jones</i>, <i>Lou Grant</i>), and others. This might have been a matter of budget but it also fits De Palma’s sensibilities. They are all professionals but not really above-average players. It’s a weird sensation as the picture wavers in and out of scenes that feel like TV set-pieces—comforting and cheesy by turns, perhaps intended to soothe the ongoing relentless brutalities.<br /><br />De Palma’s <i>Scarface</i> grows less interesting as Tony Montana grows more powerful and more depraved, which takes up a lot of the last hour and is more or less what critics like me remember most. It really does get ridiculous—almost comical, which I think is at odds with the high drama, an undermining tension, like a tire leaking air, that is never really resolved. But De Palma is once again using the full moviemaker toolkit (now with steadicam!) to knit together scenes of extraordinary tension and suspense. There are many points where you just can’t take your eyes off it. Don’t miss, for example, the visionary hallucinatory Octavio the Clown, a nightclub act that accompanies Frank Sinatra’s “Strangers in the Night.” <br /><br />The obvious star of this <i>Scarface</i> is Al Pacino, and if there’s one thing we know by now about Pacino it is that he loves to perform. Hoo-yah! In many ways both the picture and Pacino go bonkers out of control with irrational exuberance, but the totality of the spectacle is something to behold. Between De Palma’s consummate probing directing style (constantly paying homage and making you nervous all at once) and Pacino’s often mesmerizing sequences, there’s a lot to take in here. I can even see where it might reward looking at more than once.</div>Jeff Pikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17148737647138431543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32685968.post-49597921435334585982024-02-19T05:06:00.000-08:002024-02-19T05:06:27.497-08:00Sanctuary (2022)<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiitXgm7F53kLWAkZHrUUnl1opAymaByD1nq1Tgu4KoQbuQMLsHWjt8t8hCdEIYsENwKN_YhJ8xBsBE51kNAeuPBl7ghMUIp6sfBHYs8Jw3yKKBZNOV6PYqCeCw1Ox6TCjR36fjWkLkUrYs4_oduJq0VR6OSFD7lRgHYftkeiW1wYtSJVlWVYvN/s1467/sanctuar.jpg"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiitXgm7F53kLWAkZHrUUnl1opAymaByD1nq1Tgu4KoQbuQMLsHWjt8t8hCdEIYsENwKN_YhJ8xBsBE51kNAeuPBl7ghMUIp6sfBHYs8Jw3yKKBZNOV6PYqCeCw1Ox6TCjR36fjWkLkUrYs4_oduJq0VR6OSFD7lRgHYftkeiW1wYtSJVlWVYvN/w273-h400/sanctuar.jpg" width="273" /></a></div><i>Sanctuary</i> feels a little like a stage play, with the basic setup of two primary characters largely confined to a sumptuous hotel suite. It’s practically the only element of stability in this tricksy loop-the-loop tour de force which fully showcases Margaret Qualley as Rebecca and Christopher Abbott as Hal. You think these guys can’t perform? Come and take a look. Hal is a rich guy with issues whose father just died, leaving him the family business worth $185 million. Rebecca is a dominatrix for hire. The seesawing dynamics here are all about power and control. It’s more than a BDSM hobby for both, though they both take turns declaring it’s only that. Eventually they start talking about “the game” because it’s nearly as hard for them as it is for us to figure out when they are speaking directly and when they are speaking in various characters or simply being deceptive. The action revolves around Hal trying to cut Rebecca off now that he’s stepping into the responsibilities of his inheritance. He gives her a watch worth $32,000, goes doe-eyed, tells her how much it all meant to him. Rebecca is having none of it. She claims she can blackmail him—and we are on. I better admit I found this movie hot—Qualley is notably on her game. But it’s all in the script and by way of performance, on both their parts, within the movie and without. It’s hard to tell what’s real in the ever-shifting dialogue (again like a play)—there are a lot of movies like this—but in this case <i>Sanctuary</i> keeps things moving fast enough to distract from the general unbelievability. I’d say it takes about 15 or 20 minutes after the movie is over for the spell to dissolve. Perhaps the point is that during the movie we have no questions and few objections as the tensions ratchet and the back and forth goes everywhere. What unfolds is often quite startling from minute to minute and for me the movie was entirely unpredictable. I believe someone with more experience with tricksy movies might have seen this finish coming from a long way away, but I never. <i>Sanctuary</i>—for the kicks.Jeff Pikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17148737647138431543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32685968.post-33534863561176347682024-02-18T08:01:00.000-08:002024-02-18T08:01:43.993-08:00Pale Gray for Guilt (1968)<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifLIVg49pV9kRNB40v2A1yE5nBQPUCF8ENFytgCSaY9GHVgGnBuVswUfMKZW-hS65loiz2csPKAq92bwvPUVtcsqhY13Dad9BQMq2KPnSCBMl19n6wEsZEVgqcAxINltl3T3aN10PQOMDLkvBLVyobezw4m1Hsx7V4XI4azO0_HeDzCZJkOQFv/s500/macdpale.jpg"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifLIVg49pV9kRNB40v2A1yE5nBQPUCF8ENFytgCSaY9GHVgGnBuVswUfMKZW-hS65loiz2csPKAq92bwvPUVtcsqhY13Dad9BQMq2KPnSCBMl19n6wEsZEVgqcAxINltl3T3aN10PQOMDLkvBLVyobezw4m1Hsx7V4XI4azO0_HeDzCZJkOQFv/w239-h400/macdpale.jpg" width="239" /></a></div>I wanted to revisit a Travis McGee novel by John D. MacDonald partly to test myself. Admittedly, MacDonald is a good mystery writer in the hard-boiled vein and McGee is a certain classic. I read a half-dozen or so of them some years ago but finally had to give them up. They almost always included scenes that triggered me, usually women being mistreated or assaulted in ways that left me sick. I had the impression MacDonald enjoyed writing them. Someone once described his style as rabbit-punching and that clarified it for me. But the people blurbing and praising him remain big names: Lee Child (who wrote an introduction for my 2012 edition), Donald Westlake, Roger Ebert, Sue Grafton, etc., etc. As it turns out, I can say “almost always” because—happily—no such scene occurs here. It has all the stuff I remembered: a senseless title that is there to name a color, the brooding loner on a Florida houseboat Travis McGee, a revenge story, a sting, various beautiful women, and me thinking <i>her? Is she the one who gets it?</i> But nothing, or very little. I’m going to try another and see how it goes. I picked this from a generic google search (“best travis mcgee novels”). Later I found it at #13 on a ranked list of all 21 and nowhere near any rando top 5. What up, google? Maybe people like those terrible scenes? As usual, damsels in distress are all over <i>Pale Gray for Guilt</i>, as well as many shades of gray (literal, not figurative). But MacDonald is just good at pulling you into his crazy storylines. Here a friend of McGee’s is murdered, which isn’t clear at first because it was elaborately staged as a grotesque suicide. That leaves behind a widow in distress and a thirst for cold as you can stand it revenge in McGee. It all comes to revolve around a stock swindle, which gets complicated and I got lost. But you can see it works by the way the bad guys yelp and carry on and somehow MacDonald makes even that satisfying. <i>Pale Gray for Guilt</i> (ninth in the series btw, which don’t really need to be read in order) also has a poignant love story that runs parallel to the main mystery story, with an affecting, bittersweet ending. Still, there’s always a little more Hugh Hefner than I like in MacDonald. A lot of things about Travis McGee have not aged well—but all the bigs love him.<br /><br /><a href="https://amzn.to/4bkpfWO" target="_blank">In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.</a>Jeff Pikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17148737647138431543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32685968.post-21548354512003977452024-02-17T05:21:00.000-08:002024-02-17T05:21:39.797-08:0023. Echo & the Bunnymen, Porcupine (1983)<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha0X5WeKNU_4EJ1VIT7G-tEBZ66F8ufjyzP45vuBSlrycEx2J5vULn5CBKv2-Qm9LYF2D49R2JS6U9s_P9aAEIRfkjHWne9jtQ3FmJL-3BnGYjZhyphenhyphencG-62cSIDh0qkj8yp9HxuwJeansbFPMjsoKo6qLgpa2L69Mdfbgl1Ij27wTpiqA5Ui4ty/s400/echoporc.jpg"><img border="0" height="393" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha0X5WeKNU_4EJ1VIT7G-tEBZ66F8ufjyzP45vuBSlrycEx2J5vULn5CBKv2-Qm9LYF2D49R2JS6U9s_P9aAEIRfkjHWne9jtQ3FmJL-3BnGYjZhyphenhyphencG-62cSIDh0qkj8yp9HxuwJeansbFPMjsoKo6qLgpa2L69Mdfbgl1Ij27wTpiqA5Ui4ty/w400-h393/echoporc.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>[<a href="https://pkcantexplain.blogspot.com/2021/03/porcupine-1983.html" target="_blank">2021 review here.</a>]<br /><br />Once again a previous review says a lot of what I want to say (it’s the same album, after all, and it’s still me). I don’t plan to make a habit of this, but still: the weirdly titled <i>Porcupine</i> “arguably tends more toward the cerebral side of psychedelia, full of trippy climax and those thrumming string contributions from L. Shankar [no relation to Ravi].... these woozy dim images playing from wake-up movies, tarted up with exotic Eastern elements and a dense and sludgy production that bursts at will into clarity. The trademark dread of the Bunnymen lurks constantly. They're afraid of something. What is it?” (No, I don’t know what I meant by “wake-up movies” either.) Though <i>Porcupine</i> is now considered an album in good standing in the Bunnymen canon, in 1983 it got a fair amount of bad press. The knock, mainly from the UK, was that the band was already, with their third album, starting to go stale and recycle themselves. I have never heard <i>Porcupine</i> that way. For one thing it has two of their best songs in “The Cutter” (quite possibly their single best) and “The Back of Love.” It’s my favorite by them, and it's not just the exotic Eastern flourishes, but equally that creeping, gnawing sense of anxiety. Certainly on the druggy side of psychedelic experience dread and anxiety are usually there. Consider a first trip, or any. waiting to come on. Everyone is a little nervous and conversation is hard to focus. This is probably also the place for me to mention that, while I don’t consciously participate on either side of any rivalry between Ian McCulloch of Echo & the Bunnymen and Julian Cope of the Teardrop Explodes, I certainly have a preference. Cope if anything has pursued more determinedly psychedelic avenues but I couldn’t connect with any of his solo stuff lately, at least not on first listens (of <i>Peggy Suicide</i> and <i>Interpreter</i>), nor have I ever cared much for the T.E. But when I reached for the first four albums by Echo & the Bunnymen they all sounded at least as good as ever. And this still sounded best, as psychedelia or otherwise.Jeff Pikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17148737647138431543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32685968.post-8906131814595222192024-02-16T03:34:00.000-08:002024-02-16T03:34:51.773-08:00Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993)<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfpIbl7zlmHV4Ty0ONxrD-ovmjIMyjlWBCFhIPfVcUGXLEQSFY5oEkHfMGLRPTfVQjc7f8JeVGBZnrHVLsYqxABLbFkY2WnGtP_pL_F1U4Z1aB_04hV9EV2i1b7gCa8yBqEhMfYrBw6JA24qBUtSZLeVLEVbyum1gLXxPtsd0YUjOYb9jwapCd/s718/batmanma.jpg"><img border="0" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfpIbl7zlmHV4Ty0ONxrD-ovmjIMyjlWBCFhIPfVcUGXLEQSFY5oEkHfMGLRPTfVQjc7f8JeVGBZnrHVLsYqxABLbFkY2WnGtP_pL_F1U4Z1aB_04hV9EV2i1b7gCa8yBqEhMfYrBw6JA24qBUtSZLeVLEVbyum1gLXxPtsd0YUjOYb9jwapCd/w400-h268/batmanma.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><b>USA, 76 minutes</b><div>Directors: <b>Kevin Altieri, Boyd Kirkland, Frank Paur, Dan Riba, Eric Radomski, Bruce Timm</b></div><div>Writers: <b>Alan Burnett, Paul Dini, Martin Pasko, Michael Reeves, Bob Kane</b></div><div>Art direction: <b>Glen Murakami</b></div><div>Photography: <b>Song Il-Choi</b></div><div>Music: <b>Shirley Walker</b></div><div>Editor: <b>Al Breitenbach</b></div><div>Cast: <b>Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill, Dana Delany, Stacy Keach, Abe Vigoda, Efrem Zimbalist Jr., Marilu Henner</b><div><br />This animated feature—officially the first by Warner Bros. Animation, rising out of the ashes of Warner Bros. Cartoons—was intended to capitalize on the Batman franchise, then blowing up, lately fortified with “dark knight” intimations out of Frank Miller and, kinda sorta, Tim Burton. <i>Mask of the Phantasm</i> is based on a TV series, <i>Batman: The Animated Series</i>, which ran from 1992 until 1999, and followed the second Burton picture, <i>Batman Returns</i>, a second big hit after the 1989 <i>Batman</i>. <i>Phantasm</i> was intended originally as a direct-to-video release but, because the Burton pictures were making big money, it was rushed into a theatrical release and flopped. But time has been kind to this one, which features Mark Hamill as one of the better Jokers and Kevin Conroy sounding a lot like Adam West, a subtly comforting element.<br /><br />Unlike the Burton pictures, which worked the dark-knight thing but always kept one foot (or maybe three toes) planted in the campy exercises of the ‘60s TV show, <i>Mask of the Phantasm</i> is all in on the gritty nighttime crime-fighter who strikes terror etc. The giveaway on the serious Batman pictures remains how much hay they make out of the origin story, often including Bruce Wayne’s parents Thomas and Martha as characters but at least making a point of visits to the cemetery. <i>Phantasm</i> also retcons a new girlfriend for Batman/Bruce Wayne, one “Andrea Beaumont,” who has since gone on to further appearances in Batman stories. But let’s pause a moment on “retcon” because it’s an idea unique to continuing series in both the comics and TV and an important key to deciding whether or not such stories work.<br /><br /><span><a name='more'></a></span><br /></div><div>Merriam-Webster has “retcon” used first in 1989. The neologism is made up from “retroactive continuity,” as discussed on internet newsgroups, which involves reframing key events in a fictional narrative. A famous example is Arthur Conan Doyle attempting to kill off Sherlock Holmes because he didn’t want to write Holmes stories anymore. The public and his publishers, however, were having none of it, so Doyle later brought him back, explaining that the death had been merely staged. This kind of thing happens all the time in continuing stories. Darth Vader was made Luke Skywalker’s father only after the 1977 original was popular enough to require a sequel and further dramatic points. Apollo Creed was killed off in <i>Rocky IV</i> but later it turned out he had fathered a son, Adonis, for the more recent pictures. Any time you encounter a continuing series you are likely to encounter retcons.<br /><br />There is something about these explanations that finally gets a little insulting. On some level I want to ask, why bother? I mean, right, Batman first appeared in 1939 and then this picture shows up in 1993 and there is a whole new highly significant girlfriend we have never heard of who is a central part of the story? Joker is in the mix as well in <i>Phantasm</i>. My idea—my own personal suggestion for a retcon—is to return to the idea of self-contained continuing characters across discrete episodes whose resolutions are suggested by the individual stories. Need to kill Joker, Robin, even Batman? Go ahead and do it! Then bring them back whenever you like for another story. No explanations required—better without them. What the heck? Do we really need this wink-wink continuity? It’s hard to do these things. Remember DC’s “Imaginary Stories”? Another, related point. Not only <i>Mask of the Phantasm</i>, but lots of Batman stories, in all kinds of media, routinely insert Joker and his clown face and maniacal laughter. In its way it is just another comforting element in a comforting series—it’s the <i>familiarity</i> that makes continuing series comforting, and who cares if you kill somebody off to make a dramatic point and then turn around and bring them back.<br /><br />Anyway, once past the knotty retcon issues, I thought <i>Mask of the Phantasm</i> worked quite well and thoroughly lives up to its reputation as one of the better Batman productions. I waver on campy Batman versus dark-knight Batman. At one time I utterly rejected campy Batman, but I have come to see it’s hard to get away from that in live action productions. For me it starts with the squeaky costumes they awkwardly strut around in. But comics art and animated pictures relieve a lot of this problem and thus can make the whole dark-knight thing more compelling and believable. It’s true that Batman has a ridiculous jaw in <i>Phantasm</i>. There’s no denying that. But it is explicitly a cartoon and thus easier to simply accept. In cartoons, lots of good-guy heroes have ridiculous Dudley Do-Right jaws. It’s a known issue.<br /><br />As a standalone story, <i>Phantasm</i> is great, with lots of mood and surprising twists to the story. You don’t really need Joker here, but hey, why not? Hamill memorably gobbles up the role. It’s early enough in Batman lore that inevitably it has lots of points from the golden-age character. He’s still a mysterious vigilante of the night. Superstitious criminals call him “the Bat” and tremble in fear of him. He spends time visiting the grave of his parents, etc., etc. A lot of the Batman staples are here, it’s a good story, and the animation is fine. Definitely one for the Batman library.</div></div>Jeff Pikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17148737647138431543noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32685968.post-78671913031874685192024-02-15T04:18:00.000-08:002024-02-15T04:18:44.895-08:00“The Last Lords of Gardonal” (1867)<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5b3F7Lrs4ditNFmCTwpinXpYWjQFalXDWJKsZvRWXUS3BItTOcdNLL0r0cEuMotJQ-maVvI3dEl0yw8pa5gCowfDWSs6pt5nrMog83T6fobOJoc45xCn5M9dt7N33nETWr9sXomUmzz_qkLdvW5uLZLNYGdIu0wop0QtzQDnxkTaGCldMYr-h/s1000/gilbthel.jpg"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5b3F7Lrs4ditNFmCTwpinXpYWjQFalXDWJKsZvRWXUS3BItTOcdNLL0r0cEuMotJQ-maVvI3dEl0yw8pa5gCowfDWSs6pt5nrMog83T6fobOJoc45xCn5M9dt7N33nETWr9sXomUmzz_qkLdvW5uLZLNYGdIu0wop0QtzQDnxkTaGCldMYr-h/w266-h400/gilbthel.jpg" width="266" /></a></div>All my internet sources are hurrying to tell me that the author of this long story, William Gilbert, is the father of the W.S. Gilbert in Gilbert & Sullivan—noted. I like this vampire tale and sly critique of the feudal system because it moves along well, it’s always interesting, and it’s fully committed to the blood-sucking too. There’s the bad baron who does what he wants and takes what he wants. And there’s a magician (or something) called the Innominato—this story is actually part of a longer series involving him, or it. This bad baron taxes and mistreats the peasants and also marauds over a wider region, raiding towns, robbing travelers, etc. On one of his expeditions he sees a peasant woman he wants to marry, so great is her beauty. Neither she nor her family will have him, however, so he resorts to extortion and violence. Most of the family dies in the fire when the baron burns down their house, but it appears the beautiful Teresa escaped. The Innominato comes in when the peasants turn to him for help against the baron. There is quite a bit of incident as the baron foolishly takes him on. He is fixed on having Teresa. As it turns out—as we may have suspected—spoilers—Teresa did die in that fire. And in the machinations between the baron and the Innominato she is delivered to him as her bride, but she is actually of course now a vampire beast. In fact, though this story takes its time getting there, she is one of the better vampires I’ve seen. A beautiful woman by day or for public viewing (as always, the vampire rules are fungible, sunlight apparently no problem here), in private she turns into a loathsome corpse that gnaws at the baron’s wound on his neck. And it couldn’t happen to a better guy, so all’s well that ends well. Gilbert was prolific, writing a fair amount of fantastical literature like this and a good deal more besides. Trying to place this and/or Gilbert historically, the story is plainly Enlightenment-informed and opposed to the feudal system for all its inevitable corruption. The bad baron is very bad, and so is his brother, though they had a kindly father. They are repulsive bullying miscreants, a certain object lesson in human psychology. The bad baron gets everything he deserves, which makes the story as satisfying as it is well told (if, you know, somewhat antiquated). I’m still OK with vampire stories.<br /><br /><a href="https://amzn.to/2QgPfZU" target="_blank"><i>Vampire Tales: The Big Collection</i>, pub. Dark Chaos</a><br /><a href="https://vampiresrealm.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/the-last-lord-of-gardonal-william-gilbert.pdf" target="_blank">Read story online.</a><br /><a href="https://youtu.be/mI2BupGlGoI?si=noV0JG_GJPAmkOtK" target="_blank">Listen to story online.</a>Jeff Pikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17148737647138431543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32685968.post-5873940292399903052024-02-11T05:27:00.000-08:002024-02-11T05:27:30.414-08:00Legs (1975)<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcqVurvMo3DcPyFmQMIhlKzMfQ9KsJwLBv9ZAzmveEPcfitEVd_D46XBVM9mJK-wqPtYOBgu60u-4TLwDBfjALxe7ca990zSrog1EqPAj6jtjOx5WxAY9WbVf32RrX3_mhpvqBG-ONW31vfmTN1HzktscUbJuHmWUY-GME8u5hUSTuRVQ_Bdg1/s2500/kennlegs.jpg"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcqVurvMo3DcPyFmQMIhlKzMfQ9KsJwLBv9ZAzmveEPcfitEVd_D46XBVM9mJK-wqPtYOBgu60u-4TLwDBfjALxe7ca990zSrog1EqPAj6jtjOx5WxAY9WbVf32RrX3_mhpvqBG-ONW31vfmTN1HzktscUbJuHmWUY-GME8u5hUSTuRVQ_Bdg1/w263-h400/kennlegs.jpg" width="263" /></a></div>The first novel in William Kennedy’s “Albany Cycle”—it became a trilogy with the Pulitzer-winning <i>Ironweed</i> and grew from there—is a fictional account of the gangster Jack “Legs” Diamond, whose career ended in late 1931 with his mysterious execution-style death in Albany, the capital of New York state. He was 34. His murder was never solved. Kennedy tells his story with such wit and spirit it almost forces you to read more slowly and savor it. He says only suckers ever called him Legs—he was Jack to everyone who knew him. But somehow I feel more comfortable calling him Legs. So call me a sucker. Legs is a real historical character, of course, a bootlegger who was famous for surviving assassination attempts until he didn’t—that is three, but not the fourth. His legend provided some grist for F. Scott Fitzgerald, inspiring the character of Jay Gatsby. The style of charisma differed between Legs and Gatsby, but Legs had it too, and by the barrel, entertaining the news guys who followed him around and adored and reviled him by turns. He was an unpleasant and cruel man, taking revenge (including murder) on everyone he could who he felt deserved it. He took a famous trip to Europe when he was under suspicion for one such, and for which he was responsible—by reputation dismembering and dumping the remains in a river. The only problem was nobody could find the body. It was a big story. Reporters traveled with Legs aboard the ship to Europe and he entertained them with carefree banter. He was subsequently denied entry into the UK, Belgium, and Germany, and sent home. It’s all here, including his wife, mistress, and the general sex appeal. The writing is just great, with Kennedy spewing rapid-fire gangland argot of the time and wielding a structure that gets several threads going at once, like the man spinning plates on top of sticks. He keeps it going, and already Kennedy’s deep love of place is apparent in terms of Albany and environs, which includes the Catskills region. Legs, in fact, first established himself in the town of Catskill, the first place he organized for criming purposes, and the foundation of his career bootlegging booze in the Prohibition era and branching out from there. Kennedy’s cycle is up to eight novels now, two published in this century (and Kennedy is still alive!). Looking forward to getting into more of them.<br /><br /><a href="https://amzn.to/3O8KmkW" target="_blank">In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.</a><br /><a href="https://amzn.to/4b3q3iH" target="_blank">William Kennedy, <i>An Albany Trio</i></a>Jeff Pikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17148737647138431543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32685968.post-34654178348226972032024-02-09T04:52:00.000-08:002024-02-09T04:52:12.502-08:00Phantom of the Paradise (1974)<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK5xD4XG1Y85vIVcR1sNXqDe_bsBsQbqeHHLqqCDjFx2owFLJoyU2aeape_x4bD7f-Jy0_vluEfOMz-hJhcZUGNgZhWs1Je9tSQcge6Ir_SHU6EzShGvCrLsn6odYDBjNLhvUHztArDeC99fHclbA4Z9rf3mA8ODE9gv12stRBL5efYW5VWS4m/s1200/phantomo.jpg"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK5xD4XG1Y85vIVcR1sNXqDe_bsBsQbqeHHLqqCDjFx2owFLJoyU2aeape_x4bD7f-Jy0_vluEfOMz-hJhcZUGNgZhWs1Je9tSQcge6Ir_SHU6EzShGvCrLsn6odYDBjNLhvUHztArDeC99fHclbA4Z9rf3mA8ODE9gv12stRBL5efYW5VWS4m/w400-h300/phantomo.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><b>USA, 91 minutes</b><div>Director: <b>Brian De Palma</b></div><div>Writers: <b>Brian De Palma, Louisa Rose</b></div><div>Photography: <b>Larry Pizer</b></div><div>Music: <b>Paul Williams</b></div><div>Editor: <b>Paul Hirsch</b></div><div>Cast: <b>Paul Williams, William Finley, Jessica Harper, George Memmoli, Gerrit Graham, Rod Serling</b><br /><br /><i>Phantom of the Paradise</i> is one of director and cowriter Brian De Palma’s wacky experiments from the ‘70s. It wallows in that era’s sense of decadence, with a voiceover intro by Rod Serling and a sloppy munge of classic horror or horror-adjacent narratives like Goethe’s <i>Faust</i> (about the German historical and literary figure, not the German band), Oscar Wilde’s <i>Dorian Gray</i>, Edgar Allan Poe’s “Cask of Amontillado,” and, most obviously, the Gaston Leroux novel and subsequent Universal movie <i>The Phantom of the Opera</i>. Fair enough—obvious enough. All you have to do is look at <i>Phantom of the Paradise</i> to see those things. But the last time I watched it I ended up spending a lot of time trying to think of the term for this type of picture, because I think it’s one of the better examples. Is it really “rock musical” (as per Wikipedia)? I was even willing to go with “rock opera.” Candidates for comparison I thought of included <i>Flesh for Frankenstein</i> aka <i>Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein</i>, <i>Hedwig and the Angry Inch</i>, <i>Performance</i>, <i>The Rocky Horror Show</i>, <i>The Man Who Fell to Earth</i>, <i>Grace of My Heart</i>, and <i>Velvet Goldmine</i>, and Wikipedia had a few more good ideas as well (<i>Jesus Christ Superstar</i>, <i>Grease</i>, <i>The Wiz</i>, <i>Pink Floyd – The Wall</i>, Ken Russell’s <i>Tommy</i>, so on so forth).<br /><br />Whatever you call it, De Palma’s picture flopped on release in 1974 but became a cult classic over time as midnight movies and VHS tech became more common, which is approximately where I came in. A friend passed it along to me in the early ‘80s and I flipped for it. The plot goes all over the place but holds together, and holds up too, and I get a kick out of all the rock signifiers. Swan (Paul Williams) is a certain type of brutally ambitious producer, impresario (owner of the Paradise theater), record label honcho (“Death Records”), and general rock ‘n’ roll savant. He is reminiscent at once of Phil Spector, Rodney Bingenheimer, and Arte Johnson. The Juicy Fruits and their various incarnations are Swan’s breakthrough project. The quasi-tragic Winslow Leach (William Finley) comes across like an era-specific Elton John / Billy Joel / Todd Rundgren kind of piano-banging songwriter. Although Leach is literally “the phantom of the Paradise” the star of the picture is more like Swan, which raises the very interesting problem of Paul Williams.<br /><br /><span><a name='more'></a></span><br /></div><div>Paul Williams is another point that roots the picture deeply in the ‘70s because, since then, his biography has only made him more featherweight and irrelevant as a rock star. He not only stars in <i>Phantom of the Paradise</i> but also wrote all the music—it may not be great, but it’s certainly rock. In fact, Williams is chiefly a songwriter. His hits include Three Dog Night’s “An Old-Fashioned Love Song” and “Out in the Country,” the Carpenters’ “We’ve Only Just Begun” and “Rainy Days and Mondays,” and Bobby Sherman’s “Cried Like a Baby.” I love a few of those songs, notably the Carpenters and “Out in the Country.” The Carpenters are another interesting case. I believe since the ‘70s, now, they have swung well out of favor and more recently back in, even to deification levels in some quarters. Not everyone is a believer and I may be giving away things about myself to say all those Paul Williams songs I like are unfortunately in the realm of “guilty pleasure,” a term and concept I try to avoid. But I have to go there with Paul Williams. He’s no rock star, even if he might have seemed like one briefly in the 1972-1975 period.<br /><br />But perversely that is exactly part of what makes <i>Phantom of the Paradise</i> such sterling entertainment. De Palma not only doesn’t understand rock, apparently—at least not the way I do—but he seems determined to be obnoxiously oblivious or at least deliberately dense about it. The Juicy Fruits alone—across their incarnations—hark explicitly to the Beach Boys (“the Beach Bums”), Sha Na Na (“the Juicy Fruits”), and KISS (“the Undeads”). That’s a reasonably shallow interpretation of rock history—but not implausible. And in any event Brian De Palma does not care. He is too busy having fun making his movie sparkle with unique images, shots, and setups. He does split-screen, he does handheld, he lets his surging instincts roam wild. His moviemaking sensibilities, arguably still nascent, are nonetheless plainly there. <br /><br />Perhaps his greatest flight here is Beef (Gerrit Graham). Swan wants to make Beef the star of the Faustian opera that he has stolen from Leach and intends to stage at the Paradise, whereas Leach wants it to be Phoenix (the ever durable Jessica Harper). Beef is a concatenation of exploding post-Stonewall stereotypes, droll and flaming, yet as a character without a lick of talent, just an ability to shriek unpleasantly. That’s rock, baby. He appears to be modeled on Gary Glitter (who did not shriek unpleasantly but turned out to be unpleasant in much worse ways). De Palma gives his movie <i>and</i> Beef a spectacular, apocalyptic finish, electrocuted live on stage in performance.<br /><br />So among other things <i>Phantom of the Paradise</i> is a time capsule out of approximately exactly 1974. It is already fighting with the conventional wisdom of what that time looked like and felt like even as inevitably it somehow captures it all in very silly and yet compelling ways. It’s not one of the prolific De Palma’s five best pictures but it probably deserves a place in a top 10. It’s worth seeing for all kinds of reasons. Call it an offbeat curiosity. Call it a guilty pleasure. Make a point of getting to it one day.</div>Jeff Pikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17148737647138431543noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32685968.post-639896764613576532024-02-05T04:35:00.000-08:002024-02-05T04:35:41.683-08:00M3GAN (2022)<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUescJmzHSBJORa_tz2GJVhcXlfPsa1CdsgAUn7KCBAvj8E5pSO55tr911Xxnx9QIuF9602UK5qlrjfhfstMVRnD_saSALQKOa6tXN8HSRZ9f_CcP4zht8V3ICAFca0YJ0rrk71nabUu1QM6hUn8U723usBtxIbMbsWdyMj9gDngPdVG7JfnZU/s1000/m3gan.jpg"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUescJmzHSBJORa_tz2GJVhcXlfPsa1CdsgAUn7KCBAvj8E5pSO55tr911Xxnx9QIuF9602UK5qlrjfhfstMVRnD_saSALQKOa6tXN8HSRZ9f_CcP4zht8V3ICAFca0YJ0rrk71nabUu1QM6hUn8U723usBtxIbMbsWdyMj9gDngPdVG7JfnZU/w270-h400/m3gan.jpg" width="270" /></a></div><i>M3GAN</i> has obvious primary roots in the Chucky franchise and it is equally obviously intended to be a franchise of its own, but don’t hold those things against it. You didn’t even need that last shot to foreshadow the sequel. No one was going to be surprised. We all know it’s coming. What surprised—surprised me, anyway—is how entertaining <i>M3GAN</i> is. It’s reasonably inventive given the narrow proportions of the malevolent-doll niche. And it’s funny in ways you never expect and I wouldn’t want to give away. The M3GAN robot doll (pronounced “Megan,” of course) bears all the hallmarks of classic doll horror (e.g., E.T.A. Hoffmann’s 1816 “Sand-Man” tale), the latest in imaginary AI robotics technology (or maybe not so imaginary, although first it appears they want to perfect those mechanical police dogs), and the intense overattachment psychology of Steven Spielberg’s <i>A.I.</i> (by way of Brian Aldiss and Stanley Kubrick). <i>M3GAN</i> is a movie-movie for this era, slick and instantly and fully engaging, funny, horrific, and scary by turns. The always competent Allison Williams is Gemma, a career woman working on toy robots when her niece Cady’s parents die in an auto accident. Cady survives and becomes the ward of Gemma, who at the moment is under heavy pressure to produce a robot for market. The sophisticated doll she has been working on—M3GAN—is not going to be ready in time, but at least it’s good enough to serve as a prototyping companion for Cady while Gemma gets her act together. And that was her first mistake, etc. You know how this goes, I promise—through the usual paces of being remarkable, then dangerous, and then remarkably dangerous. Gemma is good at this stuff but eventually she loses control and from then on it’s all M3GAN. The narrative arc is familiar (or even overly familiar) but M3GAN’s specific moves and personality are not as predictable. On the other hand, full disclosure, I have never seen a single Chucky movie and it’s possible everything here has an antecedent there. I suppose that’s something I should look into? As for now, well, <i>M3GAN</i> ends a lot like the first <i>Frankenstein</i> movie. Do we dare hope there’s a <i>Bride of M3GAN</i> waiting in the wings?Jeff Pikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17148737647138431543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32685968.post-90473558893302587682024-02-04T05:48:00.000-08:002024-02-04T05:48:30.647-08:00I Am Legend (1954)<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjafidZmGCiSH3okz_Z9_HkF_mlcb4c0YdSsLpW4Czkk69m9igEpmE9oj49uIw5P3ehjdPF1uPskx6-fzhrCjThgmYsndFNEIX2qykd-f2m3iPO6QMPIKaAnyAob_jNK5YxwV3ZWZJWrBvbJwRndqIIqD-3zTJWVhSw4CHQ-6o7sehsq4KQvMMJ/s403/mathiaml.jpg"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjafidZmGCiSH3okz_Z9_HkF_mlcb4c0YdSsLpW4Czkk69m9igEpmE9oj49uIw5P3ehjdPF1uPskx6-fzhrCjThgmYsndFNEIX2qykd-f2m3iPO6QMPIKaAnyAob_jNK5YxwV3ZWZJWrBvbJwRndqIIqD-3zTJWVhSw4CHQ-6o7sehsq4KQvMMJ/w244-h400/mathiaml.jpg" width="244" /></a></div>This compact novel by Richard Matheson—really, at about 100 pages, it’s more like a long story, or novella—may have been oversold to me a little. While generally quite well done in the boiled-down Matheson style, the story never quite reached me. What I found most interesting about it, and a little surprising, is that it’s mainly a vampire tale. Yes, it has the zombie element too—these monsters crowd together and lurch around like zombies and there are many of them. But they are explicitly vampires. I give the first movie version, <i>The Last Man on Earth</i> (1964) with Vincent Price, more credit for creating recognizable George Romero-style zombies. But then Romero also cited <i>I Am Legend</i> as an influence, so there you go. Something in the air, something in the water. As a postapocalyptic story it has much the doomy feel of many <i>Twilight Zone</i> episodes to come (some of which Matheson wrote). Our guy, as the first movie’s retitle puts it, is the last man on earth as far as he knows. He spends his days scavenging for goods and reinforcing the barricades on his house. At night the creatures come out and howl for him, pounding at his door. He reads <i>Dracula</i> by Bram Stoker and considers all the vampire lore the creatures confirm. They shun sunlight, recoil from garlic, mirrors, and crosses. They want blood. The basic thrust of the story is our guy’s scientific investigation into them. There are flashbacks to his sad life, a wife and daughter taken by this plague. He buried his wife and then she came back. I wanted more on her “second chapter” but all we learn is he’s sure she’s gone for good. Maybe he got her with a wooden stake—more vampire lore that is used in an interesting way here. There is another sad episode with a non-vampire dog. The story spans a few years, specifically January 1976 to January 1979, focusing on four periods in his life. There’s a climax when a woman shows up, which feels mechanical as much as anything. Three major film versions have been made: the 1964, <i>The Omega Man</i> (1971), and <i>I Am Legend</i> (2007). I’ve only seen the first and then I was more distracted by the obvious influence on Romero. I’m not sure Matheson’s novel actually lends itself well to film treatments, but they keep trying and now I’m curious about the other two. There may be too much concept here requiring exposition. Matheson, ever the trafficker in brutality, also provides an unpleasant sexual charge, with female vampires trying to entice our guy with lewd gestures. This leaves him thinking about sex more than he or any of us would like. <i>I Am Legend</i> is on many short lists of best horror novels of all time. I can’t go all that way. Maybe this is one you have to decide for yourself. It’s good and dirty, the way Matheson does, and I’m happy enough I took a look.<br /><br /><a href="https://amzn.to/3HcoTn1" target="_blank">In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.</a>Jeff Pikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17148737647138431543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32685968.post-67708619405527184942024-02-03T04:08:00.000-08:002024-02-03T04:08:34.592-08:0024. Acid Mothers Temple<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBYsx3rXfaZ4GcM-W4mGvhhQcMom0v_HY_MRaDLipx4BgDSVF0XHrijWQzuvlhNt6DKmwnAmc0Du6TyHC9Dg-TL23uXzZgJ1CyaggopuQa-KRRiVoPPZL_tk1SggUMrrHUxBwrMIQ0e5u1-VDLYbguazhdcX8I-EKHe8wWh2enlm8WndWzKtgN/s2000/acidmoth.jpg"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBYsx3rXfaZ4GcM-W4mGvhhQcMom0v_HY_MRaDLipx4BgDSVF0XHrijWQzuvlhNt6DKmwnAmc0Du6TyHC9Dg-TL23uXzZgJ1CyaggopuQa-KRRiVoPPZL_tk1SggUMrrHUxBwrMIQ0e5u1-VDLYbguazhdcX8I-EKHe8wWh2enlm8WndWzKtgN/w400-h300/acidmoth.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>[<a href="https://pkcantexplain.blogspot.com/2016/01/in-zero-to-infinity-2010.html" target="_blank">2016 review of <i>In Zero to Infinity</i> here.</a>]<br /><br />If I’m not on a fool’s errand in the first place counting down favorite psychedelic albums, I most certainly may be on one trying to sort out the shaggy catalog of the brilliant and prolific Japanese psychedelic / space-rock band Acid Mothers Temple (“&” a bunch of variously strange names, designating different iterations of the band as far as I can tell, most often “& the Melting Paraiso U.F.O.” Note that “paraiso” is a Latinate word for “paradise”). I’m only doing this once! The AMT mainstay is guitar player Kawabata Makota. Silvery keyboardist and guitar player Higashi Hiroshi, author of comet-like fireworks and exotic bloops and bleeps, often seems to be on board as well. The original 1997 lineup also included drummer and saxophonist Koizumi Hajime, bass player Suhara Keizo, and sitar player and keyboardist Cotton Casino. Many have come and gone. The photo above is a promotional shot of the touring band from last year, 2023. Kawabata is second from the right, Higashi second from the left.<br /><br />To be clear, I am working on a list of psychedelic albums, not of band catalogs, and again this is the only time I’m going to point helplessly, in a general way, at a band’s entire output. It is <i>all</i> psychedelic (that I’ve heard) and it is all within range of soaringly excellent. We are talking, counting the live albums and miscellaneous collaborations, singles, and EPs, about a list verging on or getting into triple-digit territory since 1997. A google search suggests that many have been here before me. See <a href="https://rateyourmusic.com/list/TomFOolery__2/acid-mothers-temple-albums-ive-heard-ranked/" target="_blank">Acid Mothers Temple Albums I've Heard, Ranked</a>; <a href="https://rateyourmusic.com/list/Utopus/a_young_persons_guide_to_acid_mothers_temple/" target="_blank">A Young Person's Guide to Acid Mothers Temple</a>; <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/psychedelicrock/comments/xvn4ot/acid_mothers_temple_where_to_begin/" target="_blank">Acid Mothers Temple – where to begin?</a> on the reddit forum; a <a href="https://www.besteveralbums.com/thechart.php?b=64248" target="_blank">Best Ever Albums roundup</a>. Or do the search yourself (“best acid mothers temple albums”).<br /><br />I’m not even sure exactly how I started but the first album I came to know was the 2010 <i>In Zero to Infinity</i>, by AMT & the Melting Paraiso U.F.O., which I acquired as a CD and later reviewed in 2016. At the time it fascinated me. I played it on the daily for a while, provoking some silly psychedelic approximations in my write-up. Later I came to understand <i>In Zero to Infinity</i> was actually a kind of sequel to their 2001 album, <i>In C</i>, which is a kind of cover or practice of a 1964 Terry Riley piece, itself more a set of instructions to musicians. Versions have been recorded by Riley, the Quebec Contemporary Music Society, the Shanghai Film Orchestra, the Styrenes, and many others as well as AMT&MPUFO, and they don’t necessarily sound that much like one another. <br /><br />I used all these many sources to start branching out. Here are some things I can tell you.<br /><br /><span><a name='more'></a></span><br /><div>First, while the house brand is AMT&MPUFO I believe my personal favorite is AMT & the Cosmic Inferno, essentially the same lineup with principles Makota and Hiroshi, but the emphasis is much heavier. As always, they tend to advertise their influences with playful references in the titles, e.g., <i>Anthems of the Space</i>, <i>Starless and Bible Black Sabbath</i>, <i>Chaos Unforgiven Kisses or Grateful Dead Kennedys</i>. I’ve heard the first two of these, along with <i>For How Much Longer Do We Tolerate Goofy Funk</i>. The quality for all of them is pretty good and many (notably <i>Anthems of the Space</i>) stray well and skillfully into heady mind-warping territories. Excellent.<br /><br />Then there is the confusing case of <i>Pink Lady Lemonade</i>, many versions of which appear with the same album cover art on youtube (where I always favor the videos posted on the AMT channel, and note that not all seem to be available). They are differentiated by various subtitles: the 2011 <i>Pink Lady Lemonade – You’re From Inner Space</i> by AMT&MPUFO, a 2016 <i>Pink Lady Lemonade (You’re So Sweet)</i> by AMT&MPUFO, a 2020 <i>Pink Lady Lemonade (Double Sweet Sucker Punch)</i> by AMT&MPUFO, the 2013 <i>Pink Lady Lemonade (Sticky Tongue Dada Licks) Part 1 & 2</i> by Acid Mothers Guru Guru Gong, a collaboration with principles of krautrockers Guru Guru and ‘70s+ Parisian / Australian rockers Gong, and, last but not least, indeed my personal favorite, the 2008 <i>Pink Lady Lemonade – You’re From Outer Space</i> by AMT & the Cosmic Inferno<br /><br />There are also further collaborations with members of Gong and Guru Guru and other collaborations and side projects too (AMT & Space Paranoid, AMT & the Pink Ladies Blues, Acid Maso Temple, Acid Mothers Afrirampo, more). The only one I’ve heard is <i>Acid Motherhood</i> by Acid Mothers Gong, which is excellent. I may be overusing the word “excellent” here but that’s not my fault.<br /><br />Here is a roughly ranked list of what I’ve heard (given all list rankings are rough):<br />1. <i>Pink Lady Lemonade</i> (2008-2020, all versions, but <i>You’re From Outer Space</i> if it’s only one)<br />2. <i>Anthems of the Space</i> (& the Cosmic Inferno, 2005)<br />3. <i>Crystal Rainbow Pyramid</i> (AMT&MPUFO, 2007)<br />4. <i>Acid Motherhood</i> (Acid Mothers Gong, 2004)<br />5. <i>For How Much Longer Do We Tolerate Goofy Funk</i> (& the Cosmic Inferno, 2011)<br />6. <i>In C</i> (AMT&MPUFO, 2001)<br />7. <i>In Zero to Infinity</i> (AMT&MPUFO, 2010)<br />8. <i>Starless and Bible Black Sabbath</i> (& the Cosmic Inferno, 2006)<br />9. <i>Troubadours From Another Heavenly World</i> (AMT&MPUFO, 2000)<br />10. <i>Recurring Dream and Apocalypse of Darkness</i> (AMT&MPUFO, 2007)<br />11. <i>Electric Heavyland</i> (AMT&MPUFO, 2002)<br /><br />Short version (tl;dr): any AMT album is a good bet for mind-blowing days and evenings.</div>Jeff Pikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17148737647138431543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32685968.post-79347120649229243862024-02-01T03:17:00.000-08:002024-02-01T03:27:02.205-08:00“The Vampyre” (1819)<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB4toiPm9XwxwQgwvt-eSX16ugFJx-0FVNUSsoWQ2YkjhDGd7ecDkKGn9aWCAu-IyxzENfJJB5teDsboBAc9IxQ9AbCC7X9i3Y5sy3TP5A16cGgaSpAmnzTLD3LRGmR2LWCnnVG0khkKk1Bxs4SCDarFgiF9YxGTT4Oedg51Pg6b53Sf0ZhdO4/s500/polithev.jpg"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB4toiPm9XwxwQgwvt-eSX16ugFJx-0FVNUSsoWQ2YkjhDGd7ecDkKGn9aWCAu-IyxzENfJJB5teDsboBAc9IxQ9AbCC7X9i3Y5sy3TP5A16cGgaSpAmnzTLD3LRGmR2LWCnnVG0khkKk1Bxs4SCDarFgiF9YxGTT4Oedg51Pg6b53Sf0ZhdO4/w263-h400/polithev.jpg" width="263" /></a></div>This story by John William Polidori is considered by some to be the first vampire story, but the claim is more about literary history, as vampire monsters appear to date well back into antiquity and oral traditions. <a href="https://pkcantexplain.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-blood-drinking-corpse-1740.html" target="_blank">Pu Songling’s “Blood-Drinking Corpse,”</a> written at least 150 years earlier in China, alone provides evidence. Polidori’s story now has more interest as coming from the same writing session in June 1816 with Percy Bysshe and Mary Shelley and Lord Byron that produced Mary Shelley’s <i>Frankenstein</i> novel. Polidori, who would die a few years later at the age of 25, was there as Lord Byron’s attending physician—perhaps the source of laudanum that reportedly may have fueled the writing session, along with the thunderstorms that kept them housebound. Polidori was only 20 and, honestly, it shows in the quality of the writing. It is alternately rushed and slow and he often has trouble composing even competent sentences. “The Vampyre” is thus not an easy read, the language exasperatingly both antiquated and inexpert. Even Songling’s much shorter version feels more vampire-like. Polidori’s one innovation, and admittedly it’s an important one, was to make his vampire a debonair gentleman—certainly the aristocratic origins of Count Dracula are here in Lord Ruthven (later reincarnating himself as the Earl of Marsden). Lord Ruthven, with or without further aliases, went on to his own life in tales, plays, operas, and novels, notably including Alexandre Dumas’s <i>The Count of Monte Cristo</i>. In “The Vampyre,” he’s more of a silently operating louche Lothario figure, taking advantage of women. Most of the vampire stories I’ve read feature female vampires, which might be why I resist crediting this story’s influence, but it’s there and it’s big, of course. Lord Ruthven is more mysterious rake than uncanny monster, though he does have a murderous side. I kept hoping he would take advantage of Aubrey, his young protégé who rejects him and then reunites with him. But no, it’s more Aubrey’s sister that he is after. “Miss Aubrey” has little discernible personality, but the story does come most alive when she is in danger, which is not often enough. The language is antique, Polidori is not a bit of an experienced writer, and my kindle version is riddled with OCR typos. Historically important, yes, I can see that, but it’s a tough sled to read even without the typos.<br /><br /><a href="https://amzn.to/2QgPfZU" target="_blank"><i>Vampire Tales: The Big Collection</i>, pub. Dark Chaos</a><br /><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/6087/pg6087-images.html" target="_blank">Read story online.</a><div><a href="https://youtu.be/o4Od-igz51s?si=4_w5KQCaI7AB2sEX" target="_blank">Listen to story online.</a></div>Jeff Pikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17148737647138431543noreply@blogger.com0