Netflix new release roundup for February ‘21

I’ll have a major announcement on March 9 that you’re gonna want to be here for. I probably should spill the beans now, but I’ll wait. In the meantime, not a lot of new stuff on Netflix that I watched...

—Malcolm & Marie. Up-and-coming filmmaker and his girlfriend come home from the premiere of his film only to hash out lingering issues pertaining to his worth as a director and her value to him as a muse. You probably know by now that writer-director Sam Levinson made this during the quarantine period last year, which is a story unto itself, and lately it became a lightning rod for other issues of the moment, but honestly, I didn’t think of or care about any of that when I saw it. It’s been called a Millennial Virginia Woolf: bickering couple, one long night, black and white. Some of it was excruciating to sit through, I admit: the language, the wandering narrative, but the acting from John David Washington and Zendaya was fine, especially given the difficult circumstances they must have gone through to make this film. Good not great.

BONUS! I had the opportunity to watch One Night in Miami on Amazon Prime last month. The feature film directing debut of Oscar-winning actress Regina King, it’s a fictionalized account of the night in 1964 when four legendary black men—Cassius Clay (before he became Muhammad Ali), Malcolm X, Sam Cooke and Jim Brown—hung out together, after Clay defeated Sonny Liston to become the heavyweight boxing champion. It’s based on a play. 

I remember King from her days as a child actress on television and it’s wonderful to see how much she’s progressed as a filmmaker. This film is basically just four guys in a room but, as you can imagine, they have some important things to say to each other, things that speak as loudly to us today as they did then. The only name among the stars I’m familiar with is Leslie Odom Jr. (the guy from Hamilton) as Cooke, but all the stars—Eli Goree (Clay), Kingsley Ben-Adir (Malcolm) and Aldis Hodge (Brown) are exquisite. A solid film debut from director King.

———————

The reopening here in NYC: on the local level, Cinemart in Forest Hills posted on their Facebook page that they thought they wouldn’t be ready to go until April 1. The Kew Gardens Cinema also said they’d need a little time to get ready.

Also, Jersey City mayor Stephen Fulop announced last month that more money is going into the Loews Jersey theater’s upgrade and a commercial operator for the redevelopment plan was conditionally named. They’ll have to close for eighteen months beginning next year, but when they reopen, look out. Booking national acts to play there is on the long-term agenda, but Friends of the Loews will still be the non-profit partner and movies will still have a place there.

Unrelated but worth checking out: the 50 most beautiful cinemas in the world.

More on the other side.

Netflix new release roundup for December ‘20

The Vaccine is out in the world now, and it’ll take some time before its impact on the future of the film industry can be measured. One likes to believe 2021 couldn’t possibly be any worse than 2020, but getting past that nightmare of a year with not only a new president on deck but a legitimate defense against the Virus does give one reason to be hopeful. Zod knows we could all use that.

—Mank. The making of Citizen Kane through the eyes of co-writer Herman Mankiewicz. I was kinda drowsy when I watched this, plus it was really talky (what a surprise, a movie about a writer was packed with dialogue). It was cool to see historical figures like Orson Welles, Louis B. Mayer, Irving Thalberg and William Randolph Hearst depicted, but ultimately this didn’t thrill me as much as I had hoped it would. David Fincher directs from a screenplay by his late father Jack. Gary Oldman acts drunk most of the time as Mankiewicz and Amanda Seyfried as Marion Davies was good, but overall I thought it was kinda meh.

—Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Early 20th-century blues pioneer Ma Rainey comes to Chicago with her band to record her songs, but her ambitious trumpet player has ideas of his own about how her music should be played. Co-produced by Denzel Washington, based on the play by August Wilson, Viola Davis is damn near unrecognizable in the title role but is also a force of nature, taking the contempt she holds for the white men controlling her career, the suspicion she has over Chadwick Boseman (in his final role) subverting her position as bandleader, and her general world-weariness and putting it into the blues. Boseman stands a strong chance at winning a posthumous Oscar with his performance; how very sad it is that he’s no longer with us.

———————

By now you’ve heard about Warner Brothers’ deal to release all its 2021 films on HBO Max at the same time as they’re released theatrically. It’s a plan that has rubbed some people the wrong way, among them Christopher Nolan. 

It’s awful hard to look at this and not think the genie is out of the bottle. It’s not likely to return, either. The theatrical distribution model was struggling before the Virus and if it’s a matter of financial survival on the studios’ part, even with a Vaccine now available, I’m unconvinced they’ll go to bat for the theaters without a strong motivation. Maybe one will come. 

That said, the recent stimulus deal signed last month offers some hope, and this piece offers more reasons to be cheerful for the long-term future of theaters (though watching movies at home has its merits too).

More on the other side.

Netflix new release roundup for November ‘20

I’m watching much more Netflix now than before, and not just for the new releases. I think I’ve come to depend on it a bit, as a way of coping. A movie a day, plus two or three TV episodes, isn’t too much, is it? At least I’m not bingeing.

—The Trial of the Chicago Seven. The anti-Vietnam protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, and the violence that resulted as a result of the confrontation with the Chicago police, gets revisited in this film from writer-director Aaron Sorkin. Specifically, it’s about the trial of an unconnected group of individuals at the heart of the protests, including irreverent activist Abbie Hoffman, memorably played by Sacha Baron Cohen. He’ll get Oscar nominated for certain. Sorkin uses cross-cutting between places and times to bring life to a very talky but riveting screenplay, in addition to actual television footage from the late 60s. In a time when Americans have been agitating for more drastic change in society than ever before, this movie leaves a deep impression.

——————

So Death on the Nile and Free Guy moved to next year and Wonder Woman 1984 will debut in theaters and on HBO Max simultaneously. The Tom Hanks western News of the World and the video game adaptation Monster Hunter are still expected to play theatrically in 2020... for the moment. This Slate article goes into streaming amidst the current status quo and how unsatisfying it can ultimately feel in a world with diminished theatrical distribution.

More on the other side.

Books: Roger Ebert’s Book of Film

The 2020 Summer Reading Classic Film Book Challenge is an event in which the goal is to read and write about a variety of books related to classic film, hosted by Out of the Past. For a complete list of the rules, visit the website.

I wasn’t planning to include this book this year because of its length (over 700 pages), but I needed to look up some information and once I started re-reading, I couldn’t stop, and since I have all this free time... you get the point.

In 1997, Roger Ebert put out this compilation of film writing, from the birth of the medium in the 19th century to modern times. He divides the book into sections: moviegoing, movie stars, the business, “sex and scandal,” “early days,” genres, directors, writers, critics, “technique,” and “Hollywood.” Each section contains a number of passages, either essays or excerpts from longer works, fiction and non-fiction, on some aspect of the movies.

The lineup spans a century of writing and includes way more than just movie-related writers: Terry McMillan, Larry McMurtry, Tom Wolfe, John Updike, Mario Puzo, Susan Sontag, Charles Bukowski, F. Scott Fitzgerald, even Leo Tolstoy—and that’s in addition to Francois Truffaut, William Castle, Charlie Chaplin, Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa, Spike Lee, David Mamet, Groucho Marx, and so many more.

I bought this book around the time it first came out, back during my video store days, because it seemed like the kind of book that would help me better understand the movies. I was fortunate to have worked in a video store with an extremely diverse selection, Hollywood classics as well as independents and foreign films, and at the time my knowledge was very limited.

This book helped make me aware of who were the important people in film and why. Plus, the novelty of the book itself interested me: movie essays from all over the 20th century (and a bit of the 19th) was quite a lure.

In the introduction, Ebert talks about the hold movies have on our imaginations:

...In my childhood and adolescence I’d liked the movies, to be sure, but they were like other forms of entertainment, like books or the radio, and I didn’t view them as an art form—maybe because I wasn’t seeing very good ones. In 1958, in high school, I saw Citizen Kane for the first time and understood two things: that a movie could suggest the truth about a human life and that movies were the expression of the vision of those who made them.... For me, no other art form touches life the way the movies do.

You can’t go wrong with this book. There’s something for everyone in it.

The Girl Most Likely To...

The Girl Most Likely To...
YouTube viewing

Joan Rivers might have been the first female stand-up comic I had ever seen. I had seen comedic actresses on TV—Carol Burnett, Isabel Sanford, Nell Carter—but I associated Rivers with stand-up. I would see quite a bit of her on TV, and she was part of the zeitgeist at the time.

I thought she was funny, not so much for the things she said as for the way she acted: gossipy, manic, catty. It’s a safe bet I knew no one in real life remotely like her.

In 2010 there was a documentary on her, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work. It provided insight on where she came from and how her distinctive brand of humor originated. I remember she said in the doc, and I’m paraphrasing, something about how “ugly” women made better comediennes. I suspect she was making a distinction from comedic actresses, because we can all think of beautiful examples of those: Carole Lombard, Rosalind Russell, Madeline Kahn.

If this were true, was it a form of compensation? Tina Fey is good looking, no doubt. Would I call her sexy? The word can mean different things to different people. I wouldn’t kick her out of my bed; I think she’d be a lot of fun to be with and would have lots of interesting things to say, and that’s sexy, in its own way. But I think we all know what Rivers was referring to: objective physical beauty.

Trilogy of Terror

Trilogy of Terror
YouTube viewing

When I remember TV movies, I remember the epic mini-series of the 80s. They were trumpeted as a Big Deal in TV Guide and they usually had all-star casts, not that I would’ve heard of most of the names, but the point was they got my attention and I watched them, even if I was too young to completely understand what was going on.

As for the shorter, considerably less-than-epic ones, I think I understood even then that they were inferior to theatrical movies. I definitely remember The Day After and how that film stoked our nuclear apocalypse fears. When the Amy Fisher trial became popular, all three networks made TV movies about her! (I forget which one I watched.)

As kids, we also had the ABC Afterschool Specials: young adult melodramas about the issue of the week, usually starring some popular teen actor from television. Here’s a MeTV top ten list. I don’t remember any of these; I think I only watched them sporadically—why would I, when GI Joe and He-Man were on instead?

TV movies get a bad rep, it’s true, but back in the 70s, they aimed a little higher, had greater aspirations, and were more memorable overall. I’ve already discussed some of them, like The House That Would Not Die with Barbara Stanwyck, and Duel, the first feature film directed by Steven Spielberg. This month I’m gonna look at some more, and today we’ll begin with one that developed a huge cult following to become a pretty big hit thanks to a certain terrifying-looking doll.

The Maverick Queen

The Maverick Queen
YouTube viewing

This is pure speculation on my part, but I’m guessing Pearl Grey realized from an early age he needed to change his name and become famous for something, so no one would ever have to call him “Pearl” again. Good thing he went with his middle name instead and became the Western writer Zane Grey.

Before Larry McMurtry, before Louis L’amour, there was Zane Grey. His novels and stories redefined the Wild West for a generation of readers, and needless to say, they were translated into numerous films and TV episodes. There is a Zane Grey Museum, in Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania, the town where he lived after his marriage for a time.

Grey played baseball; he was a pitcher and then an outfielder at the University of Pennsylvania and had a cup of coffee with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1903. For a time, he followed his father in the field of dentistry, but what he really wanted to do was write.

Television: Wagon Train

Gene Roddenberry first pitched Star Trek to NBC in April 1964. The ex-policeman turned television writer-producer had made in-roads into the new medium with scripts for anthology series and briefly had a short-lived military series called The Lieutenant, but longed for the ability to address social issues without contending with conservative network censors.

He knew science fiction was a tough sell though, so when he entered the office of producer Herb Solow, he nervously handed him a piece of paper with his treatment on it and likened his proposed series to something more familiar: a western. Specifically, a western that had been going strong since 1957, on two networks, called Wagon Train.

Spun off from a 1950 John Ford movie, Wagon Master, it lasted eight seasons and 284 episodes on first NBC, then ABC. The original stars, Ward Bond (from the original movie) and Robert Horton, were together for the first four seasons. The show centered around a wagon train, obviously, of 19th-century settlers moving to Oregon, led by Bond. Horton served as advance scout for the train. There were also recurring characters who worked with Bond and protected the settlers. The executive producers were Howard Christie and Richard Lewis.

I never gave much thought to the Trek connection (however loose it is), but I watched it wondering how much WT was like Trek, if at all. My conclusion: not that much, but maybe it’s not that obvious based on only three random episodes?

The Emperor Jones

The Emperor Jones
YouTube viewing

How awesome was Paul Robeson? The son of a former slave, he graduated high school and college as class valedictorian. He played in the NFL while studying law. He was successful on the foreign and domestic stage. He was one of the top recording artists of the 20th century. He was a civil rights activist and supported progressive political causes in other countries. He wasn’t a saint—he cheated on his wife multiple times, for instance—but he was a proud black man who saw and did it all during a time when institutional racism held back many black people in America. Oh, and he made movies too.

Among the many, many awards and tributes he received, both in life and death, include the naming of a Manhattan apartment building after him. Robeson lived in what is now The Paul Robeson Residence in uptown Washington Heights from 1939-41, and was one of the first black tenants. Count Basie and Joe Louis also lived there. It’s both a civic and national landmark—and the street on which it resides, Edgecombe Avenue, is co-named “Paul Robeson Boulevard.”

Of course he has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. A Criterion box set of his films is available. James Earl Jones starred as Robeson in a one-man Broadway play which was turned into a TV movie.  12 Years a Slave director Steve McQueen had plans for a biopic, though that was over five years ago.

Joker

Joker
seen @ Cinemart Fiveplex, Forest Hills, Queens, NY

This is the movie everyone was so scared would incite another mass shooting?

I almost fell asleep while watching it!

In fairness, I saw Joker the day after a late night out with Virginia. I got home at three in the morning, so while I was wide awake by the time the movie began, I didn’t have much sleep. Still, by the time I started dozing off, maybe a smidge past the halfway point, I had already decided Joker was not saying anything new or different; that Joaquin Phoenix, while excellent in what will almost certainly be an Oscar-nominated performance, couldn’t make up for a largely derivative screenplay (though he does come close); and that Joker isn’t a love letter to Martin Scorsese. It’s a rehash of Alan Moore.

Books: Banished From Memory

The 2019 Summer Reading Challenge is an event in which the goal is to read and write about a variety of books related to classic film, hosted by Out of the Past. For a complete list of the rules, visit the website.

I met Mary Sheeran at a birthday party Sandi threw last year. I was familiar with her, in a general sense, through Sandi’s Facebook page: I knew she, like Sandi, was a writer as well as a classic movie fan. At the party, we talked for a little bit, but I can’t say I know her that well.

Then Sandi recently told me Mary had a new novel out, one set during the twilight of Hollywood’s studio era, and I figured what the heck, I’ll give it a look. I did more than that; this book is 468 pages! It’s no light summer read. Banished From Memory is not Mary’s first novel, but I did not expect something quite this physically big from a small press book (Aquafire Sulis, since you ask).

Dianna Fletcher is the teenage daughter of a Barrymore-esque acting family in 1960 Hollywood. After a series of Disney movies, Dianna gets a plum role in a more grownup, critically-acclaimed film that gets her kudos as well as unwanted attention. At first, it doesn’t quite get her the respectability or the confidence in her future as an actress she craves, on her terms. Then she meets Bill Royce, an older, up-and-coming Method actor who slowly alters her perceptions about the movie world and her parents, as her fortunes change. Meanwhile, the specter of Communism post-McCarthy still looms over Hollywood in this election year, and over Dianna and Bill.

More about bingeing

Recently I got an email from my friend Alicia McLachlan in response to my post on TV bingeing. It was meant to be a comment, but for some reason Blogger wouldn’t let her post it. It’s big enough to be a post all its own, though, so since I kinda owe her one, I’m reproducing it here, with her permission. She’s studying to be a screenwriter, so her perspective on the subject is especially relevant.

Very insightful article! I was curious to see how this experiment went after first seeing your tweets about it. As an aspiring TV writer and avid viewer, I have mixed and evolving feelings on the subject. 

As a viewer, I have of course binge watched and enjoyed it. I don't know what the most ever was in one sitting, but I've definitely been through entire seasons in a day. More recently, I tend to stick to two episodes at a time, maybe three if I'm at a "really good part."

Looking at it from a writer's perspective, particularly with the business part of television in mind, I'm not so much a fan of a binge release for any show I may one day be lucky enough to have produced. Alongside the "communal experience," I feel like week-to-week distribution is better for a show's longevity. It allows for word-of-mouth publicity, which is free, which producers and marketing departments love! Whether that be at the old-school water cooler or on social media, the communal experience draws viewership out long term and allowing a chance for the audience to build (if the show is good of course). This in turn has the potential to drive more web traffic to support sites and side projects, including traditional media coverage like recaps and reviews, blogs and fan pages like this one, and even "in between" webisodes or post-show deep dive analysis podcasts. And it generates long-term interest that can turn into another season, and then another … 

Is a romantic subplot always necessary?

Patel and James in Yesterday 

Recently I had a burst of inspiration regarding my novel. Those of you who have been following WSW for a long time know this book has frustrated and challenged me in almost equal measure, but I had believed in the vision for my story, a baseball tale with a romantic subplot. One day, after reading a post about the need to declutter one’s manuscript, I asked myself: do I need the romance? I like it, I think it’s compelling, and it ties directly into the baseball stuff, but the more I’ve developed it, the more I’ve had the feeling it competed for attention with the baseball plot—and because it doesn’t have a happy ending, I can’t really call it a traditional romance (the romance book market has very strict guidelines for this sort of thing).

And here’s the kicker: when I first plotted this novel, I never thought twice about including a love story. My attitude came down to nothing more than “why not?” I think I even believed it was the sort of thing an audience expected. But is it really? And if so, why?

Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am

Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am
seen @ Film Forum, New York NY

So it was Virginia’s birthday a couple of weeks ago and I was gonna take her rowboating in Central Park. There were thunderstorms in the morning, but then it cleared up and got warmer. Still, she changed her mind about going and suggested a movie instead. I was like, we can go to a movie anytime, but this was what she wanted. Couldn’t refuse her on her birthday—and as it turned out, the film she picked was a winner.

I’ve read some Toni Morrison: I own a copy of The Bluest Eye, and I used to have Beloved. I forget what happened to it. (The Jonathan Demme film version was good, though I remember at the time it kinda freaked me out a bit.) I admit, when it comes to classic black literature, I tend to gravitate more towards the guys: Baldwin, Ellison, Hughes, Wright. The books by black women authors I have are more modern—though now that I think of it, couldn’t Morrison qualify as modern? Not sure. (Also—sorry, sports fans—sometimes I confuse Morrison with Maya Angelou.

Regardless, I’ve always respected Morrison as an Author of Note, but this new documentary Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am made me much more aware of her as a person. According to this Vanity Fair piece, she had known the director, Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, since 1981, so it’s quite possible he was the only one who could’ve made this film. A photographer, he has Morrison face the camera directly while all his other interviewees are off-center, a visual distinction that feels more intimate—although he does a ton of jump-cutting in the talking head sections, something I see a lot of in interviews of this sort. I don’t like it.

Morrison discusses her childhood family; her years as an editor at the book publisher Random House and how she attracted a number of black authors; her novels; and her later, hard-won recognition by her wider (whiter, male-r) audience, including her Pulitzer and Nobel Prizes. Other interviewees include Fran Leibowitz, Angela Davis, and of course, the Big O: Oprah Winfrey. In addition, we see a number of beautiful illustrations of black life made specifically for this film, including a series of collages of Morrison in the opening credits.

As a writer, I dug hearing her speak about her craft. I wish she had talked more about it, though I understand why more emphasis was placed on other things, like her career and her place in the black literary canon. I read her work when I was younger, and while I found the florid, intricate writing style a struggle, I could still tell there was something substantial there, something unlike other authors.

Virginia said she had read some of Morrison’s stuff too, though she didn’t think of herself as a huge fan. I think she was more drawn to this film as an example of a powerful and influential woman artist. I wasn’t aware of this film at all, but I am glad I saw it. I still hope I can take Virginia rowboating this summer, though.

Books: All About ‘All About Eve’

The 2019 Summer Reading Classic Film Book Challenge is an event in which the goal is to read and write about a variety of books related to classic film, hosted by Out of the Past. For a complete list of the rules, visit the website.

I used to work in video retail with a middle-aged man named Bill. He was instrumental in giving me a classic film education, so I think kindly of him, but I knew him as mostly irascible and gruff. He was also a gay man of a certain age, and as such, there were particular classic movies and movie actresses he placed upon a pedestal. Watching them could change his whole attitude in an instant.

Every year on his birthday, without fail, he’d put on All About Eve for one scene: At midnight, the phone operator wakes up Margo, Bette Davis’ character, for a west coast call to her fiancée Bill. At first she’s confused; she doesn’t realize the call was arranged secretly by Eve. Then Margo recognizes the occasion and smiles. “Bill!” says Margo. “It’s your birthday!” “My” Bill would hear that and melt.

But then, Bette Davis had that effect on people.

All About Eve is a fantastic movie that has dated little over the years. The theater isn’t as central to American pop culture as it once was, but the themes of ambition and careerism and middle age are as relevant now as they were in 1951, when it won the Oscar for Best Picture. The book All About ‘All About Eve’ by Sam Staggs chronicles the evolution of the tale of the aging theater diva and the mousy young groupie, and there’s much more to the route than most people realize.

Elisabeth Bergner, the inspiration for the character
who would become Margo Channing 

Did you know Eve was inspired by a true story? In the book we discover the middle-aged thespian from long ago, Elisabeth Bergner, who was the basis for the character of Margo Channing, and the young actress who wanted to be her. A third woman, only peripherally connected, was inspired to write a short story about the two. It was published. Writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz saw it, adapted it for the screen, and the rest is history.

Staggs writes about that initial author, Mary Orr, and how her story got her in trouble with the real-life “Eve,” plus Orr’s struggle for proper credit on what would become the Eve screenplay, and her reunion with “Eve” many years later. We learn about who else was considered for the role of Margo, the significance of the film in the lives of the cast, including an up-and-coming starlet named Marilyn Monroe, how hangers-on like George Sanders’ wife Zsa Zsa Gabor played a factor, the budding romance between Davis and co-star Gary Merrill, and of course, all the off-camera bickering. In addition, Staggs discusses the Broadway adaptation Applause, with Lauren Bacall, and the embrace of the film by the gay community.

Mary Orr, who wrote the story that
became All About Eve 

Staggs writes All About in more of a fannish manner than a journalistic one, by his own admission. Davis and Merrill and Anne Baxter are Bette and Gary and Anne (with the occasional “Miss Davis” for period authenticity). His style is chatty in an Entertainment Tonight, Liz Smith kind of way: in interviews with living subjects, like Orr, he includes asides in the conversation like “You don’t really wanna know about this, do you?” and things like that.

You either like that kind of stuff or you don’t. I found it a bit distracting, and yes, I realize how that sounds coming from me, Mr. “I am not a film critic.” It makes me want to reevaluate my own writing, for this blog, but that’s another issue.

Staggs rambles on a bit too much at times. He’s extremely erudite, but I did think he loved the sound of his voice too much. I would say that’s the risk one takes when writing as a fan, but bloggers like Farran Smith Nehme, Kendra Bean, even Raquel and Aurora put the lie to that, so I dunno.

Bottom line, All About is very informative and illuminating. You might not be put off by Staggs’s writing style. If you love Eve the movie, check this out; just don’t expect it to read like Cahiers du Cinema.

Marvelous links

I finally did it.

I finally got Netflix.

I'm just sampling it out for now; I don't know if I wanna make it permanent yet. I watch it on my new iPad. So far I'm bingeing on Deep Space Nine, rewatching the whole thing from the beginning and remembering why I loved that show so much. Eventually, I'll watch some original Netflix movies and write about them here the same way I would for any other movie.

I gotta say, it's addictive to the point of ridiculousness. To be able to watch DS9, or any TV show or movie available on Netflix, on demand whenever I want, is almost too much power for any one person. And yet now it has become part of everyday consumption, like Amazon Prime, CBS All Access, Hulu, etc.

It's too easy. I just can't help but feel there's a danger in that, like it has less value that way. So far, though, I'm wrong. I hope I stay wrong.

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

Green Book for Best Picture? Really? I seriously underestimated that one. When I first saw the trailer, I dismissed it as a twist on Driving Miss Daisy — the kind of "can't we all get along" kind of movie I'd seen lots of times before.

Even now, I find it impossible to believe it's a better movie than Roma (which did take three Oscars, including Director). I guess I'll have to give it a look when it comes to cable, but I still say Roma was robbed. And it certainly can't be as good as White Savior!

Yay for Regina King winning Supporting Actress! I've liked her ever since she was a kid on the TV show 227 back in the 80s. She would make a perfect Michelle Obama, by the way...

Yay for Spike winning an Oscar (Adapted Screenplay). Finally.... I was certain Lady Gaga would win Best Actress, so I'm glad she didn't (though she did take Original Song).... Yay for Rami Malek for taking Best Actor, though I still say Rhapsody wasn't that great a movie.

The complete list of winners.

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

Speaking of Amazon, the recent mishegoss over whether or not they would set up shop here in Queens had me thinking for a moment about their foray into original films.

Oscar winner Manchester by the Sea is one of the biggest successes of Amazon Studios. I've paid to see that, along with the Woody Allen comedy Cafe Society and the recent Polish film Cold War.

The HQ2 situation made me aware of Amazon's business practices, and it makes me a little uncomfortable to support them, but I turn a blind eye to it. Manchester was the kind of film I would want to see and blog about. It's entirely possible other movies of that caliber could be made by Amazon in the future.

It's the sort of compromise we all agree to every day. We pick and choose which stands to take.

More after the jump.

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.

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.

Supercalifragi-links

So I spent my Thanksgiving morning freezing my ass off as I ran through Flushing Meadow Park.

Why? I dunno, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

For the past month, I had trained for running in a 5k race. I had mentioned to Virginia recently how it was a long-time fantasy of mine to run in a marathon. Failing that, though, I would settle for something simpler, like a 5k. I was just talking idly; not being serious.

So she found online a month-long training program specifically designed to prepare one for a 5k and sent it to me. I looked it over and figured what the hell. If nothing else, I would do it for her.

Race conditions are very different from training by oneself. I didn't hear the starting signal on account of the host's microphone not working well.

When everyone took off, I was conscious of this being A Race for the first time. My head was in the wrong place and I ran like I was competing, which was all wrong for me. Plus, the course began with a steep-ish hill. It took me awhile to focus and settle into a pace.

I tried keeping up with these two women with whom I played leapfrog: I passed them, then they passed me, and so on. Near the end, they passed me and stayed ahead. I wanted to catch them one last time, but I came up short. That's okay, though. I still beat my previous time by a minute!

I spent the evening with Virginia and friends in Manhattan — a "Friendsgiving," I guess. It was one hell of a day overall.

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

Once again, look for my piece on Anthony Mann & John Alton in the next issue of the film noir newsletter The Dark Pages, due out December 20.

Writing the article was a real education. I learned more about noir in general than I knew before, particularly by watching the movies. I plan to write about some of the ones I watched here, so look for that.

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

Real life has delayed Anna's guest post. It's been pushed back to this month.

More after the jump.

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
seen @ UA Kaufman Astoria 14, Astoria, Queens NY

I guess it was only a matter of time before I got sucked into the world of Harry Potter.

I never got into the series of books, or their film adaptations, for reasons I went into here — and yet, I can tell you the basic, most rudimentary things about the character without having read a single page or watched a single frame. I guess that's how you know an IP has blown up.

From studying novel writing, I've learned a bit about J. K. Rowling. I know she created Potter at a time in her life when she was down and out, for instance.

Credit where credit's due: she tapped into something in the zeitgeist that touched adults as well as young adults, something that comes along once a generation; I still remember seeing folks — ordinary-looking people, not stereotypical fans — read those colorful hardcover bricks on the subway and wondering what the deal was.

This was when my definition of "young adult," in terms of the book industry, was rigid. I understand now that just because they're written for kids and teens doesn't necessarily mean they're written down for them. Maybe that's partly why adaptations of The Hunger Games and their ilk have become so popular in Hollywood.

The point is, I didn't give a fiddler's fart about Potter when it first took off. So why have I gotten involved with him now?

Like many great stories, it began with a girl.