Thursday, January 31, 2019

Lego links

The giant-sized special edition of The Dark Pages with my article on Anthony Mann & John Alton is available now. I have my hard copy edition, and I gotta say, I'm impressed with the look of it.

Back in the 90s, I had a passing interest in zines, which coincided with my initial steps into self-publishing comics. I remember trying to market my comics amongst the zine crowd, but it didn't work out; zines are a whole different animal.

One would think zines were old hat in the digital age, but TDP is one of the finest looking ones I've come across in a long time: simple, but well laid out, on nice paper, with every square inch utilized, and a topic, film noir, with a wide and devoted audience. It's like reading all the entries in a blogathon in one collection.

Karen and her staff have a quality product here, and I'm pleased to have been a part of it.

---------------

Speaking of blogathons, if you want in on the Richard Matheson Blogathon, hosted by myself and Debbie from Moon in Gemini (who is also part of the special TDP issue), be sure to e-mail me at ratzo318 (at) yahoo (dot) com or post in the comments and I'll put you on the list. March 9-10 is when it goes down.

---------------

Here's more pushback against Whoopi Goldberg's anti-bike diatribe from weeks ago. Long-time readers of this blog know my feelings about biking, and the need for livable streets in general. It's not that cars are unimportant; it's just that they dominate our streets at the expense of other forms of transportation, and as a result, they've become as great a threat to human safety as guns, if not more so. We shouldn't tolerate it anymore.

More after the jump.

Monday, January 28, 2019

Star Trek TNG: The Drumhead

The 90 Years of Jean Simmons Blogathon is an event dedicated to the life and career of the actress, hosted by The Wonderful World of Cinema and Phyllis Loves Classic Movies. For a complete list of participating bloggers, visit the links at the host sites.

Star Trek TNG: The Drumhead
BBC America viewing

Crewman Simon Tarses
Duty log
Stardate 44775.8

Admiral Norah Satie summoned me to testify at the inquiry regarding the possible presence of Romulan spies aboard the Enterprise. From what Dr. Crusher tells me, her reputation for integrity and fairness is known throughout Starfleet.

I don't expect my testimony to make much of a difference. I was one of several people within sickbay to interact with the Klingon exchange officer J'Dan. If he is a turncoat, he gave no indication to me, and that's exactly what I'll tell the admiral.

No one has any reason to suspect me of anything.

Tuesday, January 22, 2019

Television: The Barbara Stanwyck Show

The 2019 Remembering Barbara Stanwyck Blogathon is exactly what it says on the tin, hosted by In the Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood and Maddy Loves Her Classic Films. For a complete list of participating blogs, visit the link at the host site.

When television took off in popularity in the 50s, the Hollywood studios saw it as a threat, but many actors looked on it as an opportunity, especially those who were judged by the bean-counters as past their prime.

Barbara Stanwyck is one example. She spent the 50s doing mostly noir films like Clash by Night and Crime of Passion, or Westerns, a great love of hers, like Blowing Wild and Cattle Queen of Montana

TV, however, gave her the ability to sustain her career (she turned fifty in 1957), doing more of the kinds of stories she wanted. At first, during the latter half of the decade, she treaded in the shallow end, appearing in guest spots on anthology series here and there. 

Then, in 1960, she followed in the footsteps of contemporaries Loretta Young and Robert Montgomery by hosting an anthology series of her own.


OS-CAH!

For Best Picture:

Black Panther
BlacKkKlansman
Bohemian Rhapsody
The Favourite
Green Book
Roma
A Star is Born 
Vice

The rest.

JUST GIVE ROMA EVERYTHING.

Seriously. But if not, then Roma should at least walk away with Picture, Director and Original Screenplay. I don't think this should even be a debate. It's also up for Best Foreign Language Film. Has any film won both Picture and Foreign Language before?

So I guess somebody talked the Academy out of adding that proposed "Best Popular Film" category. Good. Theoretically, there's no reason why Panther and Rhapsody shouldn't compete in the same field as The Favourite and Green Book (though I didn't think Rhapsody was Best Picture worthy). The Oscars will always have an audience; the Academy shouldn't try to cater to it by inventing such a category.

I have seen If Beale Street Could Talk and I'm disappointed it didn't make the cut. Not enough votes, perhaps? I could easily see it as the number nine entry. We'll never know, because the Academy never releases the full rankings.

Of the Best Picture nominees I haven't seen, I might go see Vice. No interest in the rest.

I saw the trailer for Cold War when I saw Beale Street and boy, am I eager to see it now. Pawel Pawlikowski also directed the sublime Ida from a few years ago, so when I saw his name on this one, I figured it was worth a look, but damn! Best Director? That is quite a shock.

Yay for the women of Roma both making the cut! I thought one was a long shot, but both makes for a very pleasant surprise. Poor Glenn Close. Will this finally be her year?

Yay for Rami Malek; he totally embodied Freddy Mercury, though like I said, the movie wasn't Best Picture good. Paul Schrader wrote a new movie? Must have been on Netflix. Ditto for the Coen Brothers film.

Spike Lee finally gets a long-overdue Best Director nod. I doubt he cares one way or another, but it's about time.

Three Identical Strangers was totally robbed for Best Doc. Also, where is Michael B. Jordan for Supporting Actor? I truly believed he was a lock.

That's all I have to say about the Oscars for now.

Friday, January 18, 2019

Rawhide (1938)

The Made in 1938 Blogathon is exactly what it says on the tin, hosted by In the Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood and Pop Culture Reverie. For a complete list of participating blogs visit the links at the host sites.

Rawhide (1938)
YouTube viewing

The numbers tell the story of Lou Gehrig, and what a tale they tell: 17 seasons, all with the New York Y-nk--s; lifetime batting average of .340; a seven-time all-star; two-time MVP winner; three-time league leader in home runs; five-time league leader in runs batted in; a Triple Crown winner and owner of six World Series rings.

Plus the most important number of all: 2,130. That's how many consecutive games he played, folks: the equivalent of almost six calendar years without a day off. Though it's no longer a record, it's still a monumental achievement.

His premature death at age 37 raised awareness of the rare condition that took his life, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, to the point where the disease now bears his name. And perhaps you've heard of the film they made about him.

But did you know he himself once co-starred in a Hollywood movie?

Thursday, January 17, 2019

Whoopi vs. bike lanes: If Tenth Avenue could talk

"You’ve built 83 miles of protected bike lanes, okay. And I like bikes, I like people who ride, but I don’t think you understand the impact of taking something like 10th Avenue, which is six lanes down to two-and-a-half, particularly when you have a winter storm and you can’t move—none of that is movable. So you can’t get—nothing flows."

Aargh. For all the progress New York, and indeed, America, is making towards accepting livable streets as a goal worth pursuing, something new comes along to mess it all up again — in some cases, by people who should know better!


Recently, the city had prepared to shut down a major subway tunnel in desperate need of repairs for fifteen months — a plan that has now been put on hold by the governor — but there have also been contingency plans for serving the displaced subway riders in which several streets would be rearranged to accommodate bike lanes and faster buses.


A lawyer representing a coterie of limousine liberals has led a vocal opposition to these plans, despite his credentials as a "progressive."


Now this: another alleged progressive speaks out against measures — bike and bus lanes as a means towards social and economic justice — every left-winger should be applauding. (Whoopi's current solution: movable bike lanes.)


But I don't want to get too political here. Instead, I'll counter Whoopi's uninformed remarks with opposing testimonies from other TV and movie stars, since no one will listen to you in this country unless you're famous, it seems:




"I was pretty fast on the bike... I actually had fun on the bike." - Jennifer Aniston




"...thank you for the many of you who wanted to follow me [online]... I totally get inspiration from all of you when I get on that bike." - Hugh Jackman




"...There's a certain amount of freedom involved in cycling: you're self-propelled and decide exactly where to go." - David Byrne, who wrote a book about biking




"Jennifer and I mix it up. We like to lift, and we enjoy bike riding." - Alex Rodriguez on himself and Jennifer Lopez



"...cycling is freedom. It's fun. It's community. It recharges your soul." - Patrick Dempsey, who hosts a bike run


And if you're still unconvinced about the benefits of bike riding, take it from me: give it a try, just once. You don't need to wear spandex, you don't need some fancy, tricked out two-wheeler like they use in the Tour de France, and if you're careful, you don't even need a helmet. You might see the world in a whole new way.



Hollywood Rides a Bike


---------------------
Also:

Wednesday, January 16, 2019

Hard Boiled

Hard Boiled
YouTube viewing

The 90s were a great time to work in video retail — for me, anyway. Quentin Tarantino made being a video store clerk cool, and the store I worked in for much of the decade had a primo selection of independent and foreign cinema. Our clientele appreciated us for this.

This made me want to keep up with the current filmmakers building reputations outside the boundaries of Hollywood: Mike Leigh, Lars von Trier, Hal Hartley, Jim Jarmusch, Pedro Almodovar, just to name a few. One of the hottest directors during the decade, one championed by us film nerds, was a fella from Hong Kong named John Woo.


I admit, I jumped on the bandwagon for Woo late, after he made his American debut in 1996, with the film Broken Arrow. If you were a film nerd then, though, it was damn near impossible to avoid the buzz surrounding him.

This was partly due to the rising interest in Asian cinema in general, especially the chop-socky kind: Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and Michelle Yeoh were also crossing over to the Western market around this time (plus filmmakers like Ang Lee and Wong Kar-Wai, who appealed to the Film Forum/Angelika crowd).

You will always see a moment like this
in a John Woo film.

Tarantino made it clear his films owed a big debt to Asian cinema, and lo, his disciples did go forth and spread the word, from their churches of VHS and Betamax, to their customers, and the word was Cool.

Woo made high-octane crime flicks, with levels of violence that would make Sam Peckinpah gasp. Woo's films were among the first where I understood the importance of letterbox.


In those primitive days before every television was formatted in widescreen proportions, I remember hearing my video store co-workers use phrases like "aspect ratio" and "pan and scan" and "two-three-five to one" and learning from them that how you watch a home video matters, especially if it's a tape of a film by a certain kind of filmmaker, like Kubrick, or Cameron, or Woo.

Many film nerds from my generation agree that one of Woo's best is Hard Boiled, starring Chow Yun-Fat, the Robert De Niro to Woo's Martin Scorsese, a star who also crossed over to Hollywood.


In Hard Boiled (story by Woo), he's a loose cannon cop who inadvertently crosses paths with an undercover cop while investigating a smuggling ring. It's a grand guignol of blood and bodies falling in slo-mo and bullets, bullets, bullets. It's not for the faint of heart, but man, is it fun to watch!

In searching for pics for this post, I discovered that Woo wants to remake another one of his classic HK films, The Killer, for American audiences. (Lupita Nyong'o? Talk about an out-of-the-box choice!)


My fear is that Woo's brand of ultraviolence won't have any traction today, in an era where PG-13 films reap wider audiences than R-rated ones. Then again, given how crazy PG-13 films can get with the violence themselves, maybe it's not an issue anymore. I guess we'll find out soon enough.

Saturday, January 12, 2019

To Be Continued

To Be Continued
seen @ Scandinavia House, New York NY

Vija recently suggested seeing a new Latvian movie (she's of Latvian descent herself) that screened in the city this week. I had absolutely zero experience with Latvian cinema, and it had been awhile since I saw a movie with the gang, so I decided to give it a try. It was Vija, Franz and Andrea who came this time.

Scandinavia House is the go-to place for Nordic culture in New York and America: that's Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland, in case you didn't know. Vija had been there before. They're currently running a series called "Nordic Oscar Contenders." (So why are they showing a Latvian film? This might explain it. Thanks to Andrea for the link!)


To Be Continued (in Latvian, the title translates to Turpinājums) is a doc that is also this year's Latvian entry in the Oscar race for Best Foreign Language Film. The director, Ivars Seleckis, specializes in documentaries; you could say he's Latvia's answer to Werner Herzog, or Errol Morris.

This film spends a year following a group of first-grade kids. Why these kids in particular? The movie doesn't give much in the way of an explanation. They're bright, cute in their own ways, from good homes — both in the city and the country, but I had the impression these could have been any Latvian kids.

I focused on the culture and the educational system. It should come as no surprise that these kids are better schooled than ours, because most of the world's kids are better schooled than ours.


Extracurricular activities, with an emphasis on sports and performing arts, are emphasized: we see the kids play hockey, do martial arts, sing and dance, in addition to getting a standard education (math, science, history, etc.) in classes that don't look overcrowded, by teachers who don't look stressed or harassed.

I thought the kids were given a great deal of opportunity to express themselves in class; it wasn't a situation where Teacher dictates the lesson and the kids regurgitate it. There was more of a give-and-take at work; students were free to state opinions and preferences at the teachers' direction.

We also saw the kids' home lives, of course: one lives on a farm, one is of Russian descent, one lives with her grandma, etc. They go through their ups and downs, like kids everywhere do.


Vija and I were reminded of the Seven Up documentary series, an ongoing look at the lives of a select group of kids every seven years, begun by director Michael Apted back in 1964 (and is still going! 63 Up will come out this spring). The difference, we agreed, was that Seleckis didn't appear to make any kind of sociological statement with this film. Part of me kinda wished he had, but for what it was, Continued was okay.

UPDATE: I asked Vija to provide her insight into the film. Here she is:

Tuesday, January 8, 2019

He is legend: The Richard Matheson Blogathon!

One of the finest genre writers of the 20th century, Richard Matheson thrilled audiences worldwide with his screenplays, teleplays, novels and other writings in the fields of suspense, sci-fi/fantasy and horror. His contributions to The Twilight Zone are among the most popular in that show's history. The movies based on his work, including The Incredible Shrinking Man and The Last Man on Earth, are still watched and discussed today. And now he's the subject of this year's WSW blogathon.

I'm delighted to team up with Debbie from Moon in Gemini to bring you this one. The usual rules apply: comment here or at Debbie's blog to let us know what you wanna write about, and we'll gather up your posts, on March 9-10. Duplicates are AOK for this one! (One each.)

Matheson's literary work, his screenplays, teleplays, any movies inspired by his work, his career in general, are all fair game.

I'm going to write about the movie Duel. Debbie will write about the Amazing Stories episode "The Doll."

We got a whole bunch of banners this time, including the Kolchak one up top...






Monday, January 7, 2019

New year's links

The Christmas/New Year's week was very good. Virginia and I spent Christmas Night at another holiday dinner with friends. On New Year's Eve, she and Sandi were part of a large chorus that performs a NYE show every year.

Afterwards, a whole bunch of us rang in the new year at the same bar and grill where Virginia and I first got to really know each other a year ago (we consider it our anniversary), so NYE has taken on an added significance for me. Have I mentioned lately how lucky I am to have her in my life?

-------------------

The latest draft of the novel is done but it's not ready to go out yet. I know this for certain; it's better than it was a year ago, but it's not where it oughta be yet, so I gotta tighten it up some more.

The good news is I've got some beta readers looking it over, though I could use a few more — especially baseball fans. If anyone out there is interested, e-mail me at ratzo318@yahoo.com and let's talk.

-------------------

A brief word about Penny Marshall: Laverne and Shirley was one of my favorite sitcoms and Big was one of my favorite films growing up. I vaguely remember being a bit surprised to learn she was becoming a director, but she turned into a very successful one indeed. As a comedienne, she was enjoyable and part of my childhood; as a director, she proved to have an even more special talent that deserved to flourish more than it did. She was a trailblazer for the likes of Kathryn Bigelow, Ava DuVernay, Greta Gerwig and more. She'll be missed.

More after the jump.