Tonight's movie was a rather unusual war drama called "Days Of Glory" (1944), which tells the story of a band of Russian guerrillas who are part of the larger Resistance movement in Mother Russia, fighting the invasion of the Nazis during WW2. The film is notable as Gregory Peck's motion picture debut (and I am trusting that you haven't forgotten the correct pronunciation of his name)....
Okay, it's "Grruggerry Peckhk" (i.e noun 'pUkkh'). As a rule of thumb, just try to say it as if he were pronouncing it himself. Say his last name with a hard "K" sound. A Stentorian tone of voice will help.
Peck is the leader of the guerrilla fighters. He had been a builder of dams in civilian life, now he is Commandant. There are several others in this group, including a mountainous former blacksmith, an introspective intellectual and a fearless blonde woman who personifies the Amazonian Warrior ideal. There are also two children on board, orphaned due to the war. The little girl is about 8 or 9 and precocious. She is the chief cook for the cloistered band, and idolises her patriotic teenaged brother to the point where she declares, in a childlike way, that she would marry him if she could.
Finally, there is also Alan Reed, better known as The Voice Of Fred Flintstone. I had never seen him in a featured movie role, but here he is - as you might imagine - on hand to provide comic relief. He portrays the buffoonish "drunken proletariat", and lo and behold he even looks a bit like Flintstone! He gets drunk as soon as the movie starts and shortly thereafter he bellows away, and you can clearly hear the voice of Fred as it was to appear 16 years later on one of our favorite television shows.
The little girl (the cook) has hidden a stowaway in the group's underground hideout, the basement of a former monastery. She is a young woman on the run, made homeless by the stampeding Germans. By profession she is a ballerina, and she is played by a real life Russian/American ballerina named Tamara Tourmanova, who was the wife of Casey Robinson, the guy who wrote the movie.
She is darkly beautiful and passionately anti-war, providing a contrast to Peck's enthusiastic militarism. She observes that he seems to enjoy blowing up trains and killing German soldiers one-on-one. He admits this is true but goes on to explain why, and you can guess why : the Krauts have taken over his homeland and are killing Russians wholesale.
Tamara Tourmanova is the "Rrrooushian" (pronounced with a roll of the tongue) soul of the movie, the artistic heart of the group, and at first Peck resists her, but because this is Hollywood and we know the formula by now, we are only waiting for the two to fall in love.
This takes a while, however, because the film is slow to develop. There is a lot of fol-de-rol to begin with as director Jacques Tournier takes his time to set up his characters in a screenwriterly ethnic scenario. The first 40 minutes of the film pass by with the group interacting with one another, the little girl running the kitchen, Fred Flintstone getting hammered, and the intellectual leading everyone in the singing of folksongs. Almost no war action takes place during this time, save for the capture and killing of a German soldier, which seems implausible as it takes place, but serves as a plot device to indoctrinate the pacifist ballerina into the military group, as she is the one who has performed the killing.
Much of the film has to do with the romance that develops between Peck and Tourmanova. It feels alternately stiff and dreamlike, because Peck - remember that this is his film debut - comes off as a wooden Indian, and in the other ditection Tourmanova - the majestic ballerina - is just a bit overly dreamy. I mean, you would fall in love with her if you were Peck, but because the combination of the two is at extremes - of the blank-facedness of Peck on the one hand, and ultra-Russian romanticism of Tamara on the other hand, what should have been a huge emotional payoff doesn't happen. Peck, in his debut, is pretty stiff,
There are a few scenes of war footage that merit attention. The brief sequence of the sabotaging of a German train is well done, as is the volunteer mission of the Fearless Amazon to cross enemy lines to deliver a crucial message to Russian headquarters at the front.
There is excellent black and white photography throughout, and one would have hoped to see a decent war movie given the talent involved. But it's really a mess, I am sorry to report, and a slow one at that.
I should also add that the "rah-rah" cheerleading for the Russian cause is a bit perplexing because it is over the top, considering the time the film was made. I mean, watch the guerrilla oath that Tamara Tourmanova swears to, at the end of the film, and you would swear yourself that you are watching a Communist propaganda film. Obviously, anyone would cheer the fight of the Russian people in WW2 against the Nazis, but for some reason director Tournier wants to take things a step further, as if Stalin were head of the studio.
It's a little bit weird, even for Hollywood, which was also making ultra-reactionary anti-Japanese films at the time. The anti German and anti Japanese propaganda was understandable given the circumstances of World War Two, the most horrible time in human history. But here, the overly pro-Russian message of the movie feels out of place, not because the Russian people aren't cool - we love all people here at the blog, and I have always admired the Russian Soul - but because the regime of Uncle Joe Stalin was even more murderous than Hitler's.
The movie just feels a little strange in that way, at least in hindsight.
But more to the point of the review, it's not very good.
It's not terrible, not even bad really, and is certainly worth a view for WW2 motion picture fans. But you'll have to be like me, and be willing to sit through a lot of existential Russian hardship done Hollywood Style, with a wooden Gregory Peck in the lead, to even semi-enjoy it.
And that's what I did, I semi-enjoyed it. Therefore, I give "Days Of Glory" a single Thumb Up.
Don't rule out seeing it, but it's not one of the great WW2 films in the Hollywood canon. More like a curiosity. ////
That's all for tonight. See you in the morn, with love thoughout. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Thursday, May 30, 2019
Wednesday, May 29, 2019
"Gentleman Jim" starring Errol Flynn and Alexis Smith
Tonight I watched a movie called "Gentleman Jim" (1942), starring Errol Flynn and Alexis Smith, discovered in a library database search for Flynn, who like Bogart is one of my favorite actors. The Libe doesn't have near as many of his films as they do of Bogie, so I was lucky to find this one as I'd seen all his others
The "Gentleman" of the title is James J. Corbett, a boxer from San Francisco who fought in the late 19th century and became famous for his scientific, skilled approach to a sport that had been dominated mostly by brawlers with only street fighting abilities. Corbett, who began his career in 1887, was lighter than most of the men he fought, but he was also far more athletic. In the movie we see many shots of Flynn moving his feet, dancing around his opponents who stand planted in the ring. Corbett invented the pugilistic footwork that eventually was brought to full flower by Muhammad Ali.
His major claim to fame came when he defeated the Heavyweight Champion of The World, who at that time was the legendary John L. Sullivan. As a kid I had a paperback book on "Famous Sports Heroes". Corbett was profiled in there, as was Sullivan and the similarly-named James J. Jeffries (and a few decades later there was James J. Braddock).
There were several James J's but no James A's. Hmmmmm.......what could have been the deal?
The deal was that I knew who Corbett was even as an eight year old, and I love Errol Flynn, who was excellent in his role as the styish, egotistical boxer, but I just don't like boxing very much. For a few years in the 1980s my friends and I would watch Mike Tyson whenever he fought, and in those days his bouts were often shown on broadcast tv, but the Tyson fights were usually over so quickly that there wasn't much punching involved. Iron Mike would just burst out of his corner at the sound of the first round bell, and he would almost always destroy his opponent within a minute or two. We weren't watching knock down drag out fights that were eventually won by attrition, so I could tolerate a Tyson match because it was just a flurry of knockout punches by Mike against an overmatched opponent, and then it was over, right after it began.
But generally speaking I don't like boxing because I don't like to watch men hitting one another, even with rules and sportsmanship and padded gloves on.
I did like the movie, which was a standard biopic, but presented with great energy by Errol Flynn in his performance as Corbett and non-stop forward motion by director Raoul Walsh, one of the best in the business at that time. There are no wasted scenes or detours into other plotlines. Even the romance between Flynn and Alexis Smith is kept stifled until the final minutes. The whole movie is about Gentleman Jim, whose nickname is ironic because he is really no gentleman at all. Well, he is on the surface - his manners are always in place - but he is also arrogant and insufferable (qualities that Flynn could play to the hilt), and so he is constantly coming into conflict with managers, promoters and boxers who are already established in the burgeoning hierarchy of professional boxing, which has only just begun in the 1860s or thereabouts.
Corbett knows he is better than all the bruisers passing as boxers, guys who are only slightly above cro-magnon status. Errol Flynn plays this attitude up for the entire film. Veteran actor Jack Carter is his best friend and comic foil. Alan Hale Sr. is his Dad. Alexis Smith - as always, 100% class - kinda steals the show in a way as the daughter of a bank president. Flynn was a teller at the bank when his boxing career took off, and as usual they have a Hollywood Movie romance that develops through constant friction. Smith pretends to hate him because she can't stand his arrogance....but really the subtext is that she can indeed stand it, and in fact she loves him for it, because his arrogance is polite and self-effacing.
Subtle were the screenwriters of the 40s. And excellent were the actors of that era, as you know from my constant cheerleading.
I have to say I was surprised, though, to see that "Gentleman Jim" got a 7.7 score on IMDB, exceptionally high for an older movie not known as a "classic". I read some of the online reviews and I see that many people revere this film. It is true that Flynn gave one of his better performances, and that the movie never lags and is entertaining all the way through, with moments of Irish comedy ala John Ford, and boxing scenes that are technically very well staged and comparable to those from later movies.
For me, however, while I liked the movie, I found it to have little to no dramatic tension. The presentation of Corbett's career and his rise from bank teller to heavyweight champ was shown in such a breezy way that it all seemed like fun n' games, a fantasy that became real.
There is almost no conflict in the movie, the stuff that drama is made of. Flynn's happy go lucky portrayal carries the story, and the supporting actors adequately fill in the spaces, but the life history of James J. Corbett is never shown with any emotional depth. It's as if he were a fictional character.
I will still give it Two Thumbs Up because of Errol Flynn's performance and his own athletic ability which is shown in the ring. He was 33 here and still in great shape, though he would in the long run become one of Hollywood's tragic figures by drinking and drugging himself to death at age 50. The coroner said that he had the body of a 75 year old man at that time.
He was great in every movie I've seen him in, however, especially in "Gentleman Jim", and that's his legacy to the constant viewers. Fans like me will be looking him up in the library database for years to come. ////
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
The "Gentleman" of the title is James J. Corbett, a boxer from San Francisco who fought in the late 19th century and became famous for his scientific, skilled approach to a sport that had been dominated mostly by brawlers with only street fighting abilities. Corbett, who began his career in 1887, was lighter than most of the men he fought, but he was also far more athletic. In the movie we see many shots of Flynn moving his feet, dancing around his opponents who stand planted in the ring. Corbett invented the pugilistic footwork that eventually was brought to full flower by Muhammad Ali.
His major claim to fame came when he defeated the Heavyweight Champion of The World, who at that time was the legendary John L. Sullivan. As a kid I had a paperback book on "Famous Sports Heroes". Corbett was profiled in there, as was Sullivan and the similarly-named James J. Jeffries (and a few decades later there was James J. Braddock).
There were several James J's but no James A's. Hmmmmm.......what could have been the deal?
The deal was that I knew who Corbett was even as an eight year old, and I love Errol Flynn, who was excellent in his role as the styish, egotistical boxer, but I just don't like boxing very much. For a few years in the 1980s my friends and I would watch Mike Tyson whenever he fought, and in those days his bouts were often shown on broadcast tv, but the Tyson fights were usually over so quickly that there wasn't much punching involved. Iron Mike would just burst out of his corner at the sound of the first round bell, and he would almost always destroy his opponent within a minute or two. We weren't watching knock down drag out fights that were eventually won by attrition, so I could tolerate a Tyson match because it was just a flurry of knockout punches by Mike against an overmatched opponent, and then it was over, right after it began.
But generally speaking I don't like boxing because I don't like to watch men hitting one another, even with rules and sportsmanship and padded gloves on.
I did like the movie, which was a standard biopic, but presented with great energy by Errol Flynn in his performance as Corbett and non-stop forward motion by director Raoul Walsh, one of the best in the business at that time. There are no wasted scenes or detours into other plotlines. Even the romance between Flynn and Alexis Smith is kept stifled until the final minutes. The whole movie is about Gentleman Jim, whose nickname is ironic because he is really no gentleman at all. Well, he is on the surface - his manners are always in place - but he is also arrogant and insufferable (qualities that Flynn could play to the hilt), and so he is constantly coming into conflict with managers, promoters and boxers who are already established in the burgeoning hierarchy of professional boxing, which has only just begun in the 1860s or thereabouts.
Corbett knows he is better than all the bruisers passing as boxers, guys who are only slightly above cro-magnon status. Errol Flynn plays this attitude up for the entire film. Veteran actor Jack Carter is his best friend and comic foil. Alan Hale Sr. is his Dad. Alexis Smith - as always, 100% class - kinda steals the show in a way as the daughter of a bank president. Flynn was a teller at the bank when his boxing career took off, and as usual they have a Hollywood Movie romance that develops through constant friction. Smith pretends to hate him because she can't stand his arrogance....but really the subtext is that she can indeed stand it, and in fact she loves him for it, because his arrogance is polite and self-effacing.
Subtle were the screenwriters of the 40s. And excellent were the actors of that era, as you know from my constant cheerleading.
I have to say I was surprised, though, to see that "Gentleman Jim" got a 7.7 score on IMDB, exceptionally high for an older movie not known as a "classic". I read some of the online reviews and I see that many people revere this film. It is true that Flynn gave one of his better performances, and that the movie never lags and is entertaining all the way through, with moments of Irish comedy ala John Ford, and boxing scenes that are technically very well staged and comparable to those from later movies.
For me, however, while I liked the movie, I found it to have little to no dramatic tension. The presentation of Corbett's career and his rise from bank teller to heavyweight champ was shown in such a breezy way that it all seemed like fun n' games, a fantasy that became real.
There is almost no conflict in the movie, the stuff that drama is made of. Flynn's happy go lucky portrayal carries the story, and the supporting actors adequately fill in the spaces, but the life history of James J. Corbett is never shown with any emotional depth. It's as if he were a fictional character.
I will still give it Two Thumbs Up because of Errol Flynn's performance and his own athletic ability which is shown in the ring. He was 33 here and still in great shape, though he would in the long run become one of Hollywood's tragic figures by drinking and drugging himself to death at age 50. The coroner said that he had the body of a 75 year old man at that time.
He was great in every movie I've seen him in, however, especially in "Gentleman Jim", and that's his legacy to the constant viewers. Fans like me will be looking him up in the library database for years to come. ////
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Tuesday, May 28, 2019
"Tales Of Tomorrow" ("Sneak Attack") + Top Ten Pianists
Tonight we are doing Bruckner's 1st, which is sounding pretty majestic so far. I think after this one we will have heard 'em all, so we'll be looking for more symphonies by other composers, or maybe even music in other formats, like string quartets. Mainly we're just looking for new stuff that is lengthy and therefore "good to write to".
Ironically, I don't have much to write about tonight, because Grimsley came over and I didn't watch a movie. I did have time to sneak in a "Tales Of Tomorrow" episode beforehand, and I will describe it in a moment, but it won't be a long review and therefore I may have to resort to rattling off some lists or simply jabbering away about nothing in particular.
The "Tales" ep was actually pretty spooky given the subject matter. Keep in mind that this episode was broadcast in 1951, sixty years before a notorious event took place. 60 years is almost a lifetime, but...
The show, which you will remember was broadcast live, begins with a scene in a hospital room. A patient (Zachary Scott, handsome '40s actor) is waking after surgery to find himself in a sinister situation. His nurse is very tense and trying to give him hints that something is wrong. His doctor has a foreign accent, likely Russian, and a military officer keeps entering Scott's room. "What is going on"?, Scott wonders. The Russian officer asks the same thing of him. "We know you are a spy. If you confess it will be easier for you".
Scott is indeed a spy from Army Intelligence. Somehow he has landed in a hospital in Russia, but he has partial amnesia of how he got there. His nurse (Barbara Joyce) informs him that he was shot several times. She is terrified of something and ends up confiding in Scott, despite the danger to herself with the Russian colonel wandering the halls.
What is she so frightened of? A terror plot, and I - your reviewer - have gotta cut in here to say that this plot is so eerie - especially given what I am currently reading about - that I wasn't sure I wanted to write about it. But here goes anyway.
Again, the show was aired in 1951. The plot is set in the future, 1960. And it is about a terror attack on the US using airplanes as weapons. After the opening scenes in Zachary Scott's hospital room, we cut to the Oval Office in Washington D.C. The President is conferring with his own military leaders about how to face down the developing and very serious situation.
The enemy (never identified as Russia but the inference is certain) has landed approximately 35 planes in major cities across the United States. The planes are the size of large passenger jets and have been flown in by robots, i.e by remote control.
I have to butt in again to say, "man, that is spooky", given what I am reading about the 9/11 attack in the book by Christopher Bollyn. There is little doubt that a form of remote control was used, at the very least, on the plane that hit the Pentagon, unless you believe that a guy who couldn't fly a Cessna suddenly turned into Top Gun, and even the best military pilots have said what he supposedly did was not possible. So yeah, remote control was used on 9/11, and in this episode of "Tales From Tomorrow" (in which the tale being told will happen "tomorrow", meaning in the future), the same thing happens with the 35 Russian planes that land in the United States. They are all flown in by robots.
Now, each plane is loaded with something called heterodyne bombs. The sound on these old shows is somewhat muffled, so I had to replay the scene a couple times to make sure I heard the word correctly. I even Googled it to make double sure it was a real word, and sure enough - heterodyne, a term I had never heard before tonight, is a real word having to do with electromagnetic radiation.
So, man......this "Tales From Tomorrow" was getting pretty scary, and then the President gets an ultimatum from the Russians : "either surrender or else". 1951 was the height of the Cold War, so the President is shown standing up to the threat. He tells the Russians to stick it, but as a secret team of agents attempts to drill through the body of the plane that has landed in Denver, the whole thing goes KaBOOM!, and the city of Denver is no more.
This is the kind of subject that not only made it to prime time network TV in 1951, but was featured again and again as a main storyline. The end of the world was contemplated every week in shows such as this. That's how serious the issue of nuclear weapons was during the Cold War era.
Even I can remember, as a kid in the mid-1960s, having to go through "drop drills" in elementary school. This would be around 1967 or 68, so I was 7 or 8 years old. Every month, there would be a random day when the teacher would tell us, as we arrived in the morning, that there was going to be a "drop drill" that day. The drill would always happen at any time during the day, with no warning. You might be in the middle of a lesson at 9am or 11:20, or after lunch or even the end of the schoolday around 2:30, and out of nowhere the teacher would yell "Drop"!!
And we students, eight years old, would jump out of our chairs and hide under our desks with our arms over our heads and our heads to the floor. This was how it was in America as late as 1968. Kids had Drop Drills on a monthly basis (as if our desktop was gonna protect us from a hydrogen bomb, lol).
Of course, we didn't know the magnitude of why the drills were taking place. We did know about bombs, and I remember kids on the playground talking about the difference between "A-Bombs" and "H-Bombs" in the same simplistic way that kids talk about anything involving one-upsmanship and exageration. "Oh yeah?, Well, H-Bombs can blow the whole world up"!
The good thing about being a kid was that you would only talk about H-Bombs for a minute and then go right back to talking about regular kid stuff. We really didn't know anything about the adult world except for a few talking points, but when I see a sci-fi episode like tonight's, I can better understand the fear of the doomsday scenario that was a preoccupation of the populace during the postwar period.
I guess what I am most impressed with in seeing a show like this, from 68 years ago, is that the issue wasn't being dodged but was faced head on. This could be the end of the world, and we are living in the time of such a possibility. That's what the show is saying, and it's a prime time drama produced by ABC, big time corporate stuff.
Later on down the road, the imminent nuclear threat faded and the tension was eventually diffused, at least for the public eye, and thereafter television became big business, the broadcast hours filled with sitcoms like "I Love Lucy", which we all love indeed and which also began in 1951.
Man, what a strange time it must have been. They were still indoctrinating kids into Atomic Bomb Danger as late as 1968, but back in the early 50s it was a real possibility that the world could end, or at least that was what was being promoted with the Cold War threat.
Well anyway, it's a fascinating time capsule into the topical entertainment of 1951, and again what stands out is that the threat was so real and was being promoted by politicians as possibly imminent, that the tv producers of the era just put it out to the public in all it's raw fear.
It makes for very effective TV, even seven decades later. ////
And now, for a quick list, just cause I said I was gonna do one :
Top Ten Pianists, in no particular order except for the Top Three :
1) Dinu Lipatti
2) Vladimir Sofronitsky
3) Wilhelm Kempff
4) Alicia de Larrocha
5) Martha Argerich
6) Arturo Benedetti Michaelangeli
7) Glenn Gould
8) Alfred Cortot
9) Claudio Arrau
10) Valentina Lisitsa
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Ironically, I don't have much to write about tonight, because Grimsley came over and I didn't watch a movie. I did have time to sneak in a "Tales Of Tomorrow" episode beforehand, and I will describe it in a moment, but it won't be a long review and therefore I may have to resort to rattling off some lists or simply jabbering away about nothing in particular.
The "Tales" ep was actually pretty spooky given the subject matter. Keep in mind that this episode was broadcast in 1951, sixty years before a notorious event took place. 60 years is almost a lifetime, but...
The show, which you will remember was broadcast live, begins with a scene in a hospital room. A patient (Zachary Scott, handsome '40s actor) is waking after surgery to find himself in a sinister situation. His nurse is very tense and trying to give him hints that something is wrong. His doctor has a foreign accent, likely Russian, and a military officer keeps entering Scott's room. "What is going on"?, Scott wonders. The Russian officer asks the same thing of him. "We know you are a spy. If you confess it will be easier for you".
Scott is indeed a spy from Army Intelligence. Somehow he has landed in a hospital in Russia, but he has partial amnesia of how he got there. His nurse (Barbara Joyce) informs him that he was shot several times. She is terrified of something and ends up confiding in Scott, despite the danger to herself with the Russian colonel wandering the halls.
What is she so frightened of? A terror plot, and I - your reviewer - have gotta cut in here to say that this plot is so eerie - especially given what I am currently reading about - that I wasn't sure I wanted to write about it. But here goes anyway.
Again, the show was aired in 1951. The plot is set in the future, 1960. And it is about a terror attack on the US using airplanes as weapons. After the opening scenes in Zachary Scott's hospital room, we cut to the Oval Office in Washington D.C. The President is conferring with his own military leaders about how to face down the developing and very serious situation.
The enemy (never identified as Russia but the inference is certain) has landed approximately 35 planes in major cities across the United States. The planes are the size of large passenger jets and have been flown in by robots, i.e by remote control.
I have to butt in again to say, "man, that is spooky", given what I am reading about the 9/11 attack in the book by Christopher Bollyn. There is little doubt that a form of remote control was used, at the very least, on the plane that hit the Pentagon, unless you believe that a guy who couldn't fly a Cessna suddenly turned into Top Gun, and even the best military pilots have said what he supposedly did was not possible. So yeah, remote control was used on 9/11, and in this episode of "Tales From Tomorrow" (in which the tale being told will happen "tomorrow", meaning in the future), the same thing happens with the 35 Russian planes that land in the United States. They are all flown in by robots.
Now, each plane is loaded with something called heterodyne bombs. The sound on these old shows is somewhat muffled, so I had to replay the scene a couple times to make sure I heard the word correctly. I even Googled it to make double sure it was a real word, and sure enough - heterodyne, a term I had never heard before tonight, is a real word having to do with electromagnetic radiation.
So, man......this "Tales From Tomorrow" was getting pretty scary, and then the President gets an ultimatum from the Russians : "either surrender or else". 1951 was the height of the Cold War, so the President is shown standing up to the threat. He tells the Russians to stick it, but as a secret team of agents attempts to drill through the body of the plane that has landed in Denver, the whole thing goes KaBOOM!, and the city of Denver is no more.
This is the kind of subject that not only made it to prime time network TV in 1951, but was featured again and again as a main storyline. The end of the world was contemplated every week in shows such as this. That's how serious the issue of nuclear weapons was during the Cold War era.
Even I can remember, as a kid in the mid-1960s, having to go through "drop drills" in elementary school. This would be around 1967 or 68, so I was 7 or 8 years old. Every month, there would be a random day when the teacher would tell us, as we arrived in the morning, that there was going to be a "drop drill" that day. The drill would always happen at any time during the day, with no warning. You might be in the middle of a lesson at 9am or 11:20, or after lunch or even the end of the schoolday around 2:30, and out of nowhere the teacher would yell "Drop"!!
And we students, eight years old, would jump out of our chairs and hide under our desks with our arms over our heads and our heads to the floor. This was how it was in America as late as 1968. Kids had Drop Drills on a monthly basis (as if our desktop was gonna protect us from a hydrogen bomb, lol).
Of course, we didn't know the magnitude of why the drills were taking place. We did know about bombs, and I remember kids on the playground talking about the difference between "A-Bombs" and "H-Bombs" in the same simplistic way that kids talk about anything involving one-upsmanship and exageration. "Oh yeah?, Well, H-Bombs can blow the whole world up"!
The good thing about being a kid was that you would only talk about H-Bombs for a minute and then go right back to talking about regular kid stuff. We really didn't know anything about the adult world except for a few talking points, but when I see a sci-fi episode like tonight's, I can better understand the fear of the doomsday scenario that was a preoccupation of the populace during the postwar period.
I guess what I am most impressed with in seeing a show like this, from 68 years ago, is that the issue wasn't being dodged but was faced head on. This could be the end of the world, and we are living in the time of such a possibility. That's what the show is saying, and it's a prime time drama produced by ABC, big time corporate stuff.
Later on down the road, the imminent nuclear threat faded and the tension was eventually diffused, at least for the public eye, and thereafter television became big business, the broadcast hours filled with sitcoms like "I Love Lucy", which we all love indeed and which also began in 1951.
Man, what a strange time it must have been. They were still indoctrinating kids into Atomic Bomb Danger as late as 1968, but back in the early 50s it was a real possibility that the world could end, or at least that was what was being promoted with the Cold War threat.
Well anyway, it's a fascinating time capsule into the topical entertainment of 1951, and again what stands out is that the threat was so real and was being promoted by politicians as possibly imminent, that the tv producers of the era just put it out to the public in all it's raw fear.
It makes for very effective TV, even seven decades later. ////
And now, for a quick list, just cause I said I was gonna do one :
Top Ten Pianists, in no particular order except for the Top Three :
1) Dinu Lipatti
2) Vladimir Sofronitsky
3) Wilhelm Kempff
4) Alicia de Larrocha
5) Martha Argerich
6) Arturo Benedetti Michaelangeli
7) Glenn Gould
8) Alfred Cortot
9) Claudio Arrau
10) Valentina Lisitsa
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Monday, May 27, 2019
"A Stolen Life" starring Bette Davis + It's Freezing On Memorial Day
Though we are out of Humphrey Bogart movies for the moment, we still had Bette Davis on hand tonight in "A Stolen Life" (1946), and in fact it was a double dose of Davis because she played twin sisters. This one was a real potboiler, another Sirkian melodrama involving a love triangle of which the sisters comprise two thirds.
The movie starts with sister Kate exiting a taxicab on an island off New Bedford, Massachusetts. She has a ton of luggage and is hustling to catch a late ferry to the mainland so she can visit her twin sister and her older cousin (Charles Ruggles). The ferry has already departed, however, and - with no other recourse - she asks a local man to give her a lift. He is Glenn Ford.
Ford is a lighthouse keeper with a small boat. At first he tells Davis "no", he can't give her a ride, it's against regulations. But of course in a melodrama this is just a device to create friction so that the two will eventually bond. Kate is an artist who paints portraits. She is a lonely woman, demure and somewhat naive, but not without initiative. After finagling her boat ride, she stops in at the family estate on the mainland to check in with her cousin, then turns around and rents a boat to sail herself back out to the lighthouse, hoping to see Glenn Ford again. This was in 1946, when he was a young and handsome leading man. Soon she falls in love with him. It may not be requited, though. He seems to love her but........only in a platonic way. One factor in their favor is that they are both dreamers who live outside the norm, she as an artist, he at the lighthouse. He wants to live away from society. On paper they are made for each other, but then......
Kate's more sophisticated twin steps into the picture. Her name is Pat (also played by Davis). Pat is a man crazy vixen; just hearing of Kate's interest in Glenn Ford sends her into competitive mode. She isn't jealous, because she knows she can take Ford away from her shy sister, and she does so, first by a "chance meeting" where she follows him to a train depot, and then by a lunch date. After that he is hooked, because she is sexier and much more forward, but also more cunning and shallow than her open-hearted and somewhat innocent sister.
This is a story about real love, coming from the heart, versus the false imitation of love based on egomania and lust.
Glenn Ford is an idealist but still a man, and he is swayed by the attention of the dominant sister Pat. He hastily marries her, and his life course takes a detour. Where he had wanted to remain a lighthouse keeper, he now finds himself living in New York, off the Davis sisters' family money.
Nice sister Kate, meanwhile, becomes a respected portrait artist, talented enough to warrant a gallery showing. This sequence begins a subtheme that I am not sure was necessary to the plot, but at any rate, a very unpleasant character is introduced - a belligerent anti-social young painter played by Dane Clark. He attends Kate's gallery premier only for the free food. He is hungry, poor and envious of her success even though he has never heard of her. His character only serves, plotwise, to motivate Kate out of her complacency. He is so antagonistic towards her - even as she offers him use of her home studio - that it's a wonder she - and we the viewers! - don't kick him out (and in our case kick him out of the movie, he's that obnoxious). I suppose he does toughen Kate up. He tries at one point to come on to her, and she stands him off, growing wiser in the ways of men, not all men, but many.
Altogether, though, the Dane Clark character is but a device, and a little hard to deal with as (I think) he overdoes it a bit.
The musical score by Max Steiner ebbs and swells and even pitter-patters in places, to let you know what you should be feeling. This is not inappropriate, as The Score has long been part and parcel of the effectiveness of the drama in any movie not made for arthouse theaters.
The situation between the sisters will come to a head during a sailboat expedition into Nantucket Sound. This scenario will become harrowing and will result in a nebulous identity switch between the sisters.
That is all I can tell you without revealing the details of the final act of the 107 minute film. Bette Davis carries the movie with her twin portrayals, and as one reviewer pointed out, she is really playing three characters. You will see why for yourself. Davis was a very great actress, head and shoulders above most, even though she had a particular style that featured the exposure of a "brittle" female psychology. She became famous for playing "women on the edge" or "high-flying bitches", sorry about the non-PC terminology but that's what she played in many movies.
But here, in 'A Stolen Life", we see the breadth of her talent as she contrasts the opposition between the sister's desires and their outlooks on life. Any actress today would be hard pressed to pull off such a subtle contrast and I say this with great respect for the best of the modern actresses.
Bette Davis, however, was Bette Davis. She could be over the top, and sometimes too much to deal with, but when she was at her best, she was the best ever. Hollywood would agree.
Two Big Thumbs Up for "A Stolen Life", which also has the quality in it's final scenes of a William Dieterle fantasy like "Portrait Of Jenny". ////
That's all for tonight. We had a small group in choir this morning, likely due to the holiday, but the singing was some of the best yet.
The weather, though, was atrocious. Can you imagine 55 degrees in late May, with leaden skies opening up to wind and rain as if it were December?
That's what we had today, when in every year past in my lifetime, we would have had temps near 80 at the minimum, maybe overcast but just as likely sunny, and on many occasions it would have been near 90 and maybe even higher, and always, always, always........Summery, or closing in on it.
But today, on the Sunday before Memorial Day - which is the unofficial start of Summer in Southern California - it was so cold that I nearly froze on my evening walk. I was wearing a Pendelton but needed a sweatshirt too. Normally a t-shirt would have sufficed.
This really sucks, big time, and it is proof that Global Warming is affecting our weather to an extreme degree (as if the folks in the tornado alleys, Eastern Seaboard or Gulf States needed any more evidence).
We aren't exactly suffering in SoCal, so please understand that I complain because I lament what was.
What was, was that we used to have hot, or at least warm, sunny weather most of the year.
We don't any more. Nowdays, you never know what you're gonna get, but often as not, the weather sucks, and we are cold more often than hot, and even freezing at the beginning of June. ////
That's all for tonight, see you in the morning. Peace and Love is sent as always. xoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
The movie starts with sister Kate exiting a taxicab on an island off New Bedford, Massachusetts. She has a ton of luggage and is hustling to catch a late ferry to the mainland so she can visit her twin sister and her older cousin (Charles Ruggles). The ferry has already departed, however, and - with no other recourse - she asks a local man to give her a lift. He is Glenn Ford.
Ford is a lighthouse keeper with a small boat. At first he tells Davis "no", he can't give her a ride, it's against regulations. But of course in a melodrama this is just a device to create friction so that the two will eventually bond. Kate is an artist who paints portraits. She is a lonely woman, demure and somewhat naive, but not without initiative. After finagling her boat ride, she stops in at the family estate on the mainland to check in with her cousin, then turns around and rents a boat to sail herself back out to the lighthouse, hoping to see Glenn Ford again. This was in 1946, when he was a young and handsome leading man. Soon she falls in love with him. It may not be requited, though. He seems to love her but........only in a platonic way. One factor in their favor is that they are both dreamers who live outside the norm, she as an artist, he at the lighthouse. He wants to live away from society. On paper they are made for each other, but then......
Kate's more sophisticated twin steps into the picture. Her name is Pat (also played by Davis). Pat is a man crazy vixen; just hearing of Kate's interest in Glenn Ford sends her into competitive mode. She isn't jealous, because she knows she can take Ford away from her shy sister, and she does so, first by a "chance meeting" where she follows him to a train depot, and then by a lunch date. After that he is hooked, because she is sexier and much more forward, but also more cunning and shallow than her open-hearted and somewhat innocent sister.
This is a story about real love, coming from the heart, versus the false imitation of love based on egomania and lust.
Glenn Ford is an idealist but still a man, and he is swayed by the attention of the dominant sister Pat. He hastily marries her, and his life course takes a detour. Where he had wanted to remain a lighthouse keeper, he now finds himself living in New York, off the Davis sisters' family money.
Nice sister Kate, meanwhile, becomes a respected portrait artist, talented enough to warrant a gallery showing. This sequence begins a subtheme that I am not sure was necessary to the plot, but at any rate, a very unpleasant character is introduced - a belligerent anti-social young painter played by Dane Clark. He attends Kate's gallery premier only for the free food. He is hungry, poor and envious of her success even though he has never heard of her. His character only serves, plotwise, to motivate Kate out of her complacency. He is so antagonistic towards her - even as she offers him use of her home studio - that it's a wonder she - and we the viewers! - don't kick him out (and in our case kick him out of the movie, he's that obnoxious). I suppose he does toughen Kate up. He tries at one point to come on to her, and she stands him off, growing wiser in the ways of men, not all men, but many.
Altogether, though, the Dane Clark character is but a device, and a little hard to deal with as (I think) he overdoes it a bit.
The musical score by Max Steiner ebbs and swells and even pitter-patters in places, to let you know what you should be feeling. This is not inappropriate, as The Score has long been part and parcel of the effectiveness of the drama in any movie not made for arthouse theaters.
The situation between the sisters will come to a head during a sailboat expedition into Nantucket Sound. This scenario will become harrowing and will result in a nebulous identity switch between the sisters.
That is all I can tell you without revealing the details of the final act of the 107 minute film. Bette Davis carries the movie with her twin portrayals, and as one reviewer pointed out, she is really playing three characters. You will see why for yourself. Davis was a very great actress, head and shoulders above most, even though she had a particular style that featured the exposure of a "brittle" female psychology. She became famous for playing "women on the edge" or "high-flying bitches", sorry about the non-PC terminology but that's what she played in many movies.
But here, in 'A Stolen Life", we see the breadth of her talent as she contrasts the opposition between the sister's desires and their outlooks on life. Any actress today would be hard pressed to pull off such a subtle contrast and I say this with great respect for the best of the modern actresses.
Bette Davis, however, was Bette Davis. She could be over the top, and sometimes too much to deal with, but when she was at her best, she was the best ever. Hollywood would agree.
Two Big Thumbs Up for "A Stolen Life", which also has the quality in it's final scenes of a William Dieterle fantasy like "Portrait Of Jenny". ////
That's all for tonight. We had a small group in choir this morning, likely due to the holiday, but the singing was some of the best yet.
The weather, though, was atrocious. Can you imagine 55 degrees in late May, with leaden skies opening up to wind and rain as if it were December?
That's what we had today, when in every year past in my lifetime, we would have had temps near 80 at the minimum, maybe overcast but just as likely sunny, and on many occasions it would have been near 90 and maybe even higher, and always, always, always........Summery, or closing in on it.
But today, on the Sunday before Memorial Day - which is the unofficial start of Summer in Southern California - it was so cold that I nearly froze on my evening walk. I was wearing a Pendelton but needed a sweatshirt too. Normally a t-shirt would have sufficed.
This really sucks, big time, and it is proof that Global Warming is affecting our weather to an extreme degree (as if the folks in the tornado alleys, Eastern Seaboard or Gulf States needed any more evidence).
We aren't exactly suffering in SoCal, so please understand that I complain because I lament what was.
What was, was that we used to have hot, or at least warm, sunny weather most of the year.
We don't any more. Nowdays, you never know what you're gonna get, but often as not, the weather sucks, and we are cold more often than hot, and even freezing at the beginning of June. ////
That's all for tonight, see you in the morning. Peace and Love is sent as always. xoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Sunday, May 26, 2019
Super Scary "Ghost Story" Episode with Susan Dey, Leif Garret and Dawn Lyn
Tonight's Bruckner Symphony is his 2nd, conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini. I've been listening for a few minutes and I can already tell that it's gonna be my favorite so far. It begins with beautiful and subtle string themes as opposed to the head-knocking brass booms of some of the other ones we've heard. Overall, though, I am liking Bruckner and will give repeat listens to all of his symphonies.
I'm sorry to report that I ran out of Humphrey Bogart movies (and will try to locate more!), but as such, tonight was a TV night. I watched a super scary episode of "Ghost Story" in which veteran actor Barry Nelson and his three children have just moved into a stylish apartment in San Francisco. Nelson is a recent widower, he and his kids are in a new city. They were lucky to have found this spacious unit which is located in a old building near the bay. His eldest daughter (Susan Dey) has just returned from her first year in college to live with her Dad and her two younger siblings, played by 12 year old Leif Garret and his real life younger sister Dawn Lyn, who you will remember if you are my age as the tiny little girl with long brown hair, freckles and a hoarse speaking voice who, as a child star, was featured on the sitcom "Nanny and The Professor" in 1970. If you saw her, you would instantly remember her, and there is no mistaking her brother with his trademark haircut. They are quite an acting team in this episode of the show, and I see by their IMDBs that they worked in tandem many times. They are natural together and very believable.
The kids have recently lost their mother, and big sister Dey tries to make up for the loss by watching over them. Dad Barry Nelson is often away at work. But the kids are footloose and have taken to exploring the building. Upstairs is an empty unit and they find the door unlocked. After entering, they discover a door at the rear from which a sound is emanating.....a sound of someone chopping wood.
Dad Barry Nelson has heard it too, from downstairs in the family apartment. He reports it to the superintendent (played by creepster character actor Henry Jones), who tells him it's just the sound of the building settling.
But eldest daughter Susan Dey (who every boy my age had a crush on because she was Lori in "The Partridge Family") is also aware of the wood chopping. She is having dreams of a man standing in the snow outside a cabin in the woods. He has an axe, and is raising it and chopping, raising it and chopping.....
He is a big man, with sideburns and a moustache - woodsman like. He is dark and handsome but also silent. Dey says nothing of her dreams to the rest of the family, but little does she know that the kids have already been inside the empty apartment several times, and have opened the door from which the chopping sound is coming.
It seems to be a portal into another world, for what they see is an extension of Susan Dey's dream. Snow is falling just past the door jamb. Frigid air blows into the empty apartment, which is decrepit and full of cobwebs. But through the door, the woodland scenery of Dey's dream has come to life. The big man beckons the children. He wields his axe, chops his wood, and invites them into his world.
Later, they tell Dad and Big Sister that they have met The Man Who Lives Upstairs. He is a nice man, they say, but he is sad because he has lost his wife. This is a coincidence, as Dad has lost his wife recently as well.
Big Sis Susan Dey accuses her younger brother and sister of inventing an imaginary friend, even though she has dreamed the same thing. But she is keeping her dreams to herself, because the whole thing spooks the daylights out of her.
The kids aren't spooked, though, because the man in the empty apartment is real to them, and he seems nice.
But then Susan Dey has another dream. In this one, we find out how the wood chopping man lost his wife. Though she is terrified, Dey summons the courage to enter the empty apartment herself......in the middle of the night, of course.
I really can't tell you any more than that, but as you can see, this is one heck of a scary episode of "Ghost Story".
If you want to see a truly terrifying movie with a similar theme, watch "Stir Of Echoes" from 1999, with Kevin Bacon.
My goodness peeples....now I've scared myself. And I have to be up in a few hours for church.
So I'd better get to sleep and have a nightmare or two beforehand, haha.
See you there in the morning. Love through the night. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
I'm sorry to report that I ran out of Humphrey Bogart movies (and will try to locate more!), but as such, tonight was a TV night. I watched a super scary episode of "Ghost Story" in which veteran actor Barry Nelson and his three children have just moved into a stylish apartment in San Francisco. Nelson is a recent widower, he and his kids are in a new city. They were lucky to have found this spacious unit which is located in a old building near the bay. His eldest daughter (Susan Dey) has just returned from her first year in college to live with her Dad and her two younger siblings, played by 12 year old Leif Garret and his real life younger sister Dawn Lyn, who you will remember if you are my age as the tiny little girl with long brown hair, freckles and a hoarse speaking voice who, as a child star, was featured on the sitcom "Nanny and The Professor" in 1970. If you saw her, you would instantly remember her, and there is no mistaking her brother with his trademark haircut. They are quite an acting team in this episode of the show, and I see by their IMDBs that they worked in tandem many times. They are natural together and very believable.
The kids have recently lost their mother, and big sister Dey tries to make up for the loss by watching over them. Dad Barry Nelson is often away at work. But the kids are footloose and have taken to exploring the building. Upstairs is an empty unit and they find the door unlocked. After entering, they discover a door at the rear from which a sound is emanating.....a sound of someone chopping wood.
Dad Barry Nelson has heard it too, from downstairs in the family apartment. He reports it to the superintendent (played by creepster character actor Henry Jones), who tells him it's just the sound of the building settling.
But eldest daughter Susan Dey (who every boy my age had a crush on because she was Lori in "The Partridge Family") is also aware of the wood chopping. She is having dreams of a man standing in the snow outside a cabin in the woods. He has an axe, and is raising it and chopping, raising it and chopping.....
He is a big man, with sideburns and a moustache - woodsman like. He is dark and handsome but also silent. Dey says nothing of her dreams to the rest of the family, but little does she know that the kids have already been inside the empty apartment several times, and have opened the door from which the chopping sound is coming.
It seems to be a portal into another world, for what they see is an extension of Susan Dey's dream. Snow is falling just past the door jamb. Frigid air blows into the empty apartment, which is decrepit and full of cobwebs. But through the door, the woodland scenery of Dey's dream has come to life. The big man beckons the children. He wields his axe, chops his wood, and invites them into his world.
Later, they tell Dad and Big Sister that they have met The Man Who Lives Upstairs. He is a nice man, they say, but he is sad because he has lost his wife. This is a coincidence, as Dad has lost his wife recently as well.
Big Sis Susan Dey accuses her younger brother and sister of inventing an imaginary friend, even though she has dreamed the same thing. But she is keeping her dreams to herself, because the whole thing spooks the daylights out of her.
The kids aren't spooked, though, because the man in the empty apartment is real to them, and he seems nice.
But then Susan Dey has another dream. In this one, we find out how the wood chopping man lost his wife. Though she is terrified, Dey summons the courage to enter the empty apartment herself......in the middle of the night, of course.
I really can't tell you any more than that, but as you can see, this is one heck of a scary episode of "Ghost Story".
If you want to see a truly terrifying movie with a similar theme, watch "Stir Of Echoes" from 1999, with Kevin Bacon.
My goodness peeples....now I've scared myself. And I have to be up in a few hours for church.
So I'd better get to sleep and have a nightmare or two beforehand, haha.
See you there in the morning. Love through the night. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Saturday, May 25, 2019
"The Wagons Roll At Night" starring Humphrey Bogart, Sylvia Sidney, Eddie Albert & Joan Leslie
Tonight's Bruckner is #5, conducted by von Karajan. I just started listening a minute ago, and it sounds like he is back with the brass. He sure likes those huge, pounding horn riffs. Well, I will keep listening as I write and see how it progresses.
We were back with Bogart once again this evening, in "The Wagons Roll At Night" (1941). In the '40s, especially in film noirs, you would get titles that were statements, like this one or last night's "You Can't Get Away With Murder". So tonight you are told, before you even watch the film, that "The Wagons Roll At Night". You can't say you were unaware, haha.
By now, I think it is safe to say that Bogie can do it all. We've seen him as a crook (numerous times), as a District Attorney, a War Hero, a wrestling promoter, an Air Force test pilot, and tonight as the owner/manager of a traveling circus. It's on the low end of the circuit, barely more than a carnival, but he's got Sylvia Sidney as his fortune teller, and a lion tamer show. He's just hanging in there.
His lion tamer is his biggest draw, but is also a drunk. One day, the guy is passed out and his most fearsome lion escapes. "Caesar" is his name. Caesar is running through the streets of the town the circus is encamped in, and he enters a small grocery store. A young Eddie Albert (later of "Green Acres" fame) is behind the counter helping a customer when the lion moseys in. Terrified, he nevertheless manages to hold Caesar off with a pitchfork until help arrives. Bogart shows up soon after, and having an eye both for talent and for the bottom line, he realises that his problem with the drunken lion tamer is solved. On the spot, using his considerable sales technique, he convinces Albert to ditch his grocery job and come to join his circus as the new lion tamer. Bogie will make him a star!
It does work out this way, because as it turns out, Eddie Albert has a natural aptitude with the big cats. In addition to Caesar, there is also one named Satan. I just thought I should mention that. Albert is a little timid at first, but once he gets a feel for the show he grows into his role as the star. Now Bogie's circus is moving up in the world, playing bigger cities.
There is a side plot involving his younger sister, which will turn out to be important. Bogie has told his entire staff never to mention his sister, let alone interact with her. She is played by the beautiful Joan Leslie, and she has just graduated from a Convent School. Bogie has paid her way and kept her sheltered her entire life, away from what he perceives as the scum of carnival life. Sylvia Sidney, who was an excellent actress and who has a major role, begs to differ. She is a good and decent person, intelligent too. She is secretly in love with Eddie Albert, but when she finds out that Albert, in turn, is in love with Joan Leslie - Bogie's sequestered sister - she goes the altruism route and teams up with the couple to stave off Bogart's rage.
Eddie Albert is injured during a fight with the former lion tamer; Sidney and a couple of crewmen take him to the Bogart family farm out in the country. There, as he recovers, he meets Joan Leslie. Soon they are in love, but everyone else is worried about how Bogie will react. He is ashamed of his profession and has put his sister on a pedestal.
The whole shebang will come to a death-defying climax when, in a dirty low down bit of scheming, Bogie challenges Eddie Albert to go one-on-one with Caesar for a sold-out show in Chicago, their first major city. "The crowds will eat it up", he tells him. "You can handle any lion", he says. "Your name will be up in lights across the country".
Eddie Albert is talented with the lions, but even the longtime circus professionals think he would be crazy to accept Bogart's challenge. Caesar will rip him to pieces.
But Eddie does accept, not knowing that Bogie has a plan to eliminate him, so that he will not be able to marry his sister. Everything will come down to Albert's final scene in the ring with Caesar, under the tent of the Big Top. ////
Humphrey Bogart is playing a similar character, in temperament, to the semi-conscientious hoodlum he played in last night's "You Can't Get Away With Murder". In both cases, he cares about the people he is working with, be they his fellow prisoners or his circus employees, but he only cares about them up to a certain point, when their problems - or what he sees as their problems - begin to impact his life.
For instance, he sees the love between Eddie Albert and his sister Joan Leslie as a problem, when of course it is not one. This is the kind of character he seems to play in these early starring roles we have seen recently, the hard driving street smart boss, or hood, who cares about his friends but pushes them into danger for his own benefit.
Two Big Thumbs Up for "The Wagons Roll At Night", with great performances by all the leads, and the lions too.
That's all I know for tonight. See you in the morning with love sent continuously as always.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
We were back with Bogart once again this evening, in "The Wagons Roll At Night" (1941). In the '40s, especially in film noirs, you would get titles that were statements, like this one or last night's "You Can't Get Away With Murder". So tonight you are told, before you even watch the film, that "The Wagons Roll At Night". You can't say you were unaware, haha.
By now, I think it is safe to say that Bogie can do it all. We've seen him as a crook (numerous times), as a District Attorney, a War Hero, a wrestling promoter, an Air Force test pilot, and tonight as the owner/manager of a traveling circus. It's on the low end of the circuit, barely more than a carnival, but he's got Sylvia Sidney as his fortune teller, and a lion tamer show. He's just hanging in there.
His lion tamer is his biggest draw, but is also a drunk. One day, the guy is passed out and his most fearsome lion escapes. "Caesar" is his name. Caesar is running through the streets of the town the circus is encamped in, and he enters a small grocery store. A young Eddie Albert (later of "Green Acres" fame) is behind the counter helping a customer when the lion moseys in. Terrified, he nevertheless manages to hold Caesar off with a pitchfork until help arrives. Bogart shows up soon after, and having an eye both for talent and for the bottom line, he realises that his problem with the drunken lion tamer is solved. On the spot, using his considerable sales technique, he convinces Albert to ditch his grocery job and come to join his circus as the new lion tamer. Bogie will make him a star!
It does work out this way, because as it turns out, Eddie Albert has a natural aptitude with the big cats. In addition to Caesar, there is also one named Satan. I just thought I should mention that. Albert is a little timid at first, but once he gets a feel for the show he grows into his role as the star. Now Bogie's circus is moving up in the world, playing bigger cities.
There is a side plot involving his younger sister, which will turn out to be important. Bogie has told his entire staff never to mention his sister, let alone interact with her. She is played by the beautiful Joan Leslie, and she has just graduated from a Convent School. Bogie has paid her way and kept her sheltered her entire life, away from what he perceives as the scum of carnival life. Sylvia Sidney, who was an excellent actress and who has a major role, begs to differ. She is a good and decent person, intelligent too. She is secretly in love with Eddie Albert, but when she finds out that Albert, in turn, is in love with Joan Leslie - Bogie's sequestered sister - she goes the altruism route and teams up with the couple to stave off Bogart's rage.
Eddie Albert is injured during a fight with the former lion tamer; Sidney and a couple of crewmen take him to the Bogart family farm out in the country. There, as he recovers, he meets Joan Leslie. Soon they are in love, but everyone else is worried about how Bogie will react. He is ashamed of his profession and has put his sister on a pedestal.
The whole shebang will come to a death-defying climax when, in a dirty low down bit of scheming, Bogie challenges Eddie Albert to go one-on-one with Caesar for a sold-out show in Chicago, their first major city. "The crowds will eat it up", he tells him. "You can handle any lion", he says. "Your name will be up in lights across the country".
Eddie Albert is talented with the lions, but even the longtime circus professionals think he would be crazy to accept Bogart's challenge. Caesar will rip him to pieces.
But Eddie does accept, not knowing that Bogie has a plan to eliminate him, so that he will not be able to marry his sister. Everything will come down to Albert's final scene in the ring with Caesar, under the tent of the Big Top. ////
Humphrey Bogart is playing a similar character, in temperament, to the semi-conscientious hoodlum he played in last night's "You Can't Get Away With Murder". In both cases, he cares about the people he is working with, be they his fellow prisoners or his circus employees, but he only cares about them up to a certain point, when their problems - or what he sees as their problems - begin to impact his life.
For instance, he sees the love between Eddie Albert and his sister Joan Leslie as a problem, when of course it is not one. This is the kind of character he seems to play in these early starring roles we have seen recently, the hard driving street smart boss, or hood, who cares about his friends but pushes them into danger for his own benefit.
Two Big Thumbs Up for "The Wagons Roll At Night", with great performances by all the leads, and the lions too.
That's all I know for tonight. See you in the morning with love sent continuously as always.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Friday, May 24, 2019
"You Can't Get Away With Murder" starring Humphrey Bogart and Billy Halop + This Weather Sucks
Tonight we are going with Bruckner's 4th, aka his "Romantic" symphony. This version was just posted on Youtube three days ago, played by the Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Gustavo Gimeno. The video is crystal clear in HD and it sounds good so far (I am listening while I type), so check it out if you are becoming a Brucknerite, which I am sure you are. :) No really......I actually am sure of it!
You know you love symphonies, and opera. You even love string quartets! Okay, so you don't "love" string quartets, but you at least like 'em. And I must say that you have good taste. ////
Now, for tonight's movie, you already know Humphrey Bogart was the star, so let's see if you can guess the title. It was made in 1939, co-starred the excellent teenaged actor Billy Halop (from the "Dead End Kids"), and much of it's 79 minute running time took place in Ossining State Prison in New York. Did you say "You Can't Get Away With Murder"? Well that's it, you got it right! You've probably already seen it, but I'll review it anyway.
Bogie is a bad influence in this one.
Billy Halop is the younger brother of the beautiful Gale Page. She is engaged to be married to her security guard boyfriend (Harvey Stephens), who has just been promoted to managerial status. His new job will be in Boston, and he and Page are excited about their future. They will finally be able to move out of Hell's Kitchen in NYC and live a decent life. She is worried about her little brother, however, because he is hanging out with a no-goodnik, a small time hood (Bogart) whom he idolises.
Bogie is again playing the same kind of ill-educated but street smart wisecracking criminal that we saw in last night's "King of The Underworld". He's not quite a sociopath, he even splits the money with the kid after their first robbery, and he seems to be looking after Billy, insofar as a bad guy will do. Bogie is schooling him in the ways of making crime pay. Billy's older sister Page is beside herself, trying to extract him from Bogart's grip so she can take him to Boston to live with her and her soon-to-be husband, but now he has some cash on hand, from the robbery. He has a new suit of fancy clothes and he tells his sister that he ain't going to Boston, because he's got it made now and the straight life is for suckers.
All of this happens in the first 20 minutes. Then, a second robbery goes bad. Bogie kills a pawn shop owner in the course of the stickup. Billy Halop has brought along a gun to use for himself, but Bogart confiscated it on the way, and made him stay in the car as a lookout. What the kid doesn't know is that Bogie is gonna frame somebody for the murder of the pawnshop owner. It won't be Billy, because he stole the gun he brought with him. Instead, it will be his brother-in-law, the security guard, whose gun Billy stole and which Bogie took from him. He used Billy's gun to shoot the pawnshop owner, and now the security guard - Billy's brother in law - is going to be prosecuted for the murder.
Soon, he will be going to the Electric Chair in Sing Sing. In those days, up until about the 1950s, if you did a murder you generally got the death penalty, and a horrible death it was, either in the Electric Chair or the Gas Chamber. So now, Billy is in a jam. He and Humphrey Bogart have in the meantime been sent to Sing Sing on the earlier robbery charge. They are doing a few years each, but once his brother-in-law arrives and is escorted onto Death Row, Billy begins to suffer terrible pangs of conscience.
He is torn between telling the truth about the pawnshop killing, and keeping it to himself. He can't win, for if he tells the truth, he will either go to The Chair himself, or Humphrey Bogart will, and if he rats on Bogie he will surely be killed in prison anyway. So Billy Halop is between a rock and a hard place, and this is the thrust of the final hour of the movie.
I'd say it is one of the best prison movies I've seen from the time period of the 1930s. The location appears to be a real prison, and the script does not resort to cliches. The prison staff interact with their charges and have sympathy for the cons who are trying to go straight. Billy gets a job in the library and is taken under the wing of a wise and kindly old timer who tries to steer him away from Bogart's influence. Meanwhile the clock is ticking on his brother-in-law's execution date.
Billy knows that Bogart is the real killer, but will he tell anyone? The warden suspects he knows something, as does the district attorney and his sister. But boy is he scared of Bogart, and of getting sent to the Electric Chair himself.
In an aside, man.....can you believe they once used the Electric Chair on people? And the Gas Chamber? Now, I am no fan of criminals as you know, and murderers are the worst, and though I am not a fan of the death penalty I still would have to put myself in the shoes of a family member who has suffered such a loss before I could presume to pass judgement on a pro-death penalty person.
But still.....the Electric Chair? The Gas Chamber?
Man, were those ever some cruel and unusual punishments, even for the worst murderers. And up until the late 1950s, those punishments were handed out on a regular basis.
Sorry to go off on a tirade, and just to be clear I hate criminals and murderers especially, but I am not sure it is the job of sane humanity to put anyone to death. Maybe better to just lock them away permanently.
But in "You Can't Get Away With Murder", the key issue is who is gonna end up sitting in The Chair?
Time has almost run out for the convicted brother-in-law, even though he is innocent (reason enough to do away with the death penalty). Billy Halop knows the truth, but if he tells it, he might sit in The Chair.
Bogart is gonna take part in a planned prison break masterminded by a low down lifer who knows all the secrets, about Bogie and the kid and everyone else, and uses his knowledge to intimidate.
The fate of all involved will come down to the escape attempt, which is to take place just hours before Billy's brother-in-law is to be executed. //////
This one is a real stomach churner, featuring a tense performance by nineteen year old Halop. He is painted into a corner and you feel every minute of it. Humphrey Bogart is great as always, though he is playing more of a Standard Mook character here rather than one of his more nuances roles.
Two Big Thumbs Up in any event. "You Can't Get Away With Murder" is highly recommended, a top entry from the prison movie genre with a ton of plot and multiple character threads in it's 79 minute running time.
Hopefully we will soon get an end to the February weather we have been experiencing all this May. Today I wore a sweatshirt over a tee-shirt with a Pendleton over the top, just like I did in Winter, except that tomorrow will be the start of Memorial Day weekend, when it used to be sunny and hot.
That's our Global Warming weather in Southern California. It doesn't get hot here anymore, except for maybe a week or two in Summer. For the past few years, you have to wear sweatshirts more months than not, and the weather is grey and crummy most of the time. For real. Warm, Sunny So Cal is a thing of the past.
See you in the morning. Tons of love. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
You know you love symphonies, and opera. You even love string quartets! Okay, so you don't "love" string quartets, but you at least like 'em. And I must say that you have good taste. ////
Now, for tonight's movie, you already know Humphrey Bogart was the star, so let's see if you can guess the title. It was made in 1939, co-starred the excellent teenaged actor Billy Halop (from the "Dead End Kids"), and much of it's 79 minute running time took place in Ossining State Prison in New York. Did you say "You Can't Get Away With Murder"? Well that's it, you got it right! You've probably already seen it, but I'll review it anyway.
Bogie is a bad influence in this one.
Billy Halop is the younger brother of the beautiful Gale Page. She is engaged to be married to her security guard boyfriend (Harvey Stephens), who has just been promoted to managerial status. His new job will be in Boston, and he and Page are excited about their future. They will finally be able to move out of Hell's Kitchen in NYC and live a decent life. She is worried about her little brother, however, because he is hanging out with a no-goodnik, a small time hood (Bogart) whom he idolises.
Bogie is again playing the same kind of ill-educated but street smart wisecracking criminal that we saw in last night's "King of The Underworld". He's not quite a sociopath, he even splits the money with the kid after their first robbery, and he seems to be looking after Billy, insofar as a bad guy will do. Bogie is schooling him in the ways of making crime pay. Billy's older sister Page is beside herself, trying to extract him from Bogart's grip so she can take him to Boston to live with her and her soon-to-be husband, but now he has some cash on hand, from the robbery. He has a new suit of fancy clothes and he tells his sister that he ain't going to Boston, because he's got it made now and the straight life is for suckers.
All of this happens in the first 20 minutes. Then, a second robbery goes bad. Bogie kills a pawn shop owner in the course of the stickup. Billy Halop has brought along a gun to use for himself, but Bogart confiscated it on the way, and made him stay in the car as a lookout. What the kid doesn't know is that Bogie is gonna frame somebody for the murder of the pawnshop owner. It won't be Billy, because he stole the gun he brought with him. Instead, it will be his brother-in-law, the security guard, whose gun Billy stole and which Bogie took from him. He used Billy's gun to shoot the pawnshop owner, and now the security guard - Billy's brother in law - is going to be prosecuted for the murder.
Soon, he will be going to the Electric Chair in Sing Sing. In those days, up until about the 1950s, if you did a murder you generally got the death penalty, and a horrible death it was, either in the Electric Chair or the Gas Chamber. So now, Billy is in a jam. He and Humphrey Bogart have in the meantime been sent to Sing Sing on the earlier robbery charge. They are doing a few years each, but once his brother-in-law arrives and is escorted onto Death Row, Billy begins to suffer terrible pangs of conscience.
He is torn between telling the truth about the pawnshop killing, and keeping it to himself. He can't win, for if he tells the truth, he will either go to The Chair himself, or Humphrey Bogart will, and if he rats on Bogie he will surely be killed in prison anyway. So Billy Halop is between a rock and a hard place, and this is the thrust of the final hour of the movie.
I'd say it is one of the best prison movies I've seen from the time period of the 1930s. The location appears to be a real prison, and the script does not resort to cliches. The prison staff interact with their charges and have sympathy for the cons who are trying to go straight. Billy gets a job in the library and is taken under the wing of a wise and kindly old timer who tries to steer him away from Bogart's influence. Meanwhile the clock is ticking on his brother-in-law's execution date.
Billy knows that Bogart is the real killer, but will he tell anyone? The warden suspects he knows something, as does the district attorney and his sister. But boy is he scared of Bogart, and of getting sent to the Electric Chair himself.
In an aside, man.....can you believe they once used the Electric Chair on people? And the Gas Chamber? Now, I am no fan of criminals as you know, and murderers are the worst, and though I am not a fan of the death penalty I still would have to put myself in the shoes of a family member who has suffered such a loss before I could presume to pass judgement on a pro-death penalty person.
But still.....the Electric Chair? The Gas Chamber?
Man, were those ever some cruel and unusual punishments, even for the worst murderers. And up until the late 1950s, those punishments were handed out on a regular basis.
Sorry to go off on a tirade, and just to be clear I hate criminals and murderers especially, but I am not sure it is the job of sane humanity to put anyone to death. Maybe better to just lock them away permanently.
But in "You Can't Get Away With Murder", the key issue is who is gonna end up sitting in The Chair?
Time has almost run out for the convicted brother-in-law, even though he is innocent (reason enough to do away with the death penalty). Billy Halop knows the truth, but if he tells it, he might sit in The Chair.
Bogart is gonna take part in a planned prison break masterminded by a low down lifer who knows all the secrets, about Bogie and the kid and everyone else, and uses his knowledge to intimidate.
The fate of all involved will come down to the escape attempt, which is to take place just hours before Billy's brother-in-law is to be executed. //////
This one is a real stomach churner, featuring a tense performance by nineteen year old Halop. He is painted into a corner and you feel every minute of it. Humphrey Bogart is great as always, though he is playing more of a Standard Mook character here rather than one of his more nuances roles.
Two Big Thumbs Up in any event. "You Can't Get Away With Murder" is highly recommended, a top entry from the prison movie genre with a ton of plot and multiple character threads in it's 79 minute running time.
Hopefully we will soon get an end to the February weather we have been experiencing all this May. Today I wore a sweatshirt over a tee-shirt with a Pendleton over the top, just like I did in Winter, except that tomorrow will be the start of Memorial Day weekend, when it used to be sunny and hot.
That's our Global Warming weather in Southern California. It doesn't get hot here anymore, except for maybe a week or two in Summer. For the past few years, you have to wear sweatshirts more months than not, and the weather is grey and crummy most of the time. For real. Warm, Sunny So Cal is a thing of the past.
See you in the morning. Tons of love. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Thursday, May 23, 2019
"King Of The Underworld" starring Humphrey Bogart and Kay Francis
Listening to Bruckner's 9th (and last) symphony tonight, conducted by Leonard Bernstein. I am liking it better than the 8th, not as bombastic and more layered. He doesn't overdo it with the brass this time. Tonight's movie was called "King Of The Underworld" (1939) and you get three guesses as to who starred.
Okay forget it. You only get one guess, because you know it was Humphrey Bogart. We are on a mission to watch as many Bogie movies as we can get our hands on, so chalk another one up, and this one was really good. The gorgeous Kay Francis co-stars as a doctor whose husband, a skilled surgeon, is sought out by hoodlum Bogart, the "King" of the movie's title, after he successfully removes a bullet from the chest of one of Bogie's henchmen. Like any gang boss, Bogie needs an in-house surgeon to do occasional emergency work on his boys. He "thanks" the doctor by giving him 500 bucks. Now Bogie owns the guy, and his wife Kay Francis doesn't like it, even though they are able to move their practice from a slummy part of New York to 5th Avenue.
Tragedy then strikes in the form of a police raid on the gang's hideout. The surgeon happens to be there and is killed in a hail of bullets. Now Kay Francis is on her own. She wants no part of Bogart's gang so she moves out of NYC to go live upstate with her Aunt.
The trouble for Kay is that Bogie figures she could tip the cops off. He has escaped the police raid along with several of his men. He thinks Francis knows his whereabouts and is gonna turn him in, so he locates her in the small town where she has gone to live with her aunt, and he and his goons are on their way up there to pay her a visit.
The script, which is already unusual for a gangster flick in that it includes husband and wife doctors as main characters, now takes another detour. As Bogie and his mooks are on the highway to upstate New York, they experience a blowout. Bogie looks out the window and sees a man standing by the side of the road. Being on the run and paranoid, he thinks that the man has shot out his tire, but this is not the case. The man had only been hitchhiking. He is a Brit, an author down on his luck. One of Bogie's hoods has already shot him in the shoulder; he needs medical attention, Bogie feels bad because in this movie he is a gangster with a conscience, so they load the writer in their car and continue on to Kay Francis' town, where they locate her and force her to take the bullet out of the writer.
The next thing you know, they are boyfriend and girlfriend. Bogie had a thing for Kay Francis as well, but he doesn't mind that the writer has won her over, just so long as the two of them stay close and in his employ. Bogart has a fascination for Napoleon. He is reading a biography of the great general, and even though he is obviously a total dropout where schooling is concerned, he is nevertheless intelligent in the intuitive sense. He is reading about Napoleon to learn the fine points of being a fearless leader, and in his own case, a fearless criminal leader (and some would say the same about Napoleon).
He takes a liking to the British writer, now healed from his shoulder wound, because the writer knows all about Napoleon, and many other subjects. Bogie calls him "one a' them geniuses" and orders the man to write an "autobiography" about him. We are stuck in upstate NY now. Things are hunky dory as long as Bogie thinks Kay Francis, as his doctor, and the British writer, as his "autobiographer", are in his corner, working on his behalf, even though he knows they feel coerced.
What will happen? The writer knows he will be killed as soon as he finishes the book. Kay Francis has a bit more leverage because she is the gang's doctor. They will still need her no matter what. Can she use that as a bargaining chip to save her boyfriend? And what about the coppers? Are they still on Bogart's trail?
"King Of The Underworld", according to the notes on the back of the dvd box, was Humphrey Bogart's first "above the title" role, meaning his first big "starrer". He is 39 and very fresh looking, his energy as a wise guy and friendly but deadly crime boss is both endearing and realistic. You have no doubt he'd kill Francis or the writer if necessary, even though he likes them. Bogart has equal time onscreen, but it is still Kay Francis' picture. She was a gigantic star for Warner Brothers in the 1930s, and at one time out-earned Bette Davis by 10-1 on a dollar scale. Davis eventually became her replacement as the favored Warner's star, and it's a shame that everyone remembers Bette (and rightly so), but no one remembers Kay Francis, who was - in my opinion - every bit as talented as an actress and was also a glamour queen. Yeah, I'm a Kay Francis fan, and you will be too if you watch even one of her movies. You can start with "Trouble In Paradise" from 1932. Then you will be hooked.
Two Thumbs Up for "King Of The Underworld", which runs for only 67 minutes but has the plot of a story twice that long. ///
I've got another Bogie or two lined up for immediate viewing starting tomorrow night. I am working on my latest drawing about a "football-headed cat". If you've been following my blogs for a long time you might recall the tale of the cat and the man with the football-shaped head, who wound up on the roof of a house and got all mixed-up together. It's a true story, and now I am drawing it.
See you in the morning, with tons of love sent your way as always. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Okay forget it. You only get one guess, because you know it was Humphrey Bogart. We are on a mission to watch as many Bogie movies as we can get our hands on, so chalk another one up, and this one was really good. The gorgeous Kay Francis co-stars as a doctor whose husband, a skilled surgeon, is sought out by hoodlum Bogart, the "King" of the movie's title, after he successfully removes a bullet from the chest of one of Bogie's henchmen. Like any gang boss, Bogie needs an in-house surgeon to do occasional emergency work on his boys. He "thanks" the doctor by giving him 500 bucks. Now Bogie owns the guy, and his wife Kay Francis doesn't like it, even though they are able to move their practice from a slummy part of New York to 5th Avenue.
Tragedy then strikes in the form of a police raid on the gang's hideout. The surgeon happens to be there and is killed in a hail of bullets. Now Kay Francis is on her own. She wants no part of Bogart's gang so she moves out of NYC to go live upstate with her Aunt.
The trouble for Kay is that Bogie figures she could tip the cops off. He has escaped the police raid along with several of his men. He thinks Francis knows his whereabouts and is gonna turn him in, so he locates her in the small town where she has gone to live with her aunt, and he and his goons are on their way up there to pay her a visit.
The script, which is already unusual for a gangster flick in that it includes husband and wife doctors as main characters, now takes another detour. As Bogie and his mooks are on the highway to upstate New York, they experience a blowout. Bogie looks out the window and sees a man standing by the side of the road. Being on the run and paranoid, he thinks that the man has shot out his tire, but this is not the case. The man had only been hitchhiking. He is a Brit, an author down on his luck. One of Bogie's hoods has already shot him in the shoulder; he needs medical attention, Bogie feels bad because in this movie he is a gangster with a conscience, so they load the writer in their car and continue on to Kay Francis' town, where they locate her and force her to take the bullet out of the writer.
The next thing you know, they are boyfriend and girlfriend. Bogie had a thing for Kay Francis as well, but he doesn't mind that the writer has won her over, just so long as the two of them stay close and in his employ. Bogart has a fascination for Napoleon. He is reading a biography of the great general, and even though he is obviously a total dropout where schooling is concerned, he is nevertheless intelligent in the intuitive sense. He is reading about Napoleon to learn the fine points of being a fearless leader, and in his own case, a fearless criminal leader (and some would say the same about Napoleon).
He takes a liking to the British writer, now healed from his shoulder wound, because the writer knows all about Napoleon, and many other subjects. Bogie calls him "one a' them geniuses" and orders the man to write an "autobiography" about him. We are stuck in upstate NY now. Things are hunky dory as long as Bogie thinks Kay Francis, as his doctor, and the British writer, as his "autobiographer", are in his corner, working on his behalf, even though he knows they feel coerced.
What will happen? The writer knows he will be killed as soon as he finishes the book. Kay Francis has a bit more leverage because she is the gang's doctor. They will still need her no matter what. Can she use that as a bargaining chip to save her boyfriend? And what about the coppers? Are they still on Bogart's trail?
"King Of The Underworld", according to the notes on the back of the dvd box, was Humphrey Bogart's first "above the title" role, meaning his first big "starrer". He is 39 and very fresh looking, his energy as a wise guy and friendly but deadly crime boss is both endearing and realistic. You have no doubt he'd kill Francis or the writer if necessary, even though he likes them. Bogart has equal time onscreen, but it is still Kay Francis' picture. She was a gigantic star for Warner Brothers in the 1930s, and at one time out-earned Bette Davis by 10-1 on a dollar scale. Davis eventually became her replacement as the favored Warner's star, and it's a shame that everyone remembers Bette (and rightly so), but no one remembers Kay Francis, who was - in my opinion - every bit as talented as an actress and was also a glamour queen. Yeah, I'm a Kay Francis fan, and you will be too if you watch even one of her movies. You can start with "Trouble In Paradise" from 1932. Then you will be hooked.
Two Thumbs Up for "King Of The Underworld", which runs for only 67 minutes but has the plot of a story twice that long. ///
I've got another Bogie or two lined up for immediate viewing starting tomorrow night. I am working on my latest drawing about a "football-headed cat". If you've been following my blogs for a long time you might recall the tale of the cat and the man with the football-shaped head, who wound up on the roof of a house and got all mixed-up together. It's a true story, and now I am drawing it.
See you in the morning, with tons of love sent your way as always. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Wednesday, May 22, 2019
9/11
Note: I began this blog last night but didn't finish because I was too tired. I had actually written a fair amount, but when I read back it I saw that most of it was a political tirade, and other than the occasional comment or one-liner, I don't want to include politics in my blogs. Everyone knows how I feel and what my opinions are, so I will leave the tirades to the professionals and keep this blog dedicated to the arts and weird stuff (and sometimes dumb stuff too). Therefore, what I wrote last night has been edited down, and I am filling the empty space with impromptu musings from tonight. The blog will be a mishmash, then, but it's all I've got because tonight I went over to Grimsley's and have no movie to review. By tomorrow, several new motion pictures will be in hand and all will be well. But for now........
(from 5/20/2019) Tonight I am listening to a symphony by Anton Bruckner while I write, having gone through all the Mahler symphonies during the past couple of weeks. Bruckner was supposed to be a major symphonist, so I thought I'd give him a try. This is his 8th Symphony and it's pretty bombastic, with lots of brass, but it still has some lovely, dramatic string interludes that sound similar to Wagner and Mahler, the kind of sweeping, emotional music that you might hear in a melodramatic movie by Douglas Sirk. Lately I'm on a symphonic kick, and on the lookout for new material, so this week it'll be Bruckner, conducted by Herbert von Karajan if possible. He was one of the greatest conductors who ever lived. No one could make an orchestra sound smoother. Everything he conducted has a velvety quality.
Well anyhow, listen to a symphony if you feel like it. It doesn't have to be a big deal, or something that feels pretentious. It's just music, and you might find that you like it. Pick a composer, any composer, and get started. :)
This afternoon I began a new book : "Solving 9/11 - The Deception That Changed The World" by Christopher Bollyn. I am always looking for interesting 9/11 books that I've not yet read. There aren't many of them these days, because - unlike, say, the JFK assassination - researchers seem to have given up on 9/11 for the most part. This book by Bollyn actually was published in 2012, so even it is already seven years old. I knew it was controversial when I bought it, even among "alternative" 9/11 theories, because Bollyn's central premise is that the government of Israel played a main role in planning and executing the attacks. Specifically he names Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad (their version of the CIA).
It is decidedly non-PC to blame Israel for anything, even though they have a right wing that is even more reactionary than our own and a high tech military that pounds down the hapless Palestinians on a regular basis. But it is common knowledge that, if you say anything against the far right Israeli government, you will be labeled as anti-semitic. This is the plight of Christopher Bollyn and his book.
Me, I don't subscribe to politically correct baloney. Regarding crimes, of which 9/11 certainly was, any given theory is either true or it isn't. And since it is 100% clear that the American government's theory is a deliberate lie, then the truth must be searched for elsewhere. I am only 25 pages into the book, but the first evidence Bollyn presents for Mossad involvement is the arrest and detainment of five young Israeli men who were caught celebrating the attacks on the World Trade Center shortly after the planes hit the buildings. A woman in an apartment called police when she noticed the men standing atop their van, filming the disaster and high-fiving one another. They were dancing and celebrating, she said. This was in the news for a day or two but then was quickly forgotten. But research shows, and video is available on Youtube, that these young men, who were Israeli citizens living in NYC, "worked" for a "moving company" in the city that turned out to be a Mossad front. This is not speculation but confirmed fact. The Youtube video is available that shows the young men being interviewed on Israeli televison after they were let go by the FBI and deported back to their home country. On camera, one of the men says that it was their job to "document" the event. And they celebrated it. That much is fact, as reported by the eyewitness who called the cops, and the FBI who felt it was reason enough to hold the men for several weeks.
Later on, their Mossad connections were revealed, and it was clear that they had foreknowledge of the attacks. It was also revealed that an Israeli owned text messaging service called Odigo sent out a text warning Israeli citizens who worked in the towers that "something big" was going to happen that day, and that they should not come to work.
This is as far as I have read in the book, and it is information that I was already aware of from years past, due to my ongoing research of the covered-up events that have happened in my lifetime, but author Bollyn lays out the details of what happened with the Israeli celebrants so that the reader can understand how their complicity in the attacks and their involvement with Mossad was corroborated.
From what I am reading, I think it is pretty clear that Mossad was involved in the attacks. It has been researched and proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the government of Israel was behind the coverup of their military's 1967 attack on the USS Liberty, which killed 34 American sailors. We are supposed to be allies, the United States and Israel, but in real life there have been demonic incidents of terrorism, like the Liberty attack, that suggest otherwise. You can read all about it in Philip Nelson's book "Remember The Liberty", which leaves no doubt about what happened.
However, as Nelson points out, Israel could never initiate an attack on the United States without our own blessings. In Nelson's book, he lays out in detail how the Liberty attack was masterminded by Lyndon Johnson, to be used for his benefit as a false flag incident, similar to what he used in the Gulf Of Tonkin to start the Vietnam War. Hitler was a genius at this tactic; you burn your own building down (the Bundestag) and blame it on your enemy.
In the case of the USS Liberty, Israel carried out the attack, but it was ordered by the President of The United States, Lyndon B. Johnson, a maniac. He ordered his own ship to be sunk and had Israeli forces carry it out. This is proven, and so it is no stretch to say that the Israelis could have once again agreed to help another President carry out mass murder on 9/11, and there is no doubt they did so. But they didn't order it or mastermind it, because in the end they are a small country dependent on our defense dollars.
Nonetheless, they have a precision military armed to the teeth with US technology, and it is clear that they have acted as lap dogs to help sociopathic US regimes, such as LBJ and Bush 2, carry out mass murder against the American people. ////
That's all I have to say about that, though I could say a lot more.
Just as I encourage you to listen to classical music, so as not to limit yourself, I also encourage you to read well-researched books about the subjects I have mentioned in this blog and in others that I have written about over the years. I think it is very important for folks to learn the truth about things, otherwise.......well, what do you think "otherwise" could come down to?
You should ask yourself that question.
I am not saying you should protest, or rant and rave and join the far left or far right, but just that you should read, and that you should read only the most well researched books available, and none that are on the bestseller lists, written by members of the mainstream media. You would be wasting your time, for instance, to read a book about the Iraq war written by a New York Times or Washington Post reporter, because such a book is going to parrot the official line, even if the author is "against the war".
Stay away from mainstream media reporting, because you will only get "two sides of the same coin" phoney baloney spin, courtesy of the CIA, which controls the media in this country.
That's the truth, disbelieve it at your peril, so do some reading for yourself and don't be lazy (if you are so inclined).
That's all I know for tonight. This blog turned out to be a political mishmash anyway, despite my efforts to the contrary, but tomorrow night I will have some movies to watch and things will be more pleasant.
But read those books. I could suggest dozens. ////
See you in the morning. Tons of love. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
(from 5/20/2019) Tonight I am listening to a symphony by Anton Bruckner while I write, having gone through all the Mahler symphonies during the past couple of weeks. Bruckner was supposed to be a major symphonist, so I thought I'd give him a try. This is his 8th Symphony and it's pretty bombastic, with lots of brass, but it still has some lovely, dramatic string interludes that sound similar to Wagner and Mahler, the kind of sweeping, emotional music that you might hear in a melodramatic movie by Douglas Sirk. Lately I'm on a symphonic kick, and on the lookout for new material, so this week it'll be Bruckner, conducted by Herbert von Karajan if possible. He was one of the greatest conductors who ever lived. No one could make an orchestra sound smoother. Everything he conducted has a velvety quality.
Well anyhow, listen to a symphony if you feel like it. It doesn't have to be a big deal, or something that feels pretentious. It's just music, and you might find that you like it. Pick a composer, any composer, and get started. :)
This afternoon I began a new book : "Solving 9/11 - The Deception That Changed The World" by Christopher Bollyn. I am always looking for interesting 9/11 books that I've not yet read. There aren't many of them these days, because - unlike, say, the JFK assassination - researchers seem to have given up on 9/11 for the most part. This book by Bollyn actually was published in 2012, so even it is already seven years old. I knew it was controversial when I bought it, even among "alternative" 9/11 theories, because Bollyn's central premise is that the government of Israel played a main role in planning and executing the attacks. Specifically he names Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad (their version of the CIA).
It is decidedly non-PC to blame Israel for anything, even though they have a right wing that is even more reactionary than our own and a high tech military that pounds down the hapless Palestinians on a regular basis. But it is common knowledge that, if you say anything against the far right Israeli government, you will be labeled as anti-semitic. This is the plight of Christopher Bollyn and his book.
Me, I don't subscribe to politically correct baloney. Regarding crimes, of which 9/11 certainly was, any given theory is either true or it isn't. And since it is 100% clear that the American government's theory is a deliberate lie, then the truth must be searched for elsewhere. I am only 25 pages into the book, but the first evidence Bollyn presents for Mossad involvement is the arrest and detainment of five young Israeli men who were caught celebrating the attacks on the World Trade Center shortly after the planes hit the buildings. A woman in an apartment called police when she noticed the men standing atop their van, filming the disaster and high-fiving one another. They were dancing and celebrating, she said. This was in the news for a day or two but then was quickly forgotten. But research shows, and video is available on Youtube, that these young men, who were Israeli citizens living in NYC, "worked" for a "moving company" in the city that turned out to be a Mossad front. This is not speculation but confirmed fact. The Youtube video is available that shows the young men being interviewed on Israeli televison after they were let go by the FBI and deported back to their home country. On camera, one of the men says that it was their job to "document" the event. And they celebrated it. That much is fact, as reported by the eyewitness who called the cops, and the FBI who felt it was reason enough to hold the men for several weeks.
Later on, their Mossad connections were revealed, and it was clear that they had foreknowledge of the attacks. It was also revealed that an Israeli owned text messaging service called Odigo sent out a text warning Israeli citizens who worked in the towers that "something big" was going to happen that day, and that they should not come to work.
This is as far as I have read in the book, and it is information that I was already aware of from years past, due to my ongoing research of the covered-up events that have happened in my lifetime, but author Bollyn lays out the details of what happened with the Israeli celebrants so that the reader can understand how their complicity in the attacks and their involvement with Mossad was corroborated.
From what I am reading, I think it is pretty clear that Mossad was involved in the attacks. It has been researched and proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the government of Israel was behind the coverup of their military's 1967 attack on the USS Liberty, which killed 34 American sailors. We are supposed to be allies, the United States and Israel, but in real life there have been demonic incidents of terrorism, like the Liberty attack, that suggest otherwise. You can read all about it in Philip Nelson's book "Remember The Liberty", which leaves no doubt about what happened.
However, as Nelson points out, Israel could never initiate an attack on the United States without our own blessings. In Nelson's book, he lays out in detail how the Liberty attack was masterminded by Lyndon Johnson, to be used for his benefit as a false flag incident, similar to what he used in the Gulf Of Tonkin to start the Vietnam War. Hitler was a genius at this tactic; you burn your own building down (the Bundestag) and blame it on your enemy.
In the case of the USS Liberty, Israel carried out the attack, but it was ordered by the President of The United States, Lyndon B. Johnson, a maniac. He ordered his own ship to be sunk and had Israeli forces carry it out. This is proven, and so it is no stretch to say that the Israelis could have once again agreed to help another President carry out mass murder on 9/11, and there is no doubt they did so. But they didn't order it or mastermind it, because in the end they are a small country dependent on our defense dollars.
Nonetheless, they have a precision military armed to the teeth with US technology, and it is clear that they have acted as lap dogs to help sociopathic US regimes, such as LBJ and Bush 2, carry out mass murder against the American people. ////
That's all I have to say about that, though I could say a lot more.
Just as I encourage you to listen to classical music, so as not to limit yourself, I also encourage you to read well-researched books about the subjects I have mentioned in this blog and in others that I have written about over the years. I think it is very important for folks to learn the truth about things, otherwise.......well, what do you think "otherwise" could come down to?
You should ask yourself that question.
I am not saying you should protest, or rant and rave and join the far left or far right, but just that you should read, and that you should read only the most well researched books available, and none that are on the bestseller lists, written by members of the mainstream media. You would be wasting your time, for instance, to read a book about the Iraq war written by a New York Times or Washington Post reporter, because such a book is going to parrot the official line, even if the author is "against the war".
Stay away from mainstream media reporting, because you will only get "two sides of the same coin" phoney baloney spin, courtesy of the CIA, which controls the media in this country.
That's the truth, disbelieve it at your peril, so do some reading for yourself and don't be lazy (if you are so inclined).
That's all I know for tonight. This blog turned out to be a political mishmash anyway, despite my efforts to the contrary, but tomorrow night I will have some movies to watch and things will be more pleasant.
But read those books. I could suggest dozens. ////
See you in the morning. Tons of love. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Monday, May 20, 2019
Hugh Everett III & The "Many Worlds" Theory + Mark Everett
I'd like to start off with a little bit more about the Hugh Everett book I just finished. He was a high-level genius in the science of quantum mechanics (QM), and when he was only 27 years old and a graduate student at Princeton, he came up with a mathematical formula that explained away the notorious "measurement paradox" in QM, which states that just by simply taking a measurement of any kind in a quantum system, you are causing the wave function to collapse and appear as a particle instead. The wave function, in rough terms, would be the ultra-microscopic "behind the scenes" version of the particle as it exists on the other side of the wall of reality. By making an observation - i.e. taking a measurement with a metering device - you are causing the wave to disappear so that only a particle is present, the particle being the lone object that exists on this side of reality, the side we see in everyday life, which physicists call the "classical" or macroscopic side.
Now, I haven't the time nor inclination tonight to attempt to go into a long layman's explanation of my own interpretation of what I've read in the book, so to simplify matters I will just say that Hugh Everett took a radical stance against what was generally accepted in QM at the time, which was the Collapse Postulate. This axiom was held as truth by the giants of quantum theory, including Neils Bohr, who was like the God of QM. The physicists of the day could not explain why, in experiments, light beams consisting of photons sometime behaved like particles and sometimes like waves. You can Google all of this stuff if you wish, but anyway, what Everett did that was so revolutionary was that he denied the Collapse Postulate. He had worked out the math, and he presented his theory to his professor, John Wheeler - one of the fathers of the hydrogen bomb - and he said that there is no measurement problem, because the wave doesn't collapse. Instead - and this is important - the observer (meaning The Measurer and his measuring instrument) is part of the wave. When everything is broken down to the quantum level, all quantum systems (meaning spinning particles) are entangled with one another, and thus the entire Universe is one gigantic entangled system. There is also a condition called "superposition", in which like systems are piled upon or behind one another, like ocean waves coming in to shore one at a time. From a frog's point of view, he would only see the wave in front, but a bird would see all the successive waves lined up behind the first one.
This is my "beyond-ultra-simplified" and 0.0001% super brief explanation of Hugh Everett III's "Relative States" theory, written in 1957, which was renamed the "Many Worlds Theory" much later in the 70s or 80s (I forget which) by another physicist after the death of Everett. In short, Everett's theory stated that, first of all, the universe does not need an observer to exist. Many leading QM physicists thought otherwise (though I myself, a non-physicist, agree with Everett). I have always taken the position of a proverbial Rock Sitting In Chatsworth Park for 80 Million Years. Does that rock need me to look at it, for it to exist?
Simply put, the answer is no. That rock would still be sitting there existing even if there were no humans or any other conscious beings to observe it. That's just common sense and you don't need to be a QM genius to see that clearly. But a lot of these guys were so far out there, they thought that the existence of the universe depended, in part, upon conscious observation. Hugh Everett said no. But where his math went way off the charts was when he declared that observation does indeed produce an unusual effect on the wave function, which he believed to be all-encompassing. He believed that underlying All Reality was what he called the Universal Wave Function, everything entangled in one gigantic vibrating wave. And he believed, due to his mathematics, that if a particular observer took a measurement of the wave function from their tiny, relative space inside the wave function, that it caused the branch of reality they were living in (i.e, the Universe), to split off instantaneously into differentiating "universe branches" that encompassed every single physical possibility of a given situation. Think of coming to a fork in the road; what happens if you turn left instead of right? In Everett's system, you turn both ways, and every other way possible, into innumerably differing futures, just by making the decision to turn one single way.
Now, the You that turned a particular way is the only You that You know. But all the other versions of You exist, too. You never see them or interact with them, but according to Hugh Everett, those versions of You and the Universes they live in are just as real as this one that the "You" you know is living in right now.
All of this has to do also with the notion of probability and statistical calculations. When you came to the fork in the road, why did you decide to turn left and not right? What makes a particle move one way and not another, and can it be predicted which way it would move again if the experiment were repeated? Or if you drove to the fork again, would you still turn left? Or would you turn right this time? Everett's probabilistic math, combined with the enormity of the Universal Wave Function, says that - at some point - you (and the particle) would turn every way that is possible, and that the relative angle or perspective in the Universal Wave that you are observing from, and are entangled with, is causing a splitting effect every nanosecond of your life, resulting in uncountable split-off Universes that you are theoretically living in, in other versions of yourself.
I will shut up now, but this was Hugh Everett's vision, and he apparently had the math to back it up. Neils Bohr didn't buy it, and the Many Worlds Theory went unrecognised for decades. Everett himself died in 1982 at the age of only 52. He was a hedonist and a swinger in his personal life, a very unusual character, and he smoked, drank and ate to excess. But as the years went on, other QM physicists began to pick up on his theory. Some tried to improve it, to work out bugs that has caused giants like Bohr to disregard it. Now, according the the book's author Peter Byrne, Everett's theory has gained enough creedence in mainstream QM circles as to not only be taken seriously, but to be accepted as the most likely explanation for the reality of the Universe, that our Universe is merely one of an uncountable number due to a splitting or mirroring effect caused by observation and due to the entanglement of all of our particles with the environment that we live in.
Hugh Everett had a son named Mark. It was because Mark had all his father's papers stored in his basement that this book was made possible. Mark Everett is a musician who became famous in the 1990s as the leader of a band called The Eels. It was really his musical enterprise, he wrote all the songs and sang them. He called himself "E" (for Everett), hence the band name "Eels". The book came about because he had his Dad's papers, but the other factor is that his Dad's life was in part a tragedy. This is recounted in full in the book. Hugh Everett's excesses had a tremendously detrimental effect on his family, a story that becomes harrowing for Mark, and one that I will leave you to discover for yourself.
Though I had heard of The Eels right around the time they came out, about twenty five years ago, I had never and still have not heard any of their music (meaning Mark's music), just because it would not be my style. After 55 years of being a fan of rock music, I can tell the bands I will like. But I always remembered this guy who called himself "E". I can remember him from way back, because his image, in photographs, was so walled-off. It was like "E" had created a fortress to hide behind. He had a huge black beard, way before Millenials made them a fad, he wore dark avaitor sunglasses in every picture, and he often had a big fat cigar in his hand or mouth.
He would have been a musician I would only have encountered in perusing a newspaper or magazine, but in looking back, I remember thinking, "what's the deal with this guy"? It looks like he's hiding behind something. He's got a One Letter Name. He's got an extremely forbidding image (big cigar, beard, shades, et al), and so what's his deal"?
After reading the book about his Dad, I now now what the deal is. It is also important to know what his Dad did for a living, which was to "war game" the possibilities for winning a nuclear war. Hugh Everett made his living in this way, and the chapters in the book that are devoted to this subject are downright terrifying.
Now I will stop, but I really did want to write about this book, and about Hugh Everett (and Mark), because the Everett story is a fascinating and important one.
Hugh Everett, like many scientists, was an Atheist. To me, that is like being a technically adept musician, one who knows music theory inside out but who can't hear the magic of the notes. Someone who thinks that the mathematical relationships of the chord progressions is the magic, instead of simply feeling the emotional beauty of music and knowing instinctively, without question, that it must come from something larger than ourselves.
I could write all day about my bewilderment with the atheism of scientists. To me, God - whatever God is - is so obvious that even if you were unconscious you'd be aware of God, let alone when hearing music, or when contemplating the Universe.
But these scientists love their math, and they are geniuses at it, no doubt. In Hugh Everett's case, he was a math genius and even an intuitive genius of a rare sort, but he still couldn't get past the numbers and the statistics to see something larger. ////
That's all I know for tonight. I did watch a "Ghost Story", and it was Beyond Scary, but I got so carried away with writing about Mr. Everett that I will have to let it pass for now. We did have good singing in church this morning, and I hope you had a great day.
I will see you in the morning with tons of love sent to you through the night. xoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Now, I haven't the time nor inclination tonight to attempt to go into a long layman's explanation of my own interpretation of what I've read in the book, so to simplify matters I will just say that Hugh Everett took a radical stance against what was generally accepted in QM at the time, which was the Collapse Postulate. This axiom was held as truth by the giants of quantum theory, including Neils Bohr, who was like the God of QM. The physicists of the day could not explain why, in experiments, light beams consisting of photons sometime behaved like particles and sometimes like waves. You can Google all of this stuff if you wish, but anyway, what Everett did that was so revolutionary was that he denied the Collapse Postulate. He had worked out the math, and he presented his theory to his professor, John Wheeler - one of the fathers of the hydrogen bomb - and he said that there is no measurement problem, because the wave doesn't collapse. Instead - and this is important - the observer (meaning The Measurer and his measuring instrument) is part of the wave. When everything is broken down to the quantum level, all quantum systems (meaning spinning particles) are entangled with one another, and thus the entire Universe is one gigantic entangled system. There is also a condition called "superposition", in which like systems are piled upon or behind one another, like ocean waves coming in to shore one at a time. From a frog's point of view, he would only see the wave in front, but a bird would see all the successive waves lined up behind the first one.
This is my "beyond-ultra-simplified" and 0.0001% super brief explanation of Hugh Everett III's "Relative States" theory, written in 1957, which was renamed the "Many Worlds Theory" much later in the 70s or 80s (I forget which) by another physicist after the death of Everett. In short, Everett's theory stated that, first of all, the universe does not need an observer to exist. Many leading QM physicists thought otherwise (though I myself, a non-physicist, agree with Everett). I have always taken the position of a proverbial Rock Sitting In Chatsworth Park for 80 Million Years. Does that rock need me to look at it, for it to exist?
Simply put, the answer is no. That rock would still be sitting there existing even if there were no humans or any other conscious beings to observe it. That's just common sense and you don't need to be a QM genius to see that clearly. But a lot of these guys were so far out there, they thought that the existence of the universe depended, in part, upon conscious observation. Hugh Everett said no. But where his math went way off the charts was when he declared that observation does indeed produce an unusual effect on the wave function, which he believed to be all-encompassing. He believed that underlying All Reality was what he called the Universal Wave Function, everything entangled in one gigantic vibrating wave. And he believed, due to his mathematics, that if a particular observer took a measurement of the wave function from their tiny, relative space inside the wave function, that it caused the branch of reality they were living in (i.e, the Universe), to split off instantaneously into differentiating "universe branches" that encompassed every single physical possibility of a given situation. Think of coming to a fork in the road; what happens if you turn left instead of right? In Everett's system, you turn both ways, and every other way possible, into innumerably differing futures, just by making the decision to turn one single way.
Now, the You that turned a particular way is the only You that You know. But all the other versions of You exist, too. You never see them or interact with them, but according to Hugh Everett, those versions of You and the Universes they live in are just as real as this one that the "You" you know is living in right now.
All of this has to do also with the notion of probability and statistical calculations. When you came to the fork in the road, why did you decide to turn left and not right? What makes a particle move one way and not another, and can it be predicted which way it would move again if the experiment were repeated? Or if you drove to the fork again, would you still turn left? Or would you turn right this time? Everett's probabilistic math, combined with the enormity of the Universal Wave Function, says that - at some point - you (and the particle) would turn every way that is possible, and that the relative angle or perspective in the Universal Wave that you are observing from, and are entangled with, is causing a splitting effect every nanosecond of your life, resulting in uncountable split-off Universes that you are theoretically living in, in other versions of yourself.
I will shut up now, but this was Hugh Everett's vision, and he apparently had the math to back it up. Neils Bohr didn't buy it, and the Many Worlds Theory went unrecognised for decades. Everett himself died in 1982 at the age of only 52. He was a hedonist and a swinger in his personal life, a very unusual character, and he smoked, drank and ate to excess. But as the years went on, other QM physicists began to pick up on his theory. Some tried to improve it, to work out bugs that has caused giants like Bohr to disregard it. Now, according the the book's author Peter Byrne, Everett's theory has gained enough creedence in mainstream QM circles as to not only be taken seriously, but to be accepted as the most likely explanation for the reality of the Universe, that our Universe is merely one of an uncountable number due to a splitting or mirroring effect caused by observation and due to the entanglement of all of our particles with the environment that we live in.
Hugh Everett had a son named Mark. It was because Mark had all his father's papers stored in his basement that this book was made possible. Mark Everett is a musician who became famous in the 1990s as the leader of a band called The Eels. It was really his musical enterprise, he wrote all the songs and sang them. He called himself "E" (for Everett), hence the band name "Eels". The book came about because he had his Dad's papers, but the other factor is that his Dad's life was in part a tragedy. This is recounted in full in the book. Hugh Everett's excesses had a tremendously detrimental effect on his family, a story that becomes harrowing for Mark, and one that I will leave you to discover for yourself.
Though I had heard of The Eels right around the time they came out, about twenty five years ago, I had never and still have not heard any of their music (meaning Mark's music), just because it would not be my style. After 55 years of being a fan of rock music, I can tell the bands I will like. But I always remembered this guy who called himself "E". I can remember him from way back, because his image, in photographs, was so walled-off. It was like "E" had created a fortress to hide behind. He had a huge black beard, way before Millenials made them a fad, he wore dark avaitor sunglasses in every picture, and he often had a big fat cigar in his hand or mouth.
He would have been a musician I would only have encountered in perusing a newspaper or magazine, but in looking back, I remember thinking, "what's the deal with this guy"? It looks like he's hiding behind something. He's got a One Letter Name. He's got an extremely forbidding image (big cigar, beard, shades, et al), and so what's his deal"?
After reading the book about his Dad, I now now what the deal is. It is also important to know what his Dad did for a living, which was to "war game" the possibilities for winning a nuclear war. Hugh Everett made his living in this way, and the chapters in the book that are devoted to this subject are downright terrifying.
Now I will stop, but I really did want to write about this book, and about Hugh Everett (and Mark), because the Everett story is a fascinating and important one.
Hugh Everett, like many scientists, was an Atheist. To me, that is like being a technically adept musician, one who knows music theory inside out but who can't hear the magic of the notes. Someone who thinks that the mathematical relationships of the chord progressions is the magic, instead of simply feeling the emotional beauty of music and knowing instinctively, without question, that it must come from something larger than ourselves.
I could write all day about my bewilderment with the atheism of scientists. To me, God - whatever God is - is so obvious that even if you were unconscious you'd be aware of God, let alone when hearing music, or when contemplating the Universe.
But these scientists love their math, and they are geniuses at it, no doubt. In Hugh Everett's case, he was a math genius and even an intuitive genius of a rare sort, but he still couldn't get past the numbers and the statistics to see something larger. ////
That's all I know for tonight. I did watch a "Ghost Story", and it was Beyond Scary, but I got so carried away with writing about Mr. Everett that I will have to let it pass for now. We did have good singing in church this morning, and I hope you had a great day.
I will see you in the morning with tons of love sent to you through the night. xoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Sunday, May 19, 2019
"Tales Of Tomorrow" starring Lee J. Cobb + King's X + Hugh Everett III
Tonight was a TV night, with an episode of "High Chaparral" followed by a "Tales Of Tomorrow". In the latter show, Lee J. Cobb is the multimillionaire head of an undetermined company. He is Bill Gates Rich, and he has a dream to be the first man in space. The year is 1951, so the launch of Sputnik is still six years away and it will be ten years til Yuri Gagarin actually does become the first man. But Cobb is determined to do it in 1951 and he's got the dough to make it happen. He is typical Lee J. Cobb in this show - loudmouthed, broadshouldered, smoking a cigar.....and being a great actor. Except at the very beginning of the show, and this is both interesting and funny. "Tales" was run live, as were many shows of the early TV era, meaning that the show was happening as the home audience was watching it, just like a play. But unlike a play, it seems that the actors on this show may not have had much time to rehearse, because lines are occasionally flubbed. This happens to Lee J. Cobb right after the episode begins. An onscreen map of outer space is showing the troposphere with the ring of the stratosphere above it. Cobb is describing to his accountant how his proposed rocket will blast through the upper layers of the atmosphere and into space, but he flubs his lines so badly that there are multiple pauses in the dialogue. The screen is showing "troposphere" but Cobb can't get the word out of his mouth, so he eventually just bypasses it and chucks that whole section of his speech.
It's mildly amusing to see, but moreso it is indicative of the live nature of early television. Most of the actors on these episodes (I've seen three so far) have been thoroughly prepared, but a few, like Cobb, may have come into the studio thinking they could wing it, and it didn't work out that way.
Having said that, he quickly recovered and was great, in typical Lee J. Cobb fashion (bullying people, throwing his weight around) for the rest of the show. He is confronted by his accountant (who would be called a comptroller nowdays) about his spending of the company's funds. Cobb has already allocated millions for the rocket itself, and now he is mortgaging the future of the company by selling off it's stock to raise 100 million more to devise an engine and the required fuel type. They have to go to the freakin' Congo to get some of the minerals. And the show is only a half hour long.
Cobb is like Trump. Things have to be his way or else. And he's loaded, and financially reckless. His ego is all that matters to him. Finally a scientist appears who can build him the proper engine for his rocket. The guy says he is from London, but he seems a little squirrely. He doesn't have any models for his engine, or any mathematical presentation. All he does is to show Cobb the properties of magnetism by pulling out two magnets and then placing them "pole opposite" and "pole similar". The opposites attract and the similars push apart. This is his formula for rocket propulsion, and it's pretty trippy for 1951 because it would be many decades before the theory of electrogravitics, as devised by T. Townsend Brown, made it into the mainstream science conversation. Long story short, Cobb hires this weird guy to build his engine and formulate the fuel for it, but the guy has two conditions : 1) That he be left alone to do his work (which is very hard for a meddler like Cobb), and 2) That he be allowed to pilot the test flight of the rocket. The guy seems to know his stuff, so Cobb agrees to his terms. Meanwhile, his accountant and the board of directors are cracking down, threatening to cut off the funding of the project and even to force Cobb out of the company.
Finally, the rocket is built and all systems are go. It is Zero Hour on the launch pad, and despite last minute pressure from the board members, Cobb is ready to head out into space. As he puts it, all the expenditure has been worth it, because he "will soon own the world". He is truly Trumpian in his megalomania.
However, there is a twist after the rocket is launched and has passed through the ionosphere. Cobb and his pilot are now the first men in space, but........(omg and holy smokes)......
I guessed what was gonna happen and you might, too, but man, you've gotta see this show!
I recommend that you order you the entire "Tales Of Tomorrow : Collection One" from Amazon. If you love 1950's Sci-Fi as much as I do you won't be disappointed. These shows really push the boundaries, they were made just six years after Hiroshima and the end of WW2, and at the same time as the world emerged into the Space Age. The scripts are fearless and non-PC. Political correctness wouldn't even have been a concern in so dangerous a time, and a guy like Trump would have had his ass handed to him before he had a chance to establish himself, unlike today in our pussyfooting times of "let's not impeach him".
Sorry, I didn't mean to go off on a Trump tangent, but yeah, this is such a great show that you've gotta see it. And I didn't mean to shortchange "High Chaparral" because that show is a Western of the highest order, with motion picture caliber acting and production values. But I've already described so many Western scenarios that I thought I'd give the more edgy "Tales Of Tomorrow" episode the featured write up here. ///
I finished two books today : "King's X, The Oral History", which is one of the most comprehensive books I've ever read about any band. If you are even a marginal fan of KX you should read it. Certain music by certain people can change your life. My life was permanently changed by this band. For their first six albums they are as great as The Beatles, and I say that about no one else.
Listen to King's X. ////
The other book I finished was "The Many Worlds of Hugh Everett III". Last year I began reading about "eccentric physicists" with the extraordinary biography of Paul Dirac, and this year I have read the story of Hugh Everett and what became known after his death as the "Many Worlds" theory. This book has been incredibly interesting because it covers Everett's personal life and that of his family as well as giving a comprehensive revue of his theory, and so much more.
I'd like to go into it just a little bit further tomorrow night, if I am not too tired.
For tonight, I send you love and I will sign off because I have church in the morning.
See you there. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
It's mildly amusing to see, but moreso it is indicative of the live nature of early television. Most of the actors on these episodes (I've seen three so far) have been thoroughly prepared, but a few, like Cobb, may have come into the studio thinking they could wing it, and it didn't work out that way.
Having said that, he quickly recovered and was great, in typical Lee J. Cobb fashion (bullying people, throwing his weight around) for the rest of the show. He is confronted by his accountant (who would be called a comptroller nowdays) about his spending of the company's funds. Cobb has already allocated millions for the rocket itself, and now he is mortgaging the future of the company by selling off it's stock to raise 100 million more to devise an engine and the required fuel type. They have to go to the freakin' Congo to get some of the minerals. And the show is only a half hour long.
Cobb is like Trump. Things have to be his way or else. And he's loaded, and financially reckless. His ego is all that matters to him. Finally a scientist appears who can build him the proper engine for his rocket. The guy says he is from London, but he seems a little squirrely. He doesn't have any models for his engine, or any mathematical presentation. All he does is to show Cobb the properties of magnetism by pulling out two magnets and then placing them "pole opposite" and "pole similar". The opposites attract and the similars push apart. This is his formula for rocket propulsion, and it's pretty trippy for 1951 because it would be many decades before the theory of electrogravitics, as devised by T. Townsend Brown, made it into the mainstream science conversation. Long story short, Cobb hires this weird guy to build his engine and formulate the fuel for it, but the guy has two conditions : 1) That he be left alone to do his work (which is very hard for a meddler like Cobb), and 2) That he be allowed to pilot the test flight of the rocket. The guy seems to know his stuff, so Cobb agrees to his terms. Meanwhile, his accountant and the board of directors are cracking down, threatening to cut off the funding of the project and even to force Cobb out of the company.
Finally, the rocket is built and all systems are go. It is Zero Hour on the launch pad, and despite last minute pressure from the board members, Cobb is ready to head out into space. As he puts it, all the expenditure has been worth it, because he "will soon own the world". He is truly Trumpian in his megalomania.
However, there is a twist after the rocket is launched and has passed through the ionosphere. Cobb and his pilot are now the first men in space, but........(omg and holy smokes)......
I guessed what was gonna happen and you might, too, but man, you've gotta see this show!
I recommend that you order you the entire "Tales Of Tomorrow : Collection One" from Amazon. If you love 1950's Sci-Fi as much as I do you won't be disappointed. These shows really push the boundaries, they were made just six years after Hiroshima and the end of WW2, and at the same time as the world emerged into the Space Age. The scripts are fearless and non-PC. Political correctness wouldn't even have been a concern in so dangerous a time, and a guy like Trump would have had his ass handed to him before he had a chance to establish himself, unlike today in our pussyfooting times of "let's not impeach him".
Sorry, I didn't mean to go off on a Trump tangent, but yeah, this is such a great show that you've gotta see it. And I didn't mean to shortchange "High Chaparral" because that show is a Western of the highest order, with motion picture caliber acting and production values. But I've already described so many Western scenarios that I thought I'd give the more edgy "Tales Of Tomorrow" episode the featured write up here. ///
I finished two books today : "King's X, The Oral History", which is one of the most comprehensive books I've ever read about any band. If you are even a marginal fan of KX you should read it. Certain music by certain people can change your life. My life was permanently changed by this band. For their first six albums they are as great as The Beatles, and I say that about no one else.
Listen to King's X. ////
The other book I finished was "The Many Worlds of Hugh Everett III". Last year I began reading about "eccentric physicists" with the extraordinary biography of Paul Dirac, and this year I have read the story of Hugh Everett and what became known after his death as the "Many Worlds" theory. This book has been incredibly interesting because it covers Everett's personal life and that of his family as well as giving a comprehensive revue of his theory, and so much more.
I'd like to go into it just a little bit further tomorrow night, if I am not too tired.
For tonight, I send you love and I will sign off because I have church in the morning.
See you there. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Saturday, May 18, 2019
"Murder In The Private Car" starring Charles Ruggles and Una Merkel + Early Movies & Movie Stars
Tonight I watched an early Hollywood comedy called "Murder In The Private Car" (1934), starring Charles Ruggles and Una Merkel. I found this flick in my recent search for "Warner Archives" titles, and though it is an entertainment picture and strictly for fun, I found it to be a gem, another of the little known treasures I have discovered in recent weeks (like "Soldier In The Rain").
Mary Carlisle and Una Merkel are two platinum blonde cuties, 1930s style, who are stuck working the switchboard for an undisclosed company in Los Angeles. Like all '30s chicks, they can talk a blue streak but are bored silly with the job. Suddenly, the boss calls Miss Carlisle into his office. A lawyer is present. He informs her that she is the long lost daughter of the sixth wealthiest man in the country. My goodness and Holy Smokerinos, folks! She can't believe her good fortune, but the lawyer urges caution. He tells her that her father - whom she thought was dead - has arranged for her to take a train trip to New York, accompanied by the lawyer, where he will meet the two of them and introduce his daughter to her new life of wealth. She is excited to go, and takes her fun loving and vivacious pal Merkel with her.
Lurking on the sidelines is the dithering Charlie Ruggles, a mumble-mouthed double talking comedian with a style that surely must've influenced guys like the late Tim Conway and the actor who played "Hank Kimball" on "Green Acres". Ruggles is a riot, playing what you would call a competent nitwit.
He claims to be onboard the train to protect Miss Carlisle, stating his profession as a crime "deflector" rather than a detective. Ruggles and Una Merkel were comedic pros of the highest level who could talk so fast and say so many things under their breath that in this case tonight I had to hit the pause button a few times and replay a line of dialogue so I didn't miss anything.
The movie is only 63 minutes long, so I'll not give a blow-by-blow account, but I enjoyed it from start to finish. There wasn't a dull moment in the film. On one hand, it is the type of Old Hollywood Whodunit, a storyline for mystery movies that was in use during the early days when camera techniques were still being developed, and location shooting was limited. In those days, it was easier to just group everyone into a single setting, like an old mansion or a train, and then let the "whodunit" mystery play itself out. And this is what happens here. But you have a train wreck up ahead, of a circus train, that comes out of nowhere and all of a sudden our group has to deal with an escaped gorilla. So the movie has a zany aspect, where you don't know what will happen next.
There is of course a killer on board, a saboteur who wants to prevent Mary Carlisle from reuniting with her father. He makes his presence felt at random times, in ways that terrify the young ladies. The story provides us with a handful of suspects, a device that was often used in the "roomful of people" crime scenario that I described above. You may be able to guess whodunit, but it's more fun to not try, just let it play out instead. The best part of the whole movie is the last fifteen minutes, which unfolds in a spectacular way, especially considering the era in which the film was made. I don't want to reveal too much, but I did mention a saboteur (did I not?)........
So the ending will result in a very effective, suspenseful and well edited train sequence reminiscent of the movie "Speed". The reminiscence should actually be the other way around, because "Murder In A Private Car" was made sixty years earlier, and is now 85 years old.
I found myself thinking, "Boy, I'll bet that one made a lot of money", just because it was so well done from beginning to end. The goal of Early Hollywood was to entertain and get people into the theater to see and hear these new "sound" pictures. I mean, the goal has always been to entertain and sell tickets, but in the early days, the actors were often veterans of the stage, and so their performances had an immediacy, a live feel, that added excitement and energy to what was often a formulaic story. It is sometimes said that the actors of today are the best ever, because they are trained in Method and portray realistic and therefore recognizable characters, and there is some truth to that argument.
But it is also true to say that the actors of yesteryear were incredibly talented in their own right. Many, like Charlie Ruggles or Una Merkel, were professionals who began early in film but who had the comedic timing of stage actors, while others were novices who were chosen for their looks.
But they were making it up as they went along, because movies were a new thing. Even in 1934, the entire art form was only twenty or so years old, and sound films had only existed for five years.
So when you watch these early films and you see the whip-crack comedic timing and line reading, it blows you away if you are really paying attention. I know most folks would just watch as "regular audience" members and not analyse everything, which is fine. I watch all my movies the same way.
But I guess because I grew up with a Hollywood Dad who worked in the business, and then because I worked at MGM myself for a couple of years, I developed an interest in Hollywood movies that has grown over the years, and now I watch as many of the old movies as I can, and I am really appreciating the talents of the early actresses and actors.
In their way, they were equally as talented as the realistic actors of today.
But even more, they were Showbiz People who came from the stage. They knew the whole idea of projecting a performance, of "putting on a show", and in this way, they invented what it means to be a Movie Star.
I love the Movie Stars, and I say God Bless Them for their talent and what they gave to the world by telling stories and entertaining people. They are all gone now, but their movies live on. I didn't discover them until I was about 45 or so, but now I watch one almost every night.
As with classical music, I urge you to give old movies a chance. The style may be something you aren't used to, but - as with classical music - if you give it a chance you just may discover a treasure chest that, once opened, will provide years and years of meaningful pleasure. /////
That's all for tonight. I send you love and will see you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Mary Carlisle and Una Merkel are two platinum blonde cuties, 1930s style, who are stuck working the switchboard for an undisclosed company in Los Angeles. Like all '30s chicks, they can talk a blue streak but are bored silly with the job. Suddenly, the boss calls Miss Carlisle into his office. A lawyer is present. He informs her that she is the long lost daughter of the sixth wealthiest man in the country. My goodness and Holy Smokerinos, folks! She can't believe her good fortune, but the lawyer urges caution. He tells her that her father - whom she thought was dead - has arranged for her to take a train trip to New York, accompanied by the lawyer, where he will meet the two of them and introduce his daughter to her new life of wealth. She is excited to go, and takes her fun loving and vivacious pal Merkel with her.
Lurking on the sidelines is the dithering Charlie Ruggles, a mumble-mouthed double talking comedian with a style that surely must've influenced guys like the late Tim Conway and the actor who played "Hank Kimball" on "Green Acres". Ruggles is a riot, playing what you would call a competent nitwit.
He claims to be onboard the train to protect Miss Carlisle, stating his profession as a crime "deflector" rather than a detective. Ruggles and Una Merkel were comedic pros of the highest level who could talk so fast and say so many things under their breath that in this case tonight I had to hit the pause button a few times and replay a line of dialogue so I didn't miss anything.
The movie is only 63 minutes long, so I'll not give a blow-by-blow account, but I enjoyed it from start to finish. There wasn't a dull moment in the film. On one hand, it is the type of Old Hollywood Whodunit, a storyline for mystery movies that was in use during the early days when camera techniques were still being developed, and location shooting was limited. In those days, it was easier to just group everyone into a single setting, like an old mansion or a train, and then let the "whodunit" mystery play itself out. And this is what happens here. But you have a train wreck up ahead, of a circus train, that comes out of nowhere and all of a sudden our group has to deal with an escaped gorilla. So the movie has a zany aspect, where you don't know what will happen next.
There is of course a killer on board, a saboteur who wants to prevent Mary Carlisle from reuniting with her father. He makes his presence felt at random times, in ways that terrify the young ladies. The story provides us with a handful of suspects, a device that was often used in the "roomful of people" crime scenario that I described above. You may be able to guess whodunit, but it's more fun to not try, just let it play out instead. The best part of the whole movie is the last fifteen minutes, which unfolds in a spectacular way, especially considering the era in which the film was made. I don't want to reveal too much, but I did mention a saboteur (did I not?)........
So the ending will result in a very effective, suspenseful and well edited train sequence reminiscent of the movie "Speed". The reminiscence should actually be the other way around, because "Murder In A Private Car" was made sixty years earlier, and is now 85 years old.
I found myself thinking, "Boy, I'll bet that one made a lot of money", just because it was so well done from beginning to end. The goal of Early Hollywood was to entertain and get people into the theater to see and hear these new "sound" pictures. I mean, the goal has always been to entertain and sell tickets, but in the early days, the actors were often veterans of the stage, and so their performances had an immediacy, a live feel, that added excitement and energy to what was often a formulaic story. It is sometimes said that the actors of today are the best ever, because they are trained in Method and portray realistic and therefore recognizable characters, and there is some truth to that argument.
But it is also true to say that the actors of yesteryear were incredibly talented in their own right. Many, like Charlie Ruggles or Una Merkel, were professionals who began early in film but who had the comedic timing of stage actors, while others were novices who were chosen for their looks.
But they were making it up as they went along, because movies were a new thing. Even in 1934, the entire art form was only twenty or so years old, and sound films had only existed for five years.
So when you watch these early films and you see the whip-crack comedic timing and line reading, it blows you away if you are really paying attention. I know most folks would just watch as "regular audience" members and not analyse everything, which is fine. I watch all my movies the same way.
But I guess because I grew up with a Hollywood Dad who worked in the business, and then because I worked at MGM myself for a couple of years, I developed an interest in Hollywood movies that has grown over the years, and now I watch as many of the old movies as I can, and I am really appreciating the talents of the early actresses and actors.
In their way, they were equally as talented as the realistic actors of today.
But even more, they were Showbiz People who came from the stage. They knew the whole idea of projecting a performance, of "putting on a show", and in this way, they invented what it means to be a Movie Star.
I love the Movie Stars, and I say God Bless Them for their talent and what they gave to the world by telling stories and entertaining people. They are all gone now, but their movies live on. I didn't discover them until I was about 45 or so, but now I watch one almost every night.
As with classical music, I urge you to give old movies a chance. The style may be something you aren't used to, but - as with classical music - if you give it a chance you just may discover a treasure chest that, once opened, will provide years and years of meaningful pleasure. /////
That's all for tonight. I send you love and will see you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Friday, May 17, 2019
"The Actress" starring Jean Simmons + The Three Arts Club + Mahler
I've been listening to Mahler symphonies lately while I write these blogs. Tonight is #4, conducted by Leonard Bernstein. Give Mahler a listen if you are so inclined, and definitely listen to his Lieder as sung by Janet Baker. Wow what a voice.
Tonight's movie was called "The Actress" (1953), starring Jean Simmons, Spencer Tracy, Teresa Wright and Anthony Perkins. Now that is a powerhouse cast and it is put to good use by legendary director George Cukor. The movie is based on a play written by an actress named Ruth Gordon, whom modern audiences know from "Rosemary's Baby" and especially the cult film "Harold and Maude". But there was much more to Gordon's career than these two movies, made when she was a senior citizen, and most of it happened in the 1930s. In addiiton to making movies she was a prolific stage actress, and this is what the movie is about, her dream to be on the stage, beginning when she saw the real life thespian Hazel Dawn perform live in a play. Gordon was a teenager when this happened. She was so enamored of Miss Dawn that she wrote her a letter asking for advice on how to become an actress herself. I was surprised to find, upon IMDBing Hazel Dawn, that she was a real person. This adds authenticity to Gordon's story. And Miss Dawn wrote her back, inviting her to her dressing room before a show, so Gordon could observe the actress at work, first hand. This proved to be the turning point in her life, but her dream was nearly derailed because of the acrimony she experienced at home.
The year is 1913. Gordon's full name is Ruth Gordon Jones (her real name). She is played as a free spirit by the talented Jean Simmons. She is 17 and her whole existence is consumed by her desire to act. Her school friends know all about this and so does her supportive Mom (Teresa Wright), but she can't tell her father because he is a practical man who believes in education and work. He had been a sea captain for most of his life but is now reduced to working in a factory for low wages. The family lives in Boston in a small house, barely making ends meet. Spencer Tracy gives an excellent performance as the father. He belongs to a local gymnasium and has connections to get his daughter a job as a phys-ed teacher. He can't understand why she doesn't want to do this. The pay is good. It's a steady job.....
He doesn't understand that his daughter has an artistic soul, so he fights against her desire to move to New York to follow her dream. Later in the movie we will learn more about the father's life, which will explain why he feels this way. This is a dramatic moment in the film which really changes the tone and gives the story some gravity.
I was having a problem with "The Actress" for the first 30 minutes or so, because it seemed too "stagey" for my liking. Spencer Tracy as the father was supposed to be a gruff prick on the surface though kindhearted in soul, but the trouble was that there was way too much dialogue crammed in to every scene and every interaction in the household between Tracy, Wright (playing his wife) and Simmons. Every line was rattled off so fast, and the conversation so filled with early 20th century colloquialisms, that I actually had difficulty following what the actors were saying. I got the gist of it of course, but I wasn't paying rock solid attention because the rapid fire talk and shifting emotionalism made it hard to do so. It felt somewhat like a claustrophobic Woody Allen scenario, where everyone is living in close quarters in a tenement and is slightly bonkers.
Things picked up in the second act, however, when Simmons' prospects for an audition begin to materialize. Anthony Perkins shows up in a classic 1913 Roadster, looking to date Jean Simmons. He is headed off to Harvard and also can't understand why she wouldn't want to simply marry him and follow his prospects. After all, he is a man and this is the way things work. But even in 1913, things were changing for women, and I suppose they always have been. I mean, look at Cleopatra. Women's Lib is nothing new (and because of today's news I should add that the war against women is still going strong, unfortunately). Ruth Gordon's message is a simple and eternal one : never give up on your dreams, for any reason. Period!
Once the histrionics died down and the movie settled into a discernible plot, my attention was restored and I wound up liking it for it's honesty in portraying the artist's predicament in a world dedicated to commerce. How does a creative person proceed when every force in society is set against her?
Ruth Gordon found her answer - creative people survive by aligning with other creative people, and by having heroes to be inspired by, and by believing in the magic of their art.
The message of "The Actress" is wonderful, and it is because of the message and the latter half of the film that I will relent and give it Two Thumbs Up. I was at first only going to give One and a Half Thumbs, but Two Thumbs it is. My heart was also melted when the Ruth Gordon character mentions to her father that she has a room lined up in New York, a place to stay.
This was at The Three Arts Club, which was a chain of Art School Boarding Houses for creatively inclined young women.
My Mom stayed at The Three Arts Club in Cincinnati in the early 1940s. She had been a drama student in high school and might've had acting aspirations. For a young person, it is often difficult to know exactly what one wants to do with their life. Mom was on her own at age 17, having lost both her parents, and she wound up at The Three Arts Club, before getting a job a WLW radio station later on.
She used to Talk about her time at The Three Arts Club a lot, so when I heard it mentioned in the movie, it melted me. That convinced me to give it Two Thumbs, though it is a good film anyway. Just a little hard to follow in the first half hour. ///
That's all I know for tonight. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Tonight's movie was called "The Actress" (1953), starring Jean Simmons, Spencer Tracy, Teresa Wright and Anthony Perkins. Now that is a powerhouse cast and it is put to good use by legendary director George Cukor. The movie is based on a play written by an actress named Ruth Gordon, whom modern audiences know from "Rosemary's Baby" and especially the cult film "Harold and Maude". But there was much more to Gordon's career than these two movies, made when she was a senior citizen, and most of it happened in the 1930s. In addiiton to making movies she was a prolific stage actress, and this is what the movie is about, her dream to be on the stage, beginning when she saw the real life thespian Hazel Dawn perform live in a play. Gordon was a teenager when this happened. She was so enamored of Miss Dawn that she wrote her a letter asking for advice on how to become an actress herself. I was surprised to find, upon IMDBing Hazel Dawn, that she was a real person. This adds authenticity to Gordon's story. And Miss Dawn wrote her back, inviting her to her dressing room before a show, so Gordon could observe the actress at work, first hand. This proved to be the turning point in her life, but her dream was nearly derailed because of the acrimony she experienced at home.
The year is 1913. Gordon's full name is Ruth Gordon Jones (her real name). She is played as a free spirit by the talented Jean Simmons. She is 17 and her whole existence is consumed by her desire to act. Her school friends know all about this and so does her supportive Mom (Teresa Wright), but she can't tell her father because he is a practical man who believes in education and work. He had been a sea captain for most of his life but is now reduced to working in a factory for low wages. The family lives in Boston in a small house, barely making ends meet. Spencer Tracy gives an excellent performance as the father. He belongs to a local gymnasium and has connections to get his daughter a job as a phys-ed teacher. He can't understand why she doesn't want to do this. The pay is good. It's a steady job.....
He doesn't understand that his daughter has an artistic soul, so he fights against her desire to move to New York to follow her dream. Later in the movie we will learn more about the father's life, which will explain why he feels this way. This is a dramatic moment in the film which really changes the tone and gives the story some gravity.
I was having a problem with "The Actress" for the first 30 minutes or so, because it seemed too "stagey" for my liking. Spencer Tracy as the father was supposed to be a gruff prick on the surface though kindhearted in soul, but the trouble was that there was way too much dialogue crammed in to every scene and every interaction in the household between Tracy, Wright (playing his wife) and Simmons. Every line was rattled off so fast, and the conversation so filled with early 20th century colloquialisms, that I actually had difficulty following what the actors were saying. I got the gist of it of course, but I wasn't paying rock solid attention because the rapid fire talk and shifting emotionalism made it hard to do so. It felt somewhat like a claustrophobic Woody Allen scenario, where everyone is living in close quarters in a tenement and is slightly bonkers.
Things picked up in the second act, however, when Simmons' prospects for an audition begin to materialize. Anthony Perkins shows up in a classic 1913 Roadster, looking to date Jean Simmons. He is headed off to Harvard and also can't understand why she wouldn't want to simply marry him and follow his prospects. After all, he is a man and this is the way things work. But even in 1913, things were changing for women, and I suppose they always have been. I mean, look at Cleopatra. Women's Lib is nothing new (and because of today's news I should add that the war against women is still going strong, unfortunately). Ruth Gordon's message is a simple and eternal one : never give up on your dreams, for any reason. Period!
Once the histrionics died down and the movie settled into a discernible plot, my attention was restored and I wound up liking it for it's honesty in portraying the artist's predicament in a world dedicated to commerce. How does a creative person proceed when every force in society is set against her?
Ruth Gordon found her answer - creative people survive by aligning with other creative people, and by having heroes to be inspired by, and by believing in the magic of their art.
The message of "The Actress" is wonderful, and it is because of the message and the latter half of the film that I will relent and give it Two Thumbs Up. I was at first only going to give One and a Half Thumbs, but Two Thumbs it is. My heart was also melted when the Ruth Gordon character mentions to her father that she has a room lined up in New York, a place to stay.
This was at The Three Arts Club, which was a chain of Art School Boarding Houses for creatively inclined young women.
My Mom stayed at The Three Arts Club in Cincinnati in the early 1940s. She had been a drama student in high school and might've had acting aspirations. For a young person, it is often difficult to know exactly what one wants to do with their life. Mom was on her own at age 17, having lost both her parents, and she wound up at The Three Arts Club, before getting a job a WLW radio station later on.
She used to Talk about her time at The Three Arts Club a lot, so when I heard it mentioned in the movie, it melted me. That convinced me to give it Two Thumbs, though it is a good film anyway. Just a little hard to follow in the first half hour. ///
That's all I know for tonight. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Thursday, May 16, 2019
"Museo", an excellent Heist Movie seen at CSUN tonight
Tonight I went back to the Armer Theater at CSUN for the final Cinematheque screening of the semester, of a film called "Museo" (2018), directed by Alonso Ruizpalacios and starring Gael Garcia Bernal. On the surface it is a "heist" picture that tells a fictionalised version of an actual museum robbery in Mexico City in 1985. Thieves broke into an anthropological museum and stole 140 priceless artifacts from the Mayan era.
In the movie, the heist is not the centerpiece, which sets "Museo" apart in it's format from other classics of the genre like "Rififi" or "The Killing". Much of the plot in those films is dedicated to the planning of the crime, which must be meticulous. In "Museo", we are shown no planning at all. Garcia Bernal works briefly at the museum as a photographic assistant and has access to the layout and security procedures, but his plans are kept to himself as he loafs around his parents' house at Christmastime. He is 40 in real life, so I assume his character is meant to be roughly the same age, and he still lives at home. He spends his time playing video games with his nieces and nephews who are over for the holiday, and trading insults with his married older sister who sees him as a washout. Little does she know what is going on inside his head.
Bernal has a friend, a dog groomer who is more responsible than he, but who is also very passive. He is the one person Bernal can boss around and feel superior to. All of a sudden, on Christmas Eve, Bernal calls him up and says "it has to be tonight"! He means the museum robbery, which we have thus far only been given hints of. It has to be tonight because Bernal has just heard on the news that a renovation of the museum is set to begin the day after Christmas. Crews will be constantly on site and their caper will not be possible at that point. So it's Christmas Eve or else. The dog groomer's father is terminally ill and he doesn't want to leave him, but Bernal insists, and he badgers his friend into compliance.
The heist itself is artfully shot and edited (the movie is in widescreen), and features technical tricks that a robber would have to know how to execute in order to pry the artifacts loose from their plexiglass presentation boxes. This whole sequence is great stuff and would fit in even in a "Mission Impossible" movie. It turns out that Gael Garcia Bernal is no dumbell after all.
But he is immature, and this is what the movie is really about. The heist takes place early on. But now what? What are these two crafty but shiftless young men gonna do now that they've gotten away with their crime and have this irreplaceable loot in their possession? The heist is all over the news and the cultural community is aghast at the loss. The young men have a fence who has ostensibly agreed to help them, but he also has to be pressured to honor his commitment. The fence knows a wealthy patron of the arts who may want to buy the artifacts. Maybe.
He turns out to be a middle aged expatriate English prick with a seaside estate. The guys are in over their heads trying to do business with him. He tells them what should have been obvious, that their loot is unsellable because of the heat that has come down on the robbery.
Now what are they gonna do? The dog groomer wants to go back home to his ailing father. Bernal tries to berate him once more into continuing on with their attempt to fence the goods, but it doesn't work. The dog groomer leaves and now Bernal is on his own. Unable to work without a foil, he will retreat into a fantasy world, his dream of meeting his favorite movie star (a fading B Actress), that will bring about his downfall.
"Museo" is really a spectacular film, a road movie in a way, and in that respect it works well with Bernal as it's star because of his charisma in other road oriented films such as "Y Tu Mama Tambien" and "The Motorcycle Diaries". Also, it is extremely well made in every respect. The cinematography is reminiscent of the European art films of the 1960s, the direction is well paced and the script is layered with underlying commentary on the Mexican class struggle and the whole question of whether or
not museums in and of themselves, as institutions, have the right to display artifacts from past cultures, to displace them from their original locations to show them to the public. This argument is presented with both sides given a fair hearing. Should archaeology be outlawed? If that had happened then all of the treasures discovered to date would still lie under the earth and no one would have ever seen them. We would never have learned about Egyptian culture, for instance. Professor Dianah, who hosted this semester's Cinematheque, summed it up best when she said that maybe the digging isn't the problem but rather that each culture's treasures should be held by their own countries' museums, and I agree with that.
But yes! Two Huge and Gigantic Thumbs Up for "Museo". They are gonna have to add a Fourth Amigo to the trio of Cuaron, Inarritu and Del Toro, and his name is Alfonso Ruizpalacios.
He is as good a filmmaker as the others, and I am glad I went to the Armer tonight to see his film "Museo". I give it my highest recommendation. ////
That's all for tonight. See you in the morning with much love sent as always, in between.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
In the movie, the heist is not the centerpiece, which sets "Museo" apart in it's format from other classics of the genre like "Rififi" or "The Killing". Much of the plot in those films is dedicated to the planning of the crime, which must be meticulous. In "Museo", we are shown no planning at all. Garcia Bernal works briefly at the museum as a photographic assistant and has access to the layout and security procedures, but his plans are kept to himself as he loafs around his parents' house at Christmastime. He is 40 in real life, so I assume his character is meant to be roughly the same age, and he still lives at home. He spends his time playing video games with his nieces and nephews who are over for the holiday, and trading insults with his married older sister who sees him as a washout. Little does she know what is going on inside his head.
Bernal has a friend, a dog groomer who is more responsible than he, but who is also very passive. He is the one person Bernal can boss around and feel superior to. All of a sudden, on Christmas Eve, Bernal calls him up and says "it has to be tonight"! He means the museum robbery, which we have thus far only been given hints of. It has to be tonight because Bernal has just heard on the news that a renovation of the museum is set to begin the day after Christmas. Crews will be constantly on site and their caper will not be possible at that point. So it's Christmas Eve or else. The dog groomer's father is terminally ill and he doesn't want to leave him, but Bernal insists, and he badgers his friend into compliance.
The heist itself is artfully shot and edited (the movie is in widescreen), and features technical tricks that a robber would have to know how to execute in order to pry the artifacts loose from their plexiglass presentation boxes. This whole sequence is great stuff and would fit in even in a "Mission Impossible" movie. It turns out that Gael Garcia Bernal is no dumbell after all.
But he is immature, and this is what the movie is really about. The heist takes place early on. But now what? What are these two crafty but shiftless young men gonna do now that they've gotten away with their crime and have this irreplaceable loot in their possession? The heist is all over the news and the cultural community is aghast at the loss. The young men have a fence who has ostensibly agreed to help them, but he also has to be pressured to honor his commitment. The fence knows a wealthy patron of the arts who may want to buy the artifacts. Maybe.
He turns out to be a middle aged expatriate English prick with a seaside estate. The guys are in over their heads trying to do business with him. He tells them what should have been obvious, that their loot is unsellable because of the heat that has come down on the robbery.
Now what are they gonna do? The dog groomer wants to go back home to his ailing father. Bernal tries to berate him once more into continuing on with their attempt to fence the goods, but it doesn't work. The dog groomer leaves and now Bernal is on his own. Unable to work without a foil, he will retreat into a fantasy world, his dream of meeting his favorite movie star (a fading B Actress), that will bring about his downfall.
"Museo" is really a spectacular film, a road movie in a way, and in that respect it works well with Bernal as it's star because of his charisma in other road oriented films such as "Y Tu Mama Tambien" and "The Motorcycle Diaries". Also, it is extremely well made in every respect. The cinematography is reminiscent of the European art films of the 1960s, the direction is well paced and the script is layered with underlying commentary on the Mexican class struggle and the whole question of whether or
not museums in and of themselves, as institutions, have the right to display artifacts from past cultures, to displace them from their original locations to show them to the public. This argument is presented with both sides given a fair hearing. Should archaeology be outlawed? If that had happened then all of the treasures discovered to date would still lie under the earth and no one would have ever seen them. We would never have learned about Egyptian culture, for instance. Professor Dianah, who hosted this semester's Cinematheque, summed it up best when she said that maybe the digging isn't the problem but rather that each culture's treasures should be held by their own countries' museums, and I agree with that.
But yes! Two Huge and Gigantic Thumbs Up for "Museo". They are gonna have to add a Fourth Amigo to the trio of Cuaron, Inarritu and Del Toro, and his name is Alfonso Ruizpalacios.
He is as good a filmmaker as the others, and I am glad I went to the Armer tonight to see his film "Museo". I give it my highest recommendation. ////
That's all for tonight. See you in the morning with much love sent as always, in between.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Wednesday, May 15, 2019
"Chain Lightning" starring Humphrey Bogart and Eleanor Parker
Tonight's movie was called "Chain Lightning" (1950) and starred.......(hmmm, let's see, who did it star?)......oh yeah, that's right it starred Humphrey Bogart. Who'd ya think it starred? I will have to go over to IMDB, maybe tomorrow, and try to figure out how many Bogie movies I have seen and how many more I still have to go. Anyway, "Chain Lightning" was a good one. Bogart plays an Air Force Test Pilot who is qualifying a new supersonic jet so that it can be okayed for manufacture. The jet resembles Chuck Yeager's Bell X-1 and is capable of Mach Two. Bogie's girlfriend is the beautiful Eleanor Parker. She doesn't want him to keep flying because the tests are becoming more and more dangerous, but flying is what he lives for so she puts up with it.
The story begins with his final test flight and is told in flashback after that. Bogart's Air Force career started in WW2, where he flew B-17 Flying Fortresses over Germany. He happens to meet the designer of that famous bomber and complains to him about weaknesses in it's design. Because the script is half romance, we see Bogie proposing marriage to Parker the night before a fateful mission. The next thing we know, the story fast forwards to postwar. Now Humphrey is out of the service and is trying to make ends meet by running a small flight school out in the sticks. He runs into an old wartime buddy (James Brown......no, not that James Brown), who is still in the Air Force but in peacetime mode, and this friend has connections to the new flight research being undertaken in the dawning Jet Age.
Bogie is interested in learning more, and of course the friend's main connection turns out to be the guy who designed the B-17 who Bogie met six years ago during the war. He didn't like the guy then. But the designer is now working on a supersonic jet and he has a backer, a very wealthy aerospace manufacturer clearly based on Howard Hughes and played by Raymond Massey. The designer is ready to recommend Humphrey for the job as #1 Test Pilot for the new jet......but than the romance kicks back in, because Bogie's old WW2 girlfriend, whom he was set to marry at the end of the war before fate intervened, is now involved with the talented aircraft designer.
It's one of those motion picture situations where the woman is torn between two men, but the outcome is clear to the designer. He knows that Parker loves Bogart more than him, but he still needs Bogie to fly his jet, and things get tricky from there, because Raymond Massey is supplying the money for all of the design work, and he wants to blow Chuck Yeager's speed record out of the water because he loves headlines (another direct reference to Howard Hughes).
The grand finale of the film begins when Massey proposes a high speed flight, at 90,000 feet altitude, from Nome, Alaska to Washington, D.C., by way of the North Pole. He says that Bogart will complete the flight in no more than four and one half hours.
This final sequence is very exciting stuff, mostly because of the excellent special effects of the time, which show the jet in flight at high altitude and are combined with stock footage of actual test flights from Edwards Air Force Base to produce an impressive action sequence that, for it's time, would pin audiences in their seats for close to twenty minutes. It even does so today and I would bet that "Chain Lightning" has been an influence on subsequent movies like "Top Gun", just for it's aerial photography.
"Chain Lightning" is extra fun if you are an aviation enthusiast, because there is a lot of location shooting at an early version of Burbank Airport, and also at Edwards. The three way romance is going to play itself out in a somewhat formulaic way, but not without some final drama related to the final flight test.
This one is mostly about the planes, and on those terms it gets Two Thumbs Up from me. It's not a classic Bogie character study, like last night's "The Big Shot" with it's megascript and multi-layered story, but as an action picture it is most excellent, especially for airshow fans like yours truly. ////
I am supertired, so I'm gonna get some sleep and I will see you in the morning.
Tons of love. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxxo :):)
The story begins with his final test flight and is told in flashback after that. Bogart's Air Force career started in WW2, where he flew B-17 Flying Fortresses over Germany. He happens to meet the designer of that famous bomber and complains to him about weaknesses in it's design. Because the script is half romance, we see Bogie proposing marriage to Parker the night before a fateful mission. The next thing we know, the story fast forwards to postwar. Now Humphrey is out of the service and is trying to make ends meet by running a small flight school out in the sticks. He runs into an old wartime buddy (James Brown......no, not that James Brown), who is still in the Air Force but in peacetime mode, and this friend has connections to the new flight research being undertaken in the dawning Jet Age.
Bogie is interested in learning more, and of course the friend's main connection turns out to be the guy who designed the B-17 who Bogie met six years ago during the war. He didn't like the guy then. But the designer is now working on a supersonic jet and he has a backer, a very wealthy aerospace manufacturer clearly based on Howard Hughes and played by Raymond Massey. The designer is ready to recommend Humphrey for the job as #1 Test Pilot for the new jet......but than the romance kicks back in, because Bogie's old WW2 girlfriend, whom he was set to marry at the end of the war before fate intervened, is now involved with the talented aircraft designer.
It's one of those motion picture situations where the woman is torn between two men, but the outcome is clear to the designer. He knows that Parker loves Bogart more than him, but he still needs Bogie to fly his jet, and things get tricky from there, because Raymond Massey is supplying the money for all of the design work, and he wants to blow Chuck Yeager's speed record out of the water because he loves headlines (another direct reference to Howard Hughes).
The grand finale of the film begins when Massey proposes a high speed flight, at 90,000 feet altitude, from Nome, Alaska to Washington, D.C., by way of the North Pole. He says that Bogart will complete the flight in no more than four and one half hours.
This final sequence is very exciting stuff, mostly because of the excellent special effects of the time, which show the jet in flight at high altitude and are combined with stock footage of actual test flights from Edwards Air Force Base to produce an impressive action sequence that, for it's time, would pin audiences in their seats for close to twenty minutes. It even does so today and I would bet that "Chain Lightning" has been an influence on subsequent movies like "Top Gun", just for it's aerial photography.
"Chain Lightning" is extra fun if you are an aviation enthusiast, because there is a lot of location shooting at an early version of Burbank Airport, and also at Edwards. The three way romance is going to play itself out in a somewhat formulaic way, but not without some final drama related to the final flight test.
This one is mostly about the planes, and on those terms it gets Two Thumbs Up from me. It's not a classic Bogie character study, like last night's "The Big Shot" with it's megascript and multi-layered story, but as an action picture it is most excellent, especially for airshow fans like yours truly. ////
I am supertired, so I'm gonna get some sleep and I will see you in the morning.
Tons of love. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxxo :):)
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