I haven't got a movie for you tonight because I watched the eighth episode of Steven Spielberg's "Taken", which I must say was mindblowing. There is a lot of stuff in this series that intrigues me personally because of the covert military activity that took place in the wake of the Roswell Incident and the coverup that continues to this day. As you surely know if you have read this blog for a while, the incident known as "What Happened In Northridge", or more recently that I just call "1989", also involved a secret team of soldiers, and beyond that, the leadership of a small cadre of men whose authority was nebulous and hard to pin down, but which was most likely affiliated with the CIA. When I say a "small cadre", I was really only aware of two men who appeared to be in charge of the situation at different locations. I usually don't mention these men by name anymore, but I will tonight. One was Bill Clinton, who was in charge of the entire operation, if you can call it that. The other man was Jerry Brown, former Governor of California, who was present at the Wilbur Wash location at Wilbur and Valerio Streets in Reseda. He arrived at that location in a covered Army truck with a group of soldiers, over whom he had command.
Jerry Brown was in charge of the soldiers, but Bill Clinton was in charge overall.
Make of it what you will, you can even laugh if you choose, or roll your eyes or just say, "huh"? I have noted that I might look askance myself if someone were to tell me such a tale.
But it's the truth and it's been the truth for thirty years now, and it will always be the truth because it actually happened.
I realize that the above descriptions give little to no context as to what I am talking about, but I am assuming on the part of longtime regular blog readers at least a working knowledge of the events of September 1989. I have written enough about my experience over the past twenty years, including an entire 800 page recounting in my 2006 book, which was published on Myspace, that if you've followed me for some or all of that time, you should have some familiarity with "What Happened In Northridge".
I mention all of this because over the next couple of nights, maybe even the next several, I am going to be writing about What Happened In Northridge once again, for the simple reason that this weekend marks the 30th anniversary of the start of that experience. By my best estimate, based on years of dedicated research, the entire series of events lasted for twelve days, from September 1st until September 12, 1989.
If you were to measure by the day of the week rather than the date, then tonight would mark the 30th anniversary, because the whole thing began - without any doubt whatsoever - on a Friday night at the start of Labor Day weekend. In 1989, the date of that Friday night was September 1st. In 2019, September 1st will fall on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend, by which point in 1989 the horrific events were well underway. But measure it however you wish, by day or by date, this is the weekend that it all began, thirty years ago on a Friday night, with a minor but important preliminary event the night before, on Thursday August 31, 1989. These initial events took place at an apartment complex in Reseda, California called Concord Square. You can Google that name if you wish. Concord Square is located on Sherman Way, near the intersection of Lindley Avenue.
I want to reassure anyone who does intend to read these next few blogs that I will not be writing to disparage anyone, nor do I think I have ever done so, even when I was irate about the situation, back when the memories were new to me in 1997-2006. Much time has passed, and I am at peace with the whole thing in every way but one : I still need to know what happened to me, and by not knowing I am not at peace at all.
Knowing what happened to me is more important than you can possibly imagine, and it drives me to continue on in my life. I have often thought to myself that it's a wonder I am still standing.
Everything in my life is secondary to my need to know what happened to me between the dates of September 1st and September 12th, 1989.
Every day of my life, I get up and live with this question, and it is not easy for me to deal with, to put it mildly.
And so, because we are now at the 30th anniversary, I will be writing a blog or two, or maybe three, about it. I mention it in advance in case any readers wish to avoid the subject, although I would argue against avoidance as that is what has brought us to this standstill.
I have just this evening finished Dianne Lake's book about her life as part of Charles Manson's "Family" when she was only 14 years old. It is a story so profound as to bring you to tears, and it is also my Book Of The Year recommendation. But I mention it tonight because, at the very end of her book, on the last page, she talks about the destructiveness of keeping secrets. She herself kept her past life secret from her children for 35 years, until a news item forced her to reveal to them the truth, which resulted in the writing of her book, and in a spiritual cleansing that has freed her from her past. I mention this because I know of people who are still holding tightly to the secrets of September 1989, which they pretend not to know of, but in truth they are holding this secret knowledge inside themselves and have been doing so for thirty years.
I would encourage these folks to read Dianne Lake's book. She can tell you what holding a destructive secret inside yourself can do to you. /////
See you tomorrow night. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Saturday, August 31, 2019
Friday, August 30, 2019
Bryan Ferry at The Greek Theatre
(this blog was begun the night of August 29, 2019 and completed the next day)
Tonight I went to see Bryan Ferry in concert at The Greek Theatre. For those who may be unaware, Ferry is a legendary figure in the rock world. He was the lead singer and main writer for Roxy Music, a band that - if I had to define the term art rock - I would just put their picture in the dictionary next to the phrase, and leave it at that. I may have already asked the question about Roxy : Just what kind of band were they, anyway?
Were they glam? Were they retro? Were they progressive? Were they Super Rock Stars?
Well, check, check, check and check. They were all four of the above things, But really they were unclassifiable, like all the best bands. For example, into what category would you put The Beatles?
Okay, 'nuff said.
If I had to classify Roxy Music, I'd simply call them Art Rock, and it is interesting (and I just found out) that Bryan Ferry studied fine art in college and since his rise in music he has become a collector of notable paintings. But in 1973, when I first heard Roxy Music and saw their album covers, which stood out as works of art themselves, I knew nothing of his background. I only saw, as we all did, that this was a band that existed wholly in their own universe. They looked and sounded like no one, and vice versa. In order to save me from giving a history lesson, I would ask the uninitiated to check out the first four Roxy Music albums for themselves. While listening to the music, take time to examine the album covers and the lyrics. Yeah, I know that the front covers could now be considered sexist, but try to go beyond that. Look at the pictures of the band, too. Read the words to the songs and take the entire presentation into context. What you will see is that Roxy Music was an artistic concept as well as a band that made some of the most original music of the rock era. But onwards to tonight's concert....
I arrived at The Greek in plenty of time, having encountered little traffic on the freeway. Parking for free off Los Feliz, I walked up the hill to the theatre, with a stop at the box office to straighten out my ticket situation. You see, they have a new "all-digital" ticketing policy that I wasn't aware of when I bought my ticket last January. You don't get a "print at home" option anymore, instead, you have to have an app on your phone to upload the ticket code which will then be scanned at the gate. But I don't have an iPhone, merely a flip phone. "I'm a Cave Man", I told the girl at the box office. She laughed and printed me up an old school ticket after checking my I.D.
Soon I was in my seat. I'd deliberately chosen an awesome seat that I've had the pleasure of sitting in before. It is located in the side terrace, but overlooks the stage near the center. Best of all, the seat is isolated by itself, where the terrace section comes to a point. So it is a single seat "row of it's own". I love it because I've got nobody sitting next to me and no one in front of me. Everyone else is either behind me or across the aisle, so I don't have to worry about beer drinkers who get up after every third song, or big guys sitting on either side of me, or giants in front of me. It's just little ol' me in my own seat in my own row, at the pointed end of the section. And, it's fairly close to the stage, too. I will try to order that seat every time I go to The Greek Theater. :)
It turned out there was an opening act, so I needn't have worried about arriving on time. Her name is Femme Schmidt, a young German woman who speaks California English with only a trace of her native accent. Turns out she used to live here. She sang heartbreak songs accompanied by a guitarist and a lot of reverb and was quite good. You could picture her music in a David Lynch movie.
Bryan Ferry came onstage after a short break, and right away I could see that this concert was going to be a big deal. For one thing, he had a nine piece band : two guitarists (one being the legendary British sideman Chris Spedding), a bass player, a keyboardist, a drummer, an amazing female sax player named Jorja Chalmers, who also doubled on keys, a female violinist, and two backup singers (a man and a woman). Ferry and band started off with "India" and "The Main Thing" from the "Avalon" album, and right away you could hear how dynamic this band was. Their collective ability to recreate every musical detail of the songs, seamlessly but without sounding "canned" was on the level of Pink Floyd or what I imagine David Bowie's live shows must've been like (I never got to see Bowie).
The band was off the charts with a live sound to match. Ferry himself has still got perhaps 80-85% of his vocal range, maybe having lost a little bit of lung power at the lower end, but nothing drastic. He was never a Rock Belter anyway, but always one of the unique voices in music, sounding more like a European cafe singer than anything else, maybe with a touch of Elvis.
He is gonna be 74 next month, and though he mostly looks his age, he looks it in a good way, like a movie star who has maintained his trademark image with just a few crinkles around the eyes.
He has so much charisma, blowing kisses to the crowd after every song. He's like an aristocrat from a 1940s movie, tall, lanky and handsome, and still with all his hair, black suited with an air of dignity. He didn't say much between songs, just a few "thank yous" and "nice to be back in Los Angeles". Instead, he let the music do the talking, and as I remarked to Grimsley in an after-the-concert phone call (Grim did not attend the show), "It was just one great song after another. One classic song after another". Ferry and band played 21 songs in all, with no encore due to the Greek's curfew policy. The show ran a few minutes over, ending at 10:19. He played many of the songs from "Avalon", the final Roxy Music album and one which featured a slower and more hypnotic sound than the band's earlier, more rocking records. But he also played those early songs, too, like "Do The Strand", "Out Of The Blue" (featuring a shredding violin solo that blew the audience away), "Love Is The Drug" and "In Every Dreamhome A Heartache", which Ferry sang almost a capella, accompanied only by a slight keyboard backing. On that song he was lit from below like a madman in a German Expressionist movie. The effect was very dramatic!
All in all, I was pretty much left speechless by the show, because I hadn't expected it to be that good. I mean, I knew it was gonna be good because it was Bryan Ferry, but I hadn't followed him for the past 35 years, and I thought, "well, it'll be good to see him again, even though it's a solo show and not with Roxy Music". But I had no idea it would be state of the art quality, up there with Pink Floyd as far as musicianship and sound goes, and with a gorgeous, colorful light show as an extra bonus.
I thought of my late friend Mike B. The last time I saw Bryan Ferry was in February 1976, at the Hollywood Palladium. He was still with Roxy Music then. Mike and I went behind the stage and snuck up into the catwalk, where we watched the show from a small opening behind the curtains. Though we were behind the band, we could still almost see them in profile, and it was almost like being onstage ourselves. I was 15, Mike 17. We had a blast sneaking around the Palladium that night and we met Eddie Jobson, Roxy's violinist, after the show. It is one of my great concert memories, and I thought of Mike last night and hoped he was watching with me.
So that's my Bryan Ferry review. I sure hope I get to see him again before he retires, because he's still at the very top of his game. When I think that 43 years had passed between the last time I saw him and last night's show at the Greek, it blows my mind. But it also seemed like no time at all had passed.
Ahh, time.........that weird, weird thing.
Life, and time, and our life and times. /////
That's all for now, see you tonight at the Usual "Time"!
Tons of love. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Tonight I went to see Bryan Ferry in concert at The Greek Theatre. For those who may be unaware, Ferry is a legendary figure in the rock world. He was the lead singer and main writer for Roxy Music, a band that - if I had to define the term art rock - I would just put their picture in the dictionary next to the phrase, and leave it at that. I may have already asked the question about Roxy : Just what kind of band were they, anyway?
Were they glam? Were they retro? Were they progressive? Were they Super Rock Stars?
Well, check, check, check and check. They were all four of the above things, But really they were unclassifiable, like all the best bands. For example, into what category would you put The Beatles?
Okay, 'nuff said.
If I had to classify Roxy Music, I'd simply call them Art Rock, and it is interesting (and I just found out) that Bryan Ferry studied fine art in college and since his rise in music he has become a collector of notable paintings. But in 1973, when I first heard Roxy Music and saw their album covers, which stood out as works of art themselves, I knew nothing of his background. I only saw, as we all did, that this was a band that existed wholly in their own universe. They looked and sounded like no one, and vice versa. In order to save me from giving a history lesson, I would ask the uninitiated to check out the first four Roxy Music albums for themselves. While listening to the music, take time to examine the album covers and the lyrics. Yeah, I know that the front covers could now be considered sexist, but try to go beyond that. Look at the pictures of the band, too. Read the words to the songs and take the entire presentation into context. What you will see is that Roxy Music was an artistic concept as well as a band that made some of the most original music of the rock era. But onwards to tonight's concert....
I arrived at The Greek in plenty of time, having encountered little traffic on the freeway. Parking for free off Los Feliz, I walked up the hill to the theatre, with a stop at the box office to straighten out my ticket situation. You see, they have a new "all-digital" ticketing policy that I wasn't aware of when I bought my ticket last January. You don't get a "print at home" option anymore, instead, you have to have an app on your phone to upload the ticket code which will then be scanned at the gate. But I don't have an iPhone, merely a flip phone. "I'm a Cave Man", I told the girl at the box office. She laughed and printed me up an old school ticket after checking my I.D.
Soon I was in my seat. I'd deliberately chosen an awesome seat that I've had the pleasure of sitting in before. It is located in the side terrace, but overlooks the stage near the center. Best of all, the seat is isolated by itself, where the terrace section comes to a point. So it is a single seat "row of it's own". I love it because I've got nobody sitting next to me and no one in front of me. Everyone else is either behind me or across the aisle, so I don't have to worry about beer drinkers who get up after every third song, or big guys sitting on either side of me, or giants in front of me. It's just little ol' me in my own seat in my own row, at the pointed end of the section. And, it's fairly close to the stage, too. I will try to order that seat every time I go to The Greek Theater. :)
It turned out there was an opening act, so I needn't have worried about arriving on time. Her name is Femme Schmidt, a young German woman who speaks California English with only a trace of her native accent. Turns out she used to live here. She sang heartbreak songs accompanied by a guitarist and a lot of reverb and was quite good. You could picture her music in a David Lynch movie.
Bryan Ferry came onstage after a short break, and right away I could see that this concert was going to be a big deal. For one thing, he had a nine piece band : two guitarists (one being the legendary British sideman Chris Spedding), a bass player, a keyboardist, a drummer, an amazing female sax player named Jorja Chalmers, who also doubled on keys, a female violinist, and two backup singers (a man and a woman). Ferry and band started off with "India" and "The Main Thing" from the "Avalon" album, and right away you could hear how dynamic this band was. Their collective ability to recreate every musical detail of the songs, seamlessly but without sounding "canned" was on the level of Pink Floyd or what I imagine David Bowie's live shows must've been like (I never got to see Bowie).
The band was off the charts with a live sound to match. Ferry himself has still got perhaps 80-85% of his vocal range, maybe having lost a little bit of lung power at the lower end, but nothing drastic. He was never a Rock Belter anyway, but always one of the unique voices in music, sounding more like a European cafe singer than anything else, maybe with a touch of Elvis.
He is gonna be 74 next month, and though he mostly looks his age, he looks it in a good way, like a movie star who has maintained his trademark image with just a few crinkles around the eyes.
He has so much charisma, blowing kisses to the crowd after every song. He's like an aristocrat from a 1940s movie, tall, lanky and handsome, and still with all his hair, black suited with an air of dignity. He didn't say much between songs, just a few "thank yous" and "nice to be back in Los Angeles". Instead, he let the music do the talking, and as I remarked to Grimsley in an after-the-concert phone call (Grim did not attend the show), "It was just one great song after another. One classic song after another". Ferry and band played 21 songs in all, with no encore due to the Greek's curfew policy. The show ran a few minutes over, ending at 10:19. He played many of the songs from "Avalon", the final Roxy Music album and one which featured a slower and more hypnotic sound than the band's earlier, more rocking records. But he also played those early songs, too, like "Do The Strand", "Out Of The Blue" (featuring a shredding violin solo that blew the audience away), "Love Is The Drug" and "In Every Dreamhome A Heartache", which Ferry sang almost a capella, accompanied only by a slight keyboard backing. On that song he was lit from below like a madman in a German Expressionist movie. The effect was very dramatic!
All in all, I was pretty much left speechless by the show, because I hadn't expected it to be that good. I mean, I knew it was gonna be good because it was Bryan Ferry, but I hadn't followed him for the past 35 years, and I thought, "well, it'll be good to see him again, even though it's a solo show and not with Roxy Music". But I had no idea it would be state of the art quality, up there with Pink Floyd as far as musicianship and sound goes, and with a gorgeous, colorful light show as an extra bonus.
I thought of my late friend Mike B. The last time I saw Bryan Ferry was in February 1976, at the Hollywood Palladium. He was still with Roxy Music then. Mike and I went behind the stage and snuck up into the catwalk, where we watched the show from a small opening behind the curtains. Though we were behind the band, we could still almost see them in profile, and it was almost like being onstage ourselves. I was 15, Mike 17. We had a blast sneaking around the Palladium that night and we met Eddie Jobson, Roxy's violinist, after the show. It is one of my great concert memories, and I thought of Mike last night and hoped he was watching with me.
So that's my Bryan Ferry review. I sure hope I get to see him again before he retires, because he's still at the very top of his game. When I think that 43 years had passed between the last time I saw him and last night's show at the Greek, it blows my mind. But it also seemed like no time at all had passed.
Ahh, time.........that weird, weird thing.
Life, and time, and our life and times. /////
That's all for now, see you tonight at the Usual "Time"!
Tons of love. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Thursday, August 29, 2019
Hey Elizabeth + Alcest + Tim Holt + "Tales Of Tomorrow" (The Crystal Egg)
Hey Elizabeth, I forgot to ask you what you think of the new Alcest song, "Protection"? After a couple of listens, I think it is pretty awesome, and I am glad that he seems to have decided to make the screaming vocals a consistent part of the music. No one does them like Neige, and to me they really add incredible power to the songs. I do have one comment, though. Over the course of the last few albums, it feels like Neige has moved away from what I will call the French melodies of the earliest albums, in favor of big, sweeping riffs of a more anthemic nature. In a song such as "Autre Temps" (which you know very well), you can hear a distinctly French quality to the vocal line. Though he would not have had a lot of French rock music to use as inspiration - because there wasn't any - it may have been that he absorbed other styles of music popular in France - cafe singers and such - and used them in creating his own style.
I know that Neige would mostly cite shoegaze bands as influences, but if you really listen to the early albums, there is a definite Parisian melodic influence running through the songs, in the same way that there is in the music of Edith Piaf or Frances Poulenc, even though all three of these artists make music in disparate styles. Anyhow, especially with the last album "Kodama", to me it sounds like he has moved away from the early melodies into a bigger rock sound. Don't get me wrong cause the music sounds as dynamic as ever - the word for "Kodama" is propulsive - and the concert I saw last November was the best one I've seen by Alcest. They just keep getting better and better live, and are freakin' epic by now. But it does seem like the old French melodies have gone by the wayside.
I am looking forward to hearing the whole album, and on cd rather than Youtube. I am stoked that we have new albums by Alcest and Opeth coming out within a month of each other, and I'm sure you are looking forward to "Spiritual Instinct" as well (and maybe the Opeth too). :):)
So anyway, whattaya think? You don't have to post now, but after the album comes out I would love to hear your thoughts. :):)
And now I return you to your regularly scheduled programming in the form of a movie review. Tonight I was all out of library flicks, so I opened my Tim Holt Western Collection dvd set to watch a sixty minuter called "Gunplay", which turned out to be a cut above the usual paint-by-numbers fare in these serial Westerns. Holt movies are always entertaining, but "Gunplay" actually has a script that moves beyond the formula a little bit to incorporate a measure of intrigue and suspense. I am not gonna detail it for ya, because it's still a Serial Western, but I hope you - and in this case I mean the General You - will become Holt fans yourselves. Then we can discuss his Westerns and break down their fine points, which do exist. They were almost all shot at the Iverson Movie Ranch, which is enough reason in itself to buy the collection.
Because "Gunplay" was only an hour long, I also had time to watch an episode of "Tales Of Tomorrow".
Now wait a minute! I am becoming more clever in my scrutinizations of titles, be they from motion pictures or television shows, so right now I want to know: how could you have a Tale Of Tomorrow if tomorrow hasn't happened yet?
"Oh shut up, Ad".
Right. Well anyway, it was a great episode, called "The Crystal Egg" and based on a story by our old pal H.G.Wells. Man he was far out! In the show, a tall stranger walks into a pawn shop in London. He wants to buy a crystal egg that he has seen in the window display. The proprietor fetches it for him, then - noticing the man's tension and his hurry to make the purchase - he decides to raise the price. He'd thought the egg was just a trinket, a worthless piece of junk and fake crystal at that, but the man's excitement has him thinking again. They dicker over the price, but the man is not willing to pay the five pounds the shopkeeper wants. Finally he succumbs, but hasn't enough money, so he gives the shopkeeper two pounds to hold the egg for him until he can return with the balance.
After the man leaves, the shopkeeper gets on the phone to a friend of his, a professor who works at the local university. Can the shopkeeper come over right away? He has an important object he wants the professor to examine, a crystal egg. Will the professor be able to tell him if it is real crystal, perhaps even rare?
The shopkeeper hopes so as he drops off the crystal egg with the professor. He will need it back the next day, however, because the man will be returning to the pawn shop to finish paying for it.
When the shopkeeper arrived, the professor had been entertaining a young lass - a Cockney girl who is fascinated by his brilliance. He shoos her away now, so that he can examine the egg under a microscope. The shopkeeper's spiel has him intrigued.
We see the clock on his wall. The passing of the hours is sped up to signify he has been at it all night. Suddenly it is morning. The pawn shop owner is calling, wanting to come by and pick up the egg. He also wants to know what discoveries, if any, the professor has made. Is the egg worth a lot of money?
Well, the professor has made a discovery alright, but he's not sure what to make of it, in fact, he can hardly believe his eyes. He needs time to double check the egg, but he can't tell the shopkeeper why, so he makes up an excuse, simply that he hasn't finished his examination as yet.
I really cannot tell you anything more about the egg, except that a lot more intrigue will follow because of the professor's discovery. The will be scheming between the parties to get control over the egg, and conflict will result.
It seems that there is something inside the egg, something that resembles.......a landscape?
Now that's really all I'm gonna tell ya. I don't want H.G.Wells getting mad at me. I might wind up in one of his horrifying tales......
Seriously though, do yourself a favor - this is again addressed to the General You - and buy all three sets of the "Tales Of Tomorrow" dvd collections. You get 13 episodes per set, and while the picture quality is not perfect, the shows are watchable and more than that, this is an incredible series. We are talking live television from 1951, the very early days of the medium. As a bonus, the commercials from that era are left in place, so you get to see the show just as it aired almost 70 years ago. The bottom line is that it's weird, weird, weird! And, it predates Twilight Zone by eight years.
Really, "Tales Of Tomorrow" rules the sci-fi roost. It's a must-own, I say. /////
That will do it for this afternoon. Tonight I am gonna go see Bryan Ferry at the Greek Theater. The last time I saw him (with Roxy Music) was in 1976! 43 years ago, holy smokes. I was still in high school and Gerald Ford was President.
Now that should be a Tale Of Tomorrow! See if you can make something weird out of it.
I'll be back after the show at the Usual Time. See you then!
Tons of love, as always. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
I know that Neige would mostly cite shoegaze bands as influences, but if you really listen to the early albums, there is a definite Parisian melodic influence running through the songs, in the same way that there is in the music of Edith Piaf or Frances Poulenc, even though all three of these artists make music in disparate styles. Anyhow, especially with the last album "Kodama", to me it sounds like he has moved away from the early melodies into a bigger rock sound. Don't get me wrong cause the music sounds as dynamic as ever - the word for "Kodama" is propulsive - and the concert I saw last November was the best one I've seen by Alcest. They just keep getting better and better live, and are freakin' epic by now. But it does seem like the old French melodies have gone by the wayside.
I am looking forward to hearing the whole album, and on cd rather than Youtube. I am stoked that we have new albums by Alcest and Opeth coming out within a month of each other, and I'm sure you are looking forward to "Spiritual Instinct" as well (and maybe the Opeth too). :):)
So anyway, whattaya think? You don't have to post now, but after the album comes out I would love to hear your thoughts. :):)
And now I return you to your regularly scheduled programming in the form of a movie review. Tonight I was all out of library flicks, so I opened my Tim Holt Western Collection dvd set to watch a sixty minuter called "Gunplay", which turned out to be a cut above the usual paint-by-numbers fare in these serial Westerns. Holt movies are always entertaining, but "Gunplay" actually has a script that moves beyond the formula a little bit to incorporate a measure of intrigue and suspense. I am not gonna detail it for ya, because it's still a Serial Western, but I hope you - and in this case I mean the General You - will become Holt fans yourselves. Then we can discuss his Westerns and break down their fine points, which do exist. They were almost all shot at the Iverson Movie Ranch, which is enough reason in itself to buy the collection.
Because "Gunplay" was only an hour long, I also had time to watch an episode of "Tales Of Tomorrow".
Now wait a minute! I am becoming more clever in my scrutinizations of titles, be they from motion pictures or television shows, so right now I want to know: how could you have a Tale Of Tomorrow if tomorrow hasn't happened yet?
"Oh shut up, Ad".
Right. Well anyway, it was a great episode, called "The Crystal Egg" and based on a story by our old pal H.G.Wells. Man he was far out! In the show, a tall stranger walks into a pawn shop in London. He wants to buy a crystal egg that he has seen in the window display. The proprietor fetches it for him, then - noticing the man's tension and his hurry to make the purchase - he decides to raise the price. He'd thought the egg was just a trinket, a worthless piece of junk and fake crystal at that, but the man's excitement has him thinking again. They dicker over the price, but the man is not willing to pay the five pounds the shopkeeper wants. Finally he succumbs, but hasn't enough money, so he gives the shopkeeper two pounds to hold the egg for him until he can return with the balance.
After the man leaves, the shopkeeper gets on the phone to a friend of his, a professor who works at the local university. Can the shopkeeper come over right away? He has an important object he wants the professor to examine, a crystal egg. Will the professor be able to tell him if it is real crystal, perhaps even rare?
The shopkeeper hopes so as he drops off the crystal egg with the professor. He will need it back the next day, however, because the man will be returning to the pawn shop to finish paying for it.
When the shopkeeper arrived, the professor had been entertaining a young lass - a Cockney girl who is fascinated by his brilliance. He shoos her away now, so that he can examine the egg under a microscope. The shopkeeper's spiel has him intrigued.
We see the clock on his wall. The passing of the hours is sped up to signify he has been at it all night. Suddenly it is morning. The pawn shop owner is calling, wanting to come by and pick up the egg. He also wants to know what discoveries, if any, the professor has made. Is the egg worth a lot of money?
Well, the professor has made a discovery alright, but he's not sure what to make of it, in fact, he can hardly believe his eyes. He needs time to double check the egg, but he can't tell the shopkeeper why, so he makes up an excuse, simply that he hasn't finished his examination as yet.
I really cannot tell you anything more about the egg, except that a lot more intrigue will follow because of the professor's discovery. The will be scheming between the parties to get control over the egg, and conflict will result.
It seems that there is something inside the egg, something that resembles.......a landscape?
Now that's really all I'm gonna tell ya. I don't want H.G.Wells getting mad at me. I might wind up in one of his horrifying tales......
Seriously though, do yourself a favor - this is again addressed to the General You - and buy all three sets of the "Tales Of Tomorrow" dvd collections. You get 13 episodes per set, and while the picture quality is not perfect, the shows are watchable and more than that, this is an incredible series. We are talking live television from 1951, the very early days of the medium. As a bonus, the commercials from that era are left in place, so you get to see the show just as it aired almost 70 years ago. The bottom line is that it's weird, weird, weird! And, it predates Twilight Zone by eight years.
Really, "Tales Of Tomorrow" rules the sci-fi roost. It's a must-own, I say. /////
That will do it for this afternoon. Tonight I am gonna go see Bryan Ferry at the Greek Theater. The last time I saw him (with Roxy Music) was in 1976! 43 years ago, holy smokes. I was still in high school and Gerald Ford was President.
Now that should be a Tale Of Tomorrow! See if you can make something weird out of it.
I'll be back after the show at the Usual Time. See you then!
Tons of love, as always. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Wednesday, August 28, 2019
"I Live On Danger" starring the Inimitable Chester Morris
Tonight's movie was once again titled in the first person. Like last night's "I Killed That Man", we have another case where the protagonist feels a need to be declarative. His statement also ends up becoming the movie's title : "I Live On Danger" (1942).
Oh you do, do you? Well bully for you. ;)
How about the John Wayne vehicle "They Were Expendable"? I am not an English major but I suppose that title is in the second person? First person or second, or even third, what is the deal with these declarative statements posing as movie titles? More importantly, why are they telling me this? Why not just allow me to watch the movie, and I will discover for myself that "They Were Expendable".
In other words, why do you need to tell me in advance? :) Why have a title that announces itself?
I jest, of course, but I enjoy reading some of these old "statement" titles just so I can poke fun at them.
"I Live On Danger" was the second of the Alpha dvd releases I found at West Valley Libe on Sunday. You may know Alpha. They are sort of like the anti-Criterion. Alpha takes old films that are in the public domain, meaning that they have no current copyright, and they release them "as-is", with no restoration or cleaning up whatsoever. Alpha dvds often look like somebody recorded the movie on a VCR, straight off a tv set. Still, the company serves a purpose, because Alpha dvds are inexpensive (five bucks average) and they dig up old flicks you've never heard of, like "I Killed That Man" or "I Live On Danger".
Hey, maybe it's the same guy, the one who killed that man and who, as a result, lives on danger......
Maybe he's the one declaring all the movie titles.
Don't ask me to figure it all out because I wanna hold on to the few remaining brain cells I have left, but I do know this much : Chester Morris stars as Jeff Morrell, a hotshot radio reporter from NYC. He works in the field, chasing leads and hoping for a promotion to his station's overseas affiliate in London. Morrell does everything he can to break a story, but is always getting upstaged by the "company man" Dick Purcell, an in-studio announcer who never gets his hands dirty. Purcell reads on-air the nightly headlines that are the results of Morrell's hard work, and Morrell is frustrated. But one night, Morrell is out in the Mobile Truck with his engineer and they come across a disaster : a passenger ship in the harbor is on fire. Morrell reports from the scene as the ship burns and lives are lost. He's already got a scoop that might help him to overtake his rival Purcell, but then the sea delivers him a newsman's gift.
Washed ashore in the waves is one of the ship's passengers : a young woman, barely alive. Morrell recognizes her from a photograph in a recent newspaper. She is the sister of an escaped parolee who is suspected in the murder or a gangland bookie. The parolee is later thought to have gone down with the burning ship. His sister swears he was innocent. She may know who the real killer is, and it may involve a conspiracy that reaches up to the highest levels of city government.
Now, intrepid reporter Jeff Morrell has not merely a scoop, but the story of a lifetime. But will he be able to break it without getting killed himself? Will he fall in love with the sister (Jean Parker) along the way?
I have come to really like the acting of Chester Morris. I've seen him in perhaps half a dozen films by now, and he's a unique presence. In his earlier roles from the 1930s, he seemed like a holdover from the Silent era, wearing excess eye makeup and using the exaggerated mannerisms and facial expressions that were standard acting techniques in the days before sound. He also had a slicked back, chopped off haircut, so he looked like a relic from the 1920s, and he maintained that look into his later career in the 1940s and beyond. But even though he at first seemed to be overacting, he was always very good. Something about his style stood out, and you remembered him in every film he was in. I did, anyway. He is matinee-idol handsome yet just a bit goofy looking, and he uses this to add a comic edge to his performances. Morris seems extra energized in his roles, adding a touch of deliberate caricature whether playing Good Guy or Hoodlum.
He is very good here as the reporter Jeff Morrell, and the movie has a much more involved plot than I was expecting. Because it was an Alpha dvd release, I thought it was going to be another Poverty Row production, and though the print was "Alpha quality" (meaning not too good, lol), the movie itself was made by Paramount, and while it is a B-Movie, it was one of the better ones because of a marginally higher budget, which equals better writing, etc.
Jean Parker is wholesome as the female lead. I've also seen her before, she was probably cast mostly in sympathetic roles such as this one.
There are many other characters who have plenty of screen time, mostly Mooks played by actors who you know by face if not by name.
I give "I Live On Danger" Two Unqualified Thumbs Up. The print is sub-par, but unlike last night's Monogram release, no excuses need be made for the plot. It's pretty doggone good. The movie as a whole is recommended for fans of Noir, and for anyone who appreciates Chester Morris, or who wants to appreciate him. :)
I am gonna get the "Boston Blackie" dvd set of 14 films, available on Amazon. Those were one hour serials in which Morris played the lead. We'll watch 'em sometime next year, oh boy! :)
Well, that's all for now. I am really hustling today. I got a late start because Pearl had an appointment at the foot doctor. Now I am off to the produce mart for an Avocado Score. I'm addicted to 'em, what can I say?
See you tonight at the Usual Time! (man, I'm gonna get this afternoon/evening blog situation straightened around if it's the last thing I do, haha.....)
Tons and tons of love. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Oh you do, do you? Well bully for you. ;)
How about the John Wayne vehicle "They Were Expendable"? I am not an English major but I suppose that title is in the second person? First person or second, or even third, what is the deal with these declarative statements posing as movie titles? More importantly, why are they telling me this? Why not just allow me to watch the movie, and I will discover for myself that "They Were Expendable".
In other words, why do you need to tell me in advance? :) Why have a title that announces itself?
I jest, of course, but I enjoy reading some of these old "statement" titles just so I can poke fun at them.
"I Live On Danger" was the second of the Alpha dvd releases I found at West Valley Libe on Sunday. You may know Alpha. They are sort of like the anti-Criterion. Alpha takes old films that are in the public domain, meaning that they have no current copyright, and they release them "as-is", with no restoration or cleaning up whatsoever. Alpha dvds often look like somebody recorded the movie on a VCR, straight off a tv set. Still, the company serves a purpose, because Alpha dvds are inexpensive (five bucks average) and they dig up old flicks you've never heard of, like "I Killed That Man" or "I Live On Danger".
Hey, maybe it's the same guy, the one who killed that man and who, as a result, lives on danger......
Maybe he's the one declaring all the movie titles.
Don't ask me to figure it all out because I wanna hold on to the few remaining brain cells I have left, but I do know this much : Chester Morris stars as Jeff Morrell, a hotshot radio reporter from NYC. He works in the field, chasing leads and hoping for a promotion to his station's overseas affiliate in London. Morrell does everything he can to break a story, but is always getting upstaged by the "company man" Dick Purcell, an in-studio announcer who never gets his hands dirty. Purcell reads on-air the nightly headlines that are the results of Morrell's hard work, and Morrell is frustrated. But one night, Morrell is out in the Mobile Truck with his engineer and they come across a disaster : a passenger ship in the harbor is on fire. Morrell reports from the scene as the ship burns and lives are lost. He's already got a scoop that might help him to overtake his rival Purcell, but then the sea delivers him a newsman's gift.
Washed ashore in the waves is one of the ship's passengers : a young woman, barely alive. Morrell recognizes her from a photograph in a recent newspaper. She is the sister of an escaped parolee who is suspected in the murder or a gangland bookie. The parolee is later thought to have gone down with the burning ship. His sister swears he was innocent. She may know who the real killer is, and it may involve a conspiracy that reaches up to the highest levels of city government.
Now, intrepid reporter Jeff Morrell has not merely a scoop, but the story of a lifetime. But will he be able to break it without getting killed himself? Will he fall in love with the sister (Jean Parker) along the way?
I have come to really like the acting of Chester Morris. I've seen him in perhaps half a dozen films by now, and he's a unique presence. In his earlier roles from the 1930s, he seemed like a holdover from the Silent era, wearing excess eye makeup and using the exaggerated mannerisms and facial expressions that were standard acting techniques in the days before sound. He also had a slicked back, chopped off haircut, so he looked like a relic from the 1920s, and he maintained that look into his later career in the 1940s and beyond. But even though he at first seemed to be overacting, he was always very good. Something about his style stood out, and you remembered him in every film he was in. I did, anyway. He is matinee-idol handsome yet just a bit goofy looking, and he uses this to add a comic edge to his performances. Morris seems extra energized in his roles, adding a touch of deliberate caricature whether playing Good Guy or Hoodlum.
He is very good here as the reporter Jeff Morrell, and the movie has a much more involved plot than I was expecting. Because it was an Alpha dvd release, I thought it was going to be another Poverty Row production, and though the print was "Alpha quality" (meaning not too good, lol), the movie itself was made by Paramount, and while it is a B-Movie, it was one of the better ones because of a marginally higher budget, which equals better writing, etc.
Jean Parker is wholesome as the female lead. I've also seen her before, she was probably cast mostly in sympathetic roles such as this one.
There are many other characters who have plenty of screen time, mostly Mooks played by actors who you know by face if not by name.
I give "I Live On Danger" Two Unqualified Thumbs Up. The print is sub-par, but unlike last night's Monogram release, no excuses need be made for the plot. It's pretty doggone good. The movie as a whole is recommended for fans of Noir, and for anyone who appreciates Chester Morris, or who wants to appreciate him. :)
I am gonna get the "Boston Blackie" dvd set of 14 films, available on Amazon. Those were one hour serials in which Morris played the lead. We'll watch 'em sometime next year, oh boy! :)
Well, that's all for now. I am really hustling today. I got a late start because Pearl had an appointment at the foot doctor. Now I am off to the produce mart for an Avocado Score. I'm addicted to 'em, what can I say?
See you tonight at the Usual Time! (man, I'm gonna get this afternoon/evening blog situation straightened around if it's the last thing I do, haha.....)
Tons and tons of love. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Tuesday, August 27, 2019
"I Killed That Man" (yikes, what a title!) & Poverty Row Studios
Tonight I watched a cheapie from Monogram Pictures called "I Killed That Man". Yep, you read that right. This is one title you'd have a hard time explaining if you mentioned it in passing and the other person didn't know you were referring to a movie. Yikes! Well anyhow, as you may know, Monogram was one of the low-budget motion picture studios operating during the Golden Era that were collectively known as Poverty Row. Another well known one was Republic Pictures. These studios were located mostly on small lots in East Hollywood, and they cranked out B, C, and even D grade films that could be snapped up by theater chains as the lower half of double features. Consequently, the films that came from Poverty Row came to be known as "programmers", because they filled out a theater's screening program of perhaps two movies, the A-grade major studio release being the main feature, with the Poverty Row flick as the opener and maybe a cartoon or newsreel to round out the bill.
Kinda like the way they do rock concerts. So if you've gotta sit through an opening act, you hope it is at least not terrible.
I haven't seen a lot of films from Monogram Pictures, but the few I've watched have been entertaining on a basic level. You know going in that it's Monogram and you accept the pictures for what they are. I've seen worse from other low budget studios and independent filmmakers working on a shoestring. Take Roger Corman for example. I know I pick on him a lot, but his movies are, for the most part, truly awful, without even the quality of charm to redeem them. Corman worked in the 1960s, though, which was the absolute worst period ever for B-Movies, so that factor should possibly be noted in his defense.
Or maybe he caused the demise of the B-Movie in the 1960s by making such crummy films.
But let us back off from Roger for a moment to proclaim a Rule Of Thumb :
B-Movies from the 1930s = So-So. This was a time when sound had just transformed the moviegoing experience. The Major Studios were really cranking up. Top quality sound movies were a huge deal, and as a result, there was not the preponderance of lower budget films that would proliferate a decade later. The B-films that you will find from the '30s generally fall under the salacious, "pre-Code" umbrella, made to titillate audiences and put adult butts in seats. I own several dvd sets from this period, labeled as part of the "Forbidden Hollywood" collection.
B-Movies from the 1940s and 1950s = Really Good. The 40s and 50s were the peak decades for the Hollywood Studio System. Studios were so flush with cash that they could give their B-Movies the deluxe treatment. B-Pictures were often made using the same sets the A-Grade filmmakers had vacated. Acting stables were overfilled with quality talent, so the casts of the Bs were loaded with good actors, some of whom also worked on the A-List in supporting roles. I know we aren't supposed to say this nowdays, but the B-Movie lineups also featured some of the best looking actresses in the business. Film Noir was a specialty genre of the 1940s/50s Bs, so was Horror and later Sci-Fi. Serial mysteries were popular too, like the Charlie Chan films, and Westerns had always been a staple from the beginning.
So Hollywood owes at least some of it's success to it's B-Movies, and for a while, the cheapest of the Bs, but by no means the worst, were cranked out by the studios on Poverty Row.
"I Killed That Man" has a preposterous plot. As a Death Row inmate awaits execution, he addresses the warden and witnesses with his last words. He is finally going to name the "bog shot" who put him up to killing the man in the movie's title. But just before he can name that man, he himself is killed instantaneously by a miniature poison dart, which has been fired into his neck by someone in the room.
Of course, no one knows who did it, even though they were all sitting right next to one another. :)
So, the search is on for the assassin. Who would want the killer dead? Why, perhaps the still unnamed "big shot" the condemned man was about to blow the whistle on.
Luckily, the District Attorney is in the room to prevent anyone from leaving. Luckily for us, this is not one of those "everyone is stuck in a room" movies whose budget is so low that they only use a single location.
The plot may not amount to much, but what the film lacks in story it makes up for with energetic screwball comedy and "in on the joke" performances from it's quirky cast of characters, including a wise-guy kid who works as the D.As assistant. He goofs around reading detective manuals and listening in on private phone calls, trying to solve the case himself, and has the type of 1940s fast talking smart aleck delivery that makes him the default comic relief.
The camerawork is mostly static and flat, but the director keeps the story moving, and the actors make it fun.
"I Killed That Man" gets a Thumb and Half Up, but when you factor in that it's from Monogram, that really equals Two Thumbs. You could do a lot worse with your 70 minutes of viewing time (see Roger Corman), so if you're ever running low on your queue of regularly scheduled flicks, give something from Poverty Row a chance. /////
That's all for now. See you tonight, and I think we might have another one from Monogram lined up. I'm heading off to the store, then back to Pearl's. See you at the Usual Time.
Tons of love, naturally. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Kinda like the way they do rock concerts. So if you've gotta sit through an opening act, you hope it is at least not terrible.
I haven't seen a lot of films from Monogram Pictures, but the few I've watched have been entertaining on a basic level. You know going in that it's Monogram and you accept the pictures for what they are. I've seen worse from other low budget studios and independent filmmakers working on a shoestring. Take Roger Corman for example. I know I pick on him a lot, but his movies are, for the most part, truly awful, without even the quality of charm to redeem them. Corman worked in the 1960s, though, which was the absolute worst period ever for B-Movies, so that factor should possibly be noted in his defense.
Or maybe he caused the demise of the B-Movie in the 1960s by making such crummy films.
But let us back off from Roger for a moment to proclaim a Rule Of Thumb :
B-Movies from the 1930s = So-So. This was a time when sound had just transformed the moviegoing experience. The Major Studios were really cranking up. Top quality sound movies were a huge deal, and as a result, there was not the preponderance of lower budget films that would proliferate a decade later. The B-films that you will find from the '30s generally fall under the salacious, "pre-Code" umbrella, made to titillate audiences and put adult butts in seats. I own several dvd sets from this period, labeled as part of the "Forbidden Hollywood" collection.
B-Movies from the 1940s and 1950s = Really Good. The 40s and 50s were the peak decades for the Hollywood Studio System. Studios were so flush with cash that they could give their B-Movies the deluxe treatment. B-Pictures were often made using the same sets the A-Grade filmmakers had vacated. Acting stables were overfilled with quality talent, so the casts of the Bs were loaded with good actors, some of whom also worked on the A-List in supporting roles. I know we aren't supposed to say this nowdays, but the B-Movie lineups also featured some of the best looking actresses in the business. Film Noir was a specialty genre of the 1940s/50s Bs, so was Horror and later Sci-Fi. Serial mysteries were popular too, like the Charlie Chan films, and Westerns had always been a staple from the beginning.
So Hollywood owes at least some of it's success to it's B-Movies, and for a while, the cheapest of the Bs, but by no means the worst, were cranked out by the studios on Poverty Row.
"I Killed That Man" has a preposterous plot. As a Death Row inmate awaits execution, he addresses the warden and witnesses with his last words. He is finally going to name the "bog shot" who put him up to killing the man in the movie's title. But just before he can name that man, he himself is killed instantaneously by a miniature poison dart, which has been fired into his neck by someone in the room.
Of course, no one knows who did it, even though they were all sitting right next to one another. :)
So, the search is on for the assassin. Who would want the killer dead? Why, perhaps the still unnamed "big shot" the condemned man was about to blow the whistle on.
Luckily, the District Attorney is in the room to prevent anyone from leaving. Luckily for us, this is not one of those "everyone is stuck in a room" movies whose budget is so low that they only use a single location.
The plot may not amount to much, but what the film lacks in story it makes up for with energetic screwball comedy and "in on the joke" performances from it's quirky cast of characters, including a wise-guy kid who works as the D.As assistant. He goofs around reading detective manuals and listening in on private phone calls, trying to solve the case himself, and has the type of 1940s fast talking smart aleck delivery that makes him the default comic relief.
The camerawork is mostly static and flat, but the director keeps the story moving, and the actors make it fun.
"I Killed That Man" gets a Thumb and Half Up, but when you factor in that it's from Monogram, that really equals Two Thumbs. You could do a lot worse with your 70 minutes of viewing time (see Roger Corman), so if you're ever running low on your queue of regularly scheduled flicks, give something from Poverty Row a chance. /////
That's all for now. See you tonight, and I think we might have another one from Monogram lined up. I'm heading off to the store, then back to Pearl's. See you at the Usual Time.
Tons of love, naturally. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Monday, August 26, 2019
"It Came From Outer Space" starring Richard Carlson and Barbara Rush
Tonight I watched a sci-fi classic called "It Came From Outer Space" (1953), which I found on the dvd rack at West Valley Libe (open on Sundays, yippee!). Question : How can I not have seen this movie before? If you know the answer, please tell me because I don't understand it. I mean, this flick is well-known, at least as much as "Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers" and "When Worlds Collide" and all the biggies of 1950s Atomic Age sci-fi. Maybe I had it confused with "It Came From Beneath The Sea", which I did see, in fact I think I own it. Anyway, that's possible I suppose, that I confused "It Came From Beneath The Sea" with "It Came From Outer Space", but if I did I blame the filmmakers for not getting their facts straight. I mean, c'mon......at least figure out where "It Came From" before you go telling us two different stories.
Alright, so we don't have a definitive answer as to how I - a humongous 1950s Sci-Fi fan - could have gone all this time without seeing one of the genre's seminal films, but I'll let the matter drop if you will. I mean hey - I've still never seen "Casablanca", and nobody's given me any heat about that, so whatever.
The bottom line is that "It Came From Outer Space", meaning both the title of the movie and a statement of fact. Look : I was there when the movie started and I saw it, excuse me I mean It, and I saw where It Came From, which was Outer Space. It landed in the Arizona desert, just outside of Santa Clarita, and Richard Carlson saw it too. So that's that. The issue of Where It Came From has been settled.
Carlson is a writer and amateur astronomer who keeps a telescope in his yard at the edge of the desert. As the movie opens, he is studying the night sky as his girlfriend Barbara Rush talks astrology. He is a Sagittarius, she is a Scorpio; she explains their compatibility. You can do their charts yourself to see if it checks out, but the thing is, in the middle of their reverie, a Gigantic Fireball comes streaking across the sky, hurtling at a slightly off-horizontal angle until it crashes into the desert floor with a resounding Whammo!!
Richard Carlson immediately contacts a buddy of his who runs a helicopter service, and they do a middle-of-the night flyover of the crash site. An enormous crater has been created by the fireball, "the biggest we've ever seen", declares Carlson. The crater is indeed big, half a mile across. Carlson is fascinated, and against the wishes of his gal Barbara Rush) he orders the pilot to land the chopper at the crater's edge. From there he clambers down inside this deep hole in the Earth, to see the meteor up close.
Except when he gets down there, he can see that it's not a meteor.
It's a Space Ship that resembles a giant sized soccer ball.
But don't get the idea that it is cheesy looking.
Carlson inches closer to the ship for a better look, and then suddenly one of the hexagonal soccer ball sections opens up! It's a doorway. Carlson can see inside to the ship's sleek, sparse interior. There doesn't seem to be anyone about, however, so he steps toward the door to have a look for himself. Just then, the door slams, creating an Enormous Landslide around the crater. In short order, the Space Ship is buried beneath tons of rock. Carlson is lucky to get out alive. As they head back to town, he tells the chopper pilot and his girlfriend that they have to alert the Sheriff and the press. "Both of you saw it"!, he declares.
"But it's buried now", replies Barbara Rush. "No one will believe us".
It turns out she is right. No one believes that a Space Ship is buried at the bottom of the crater. Furthermore, the Sheriff and the local reporters don't trust Richard Carlson to begin with. He is an Egghead, always talking about complex ideas, so now that he's insisting that Aliens have landed, they straight up think he's crazy. There is strength in numbers where this type of mentality is concerned, so Carlson is ostracized to the point where the Sheriff is ready to punch him out.
But then, something happens.
Russell Johnson is working on a telephone line, way out in the desert. This is before he became The Professor on "Gilligan's Island". So he's out there with his partner, and suddenly they hear a rustling noise in the underbrush. Johnson goes over to inspect, and......doesn't come back.
His partner drives back to town to report the disappearance, and from there things get weird (which is always good, right?)
Pretty soon, Johnson's partner goes missing too, and when they finally turn up, they don't seem like their old selves anymore. Yeah, it's one of those deals like in "Invasion Of The Body Snatchers", except this movie came first!
What eventually happens is that the Sheriff is forced to take Carlson seriously. He finally has to send out a team to dig out all the rock so they can see what's down there at the bottom of the crater, but by the time they do this, Barbara Rush has disappeared. Richard Carlson now has a personal stake in the matter, and goes searching the desert for her, following the lead of phosphorescent trails that temporarily appear and then disappear. The trails lead to an old abandoned mine, and.......
That's all I'm gonna tell you.
But you've most likely seen the movie anyway, right? I mean, you couldn't have missed it all these years like I did, could you?
At any rate, "It Came From Outer Space" is an All Time Freakin' Classic of Sci-Fi. It almost plays like a Noir, filmed mostly at night in the desert, partly at the Alabama Hills, and with a lot of day-for-night photography also. It looks incredible, never cheesy, and the direction is solid behind Jack Arnold, who is the dean of 1950s sci-fi directors. He did "Tarantula" and "Creature From The Black Lagoon", just to name two. He also directed a boatload of "Gilligan's Island" episodes, which may account for the Russell Johnson connection, but anyway - yeah, he has created another classic here.
Two Gigantic Thumbs Up for "It Came From Outer Space", a major league epic of classic science fiction. I can't believe it took me so long to see it, but it also gives me hope that there are other confusingly-titled movies out there that I have assumed I've seen but have not. ////
That's all for the moment. I will now head over to Von's on a quick resupply mission before going back to Pearl's for the Supper Shift. See you later tonight, as usual!
Tons of love. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Alright, so we don't have a definitive answer as to how I - a humongous 1950s Sci-Fi fan - could have gone all this time without seeing one of the genre's seminal films, but I'll let the matter drop if you will. I mean hey - I've still never seen "Casablanca", and nobody's given me any heat about that, so whatever.
The bottom line is that "It Came From Outer Space", meaning both the title of the movie and a statement of fact. Look : I was there when the movie started and I saw it, excuse me I mean It, and I saw where It Came From, which was Outer Space. It landed in the Arizona desert, just outside of Santa Clarita, and Richard Carlson saw it too. So that's that. The issue of Where It Came From has been settled.
Carlson is a writer and amateur astronomer who keeps a telescope in his yard at the edge of the desert. As the movie opens, he is studying the night sky as his girlfriend Barbara Rush talks astrology. He is a Sagittarius, she is a Scorpio; she explains their compatibility. You can do their charts yourself to see if it checks out, but the thing is, in the middle of their reverie, a Gigantic Fireball comes streaking across the sky, hurtling at a slightly off-horizontal angle until it crashes into the desert floor with a resounding Whammo!!
Richard Carlson immediately contacts a buddy of his who runs a helicopter service, and they do a middle-of-the night flyover of the crash site. An enormous crater has been created by the fireball, "the biggest we've ever seen", declares Carlson. The crater is indeed big, half a mile across. Carlson is fascinated, and against the wishes of his gal Barbara Rush) he orders the pilot to land the chopper at the crater's edge. From there he clambers down inside this deep hole in the Earth, to see the meteor up close.
Except when he gets down there, he can see that it's not a meteor.
It's a Space Ship that resembles a giant sized soccer ball.
But don't get the idea that it is cheesy looking.
Carlson inches closer to the ship for a better look, and then suddenly one of the hexagonal soccer ball sections opens up! It's a doorway. Carlson can see inside to the ship's sleek, sparse interior. There doesn't seem to be anyone about, however, so he steps toward the door to have a look for himself. Just then, the door slams, creating an Enormous Landslide around the crater. In short order, the Space Ship is buried beneath tons of rock. Carlson is lucky to get out alive. As they head back to town, he tells the chopper pilot and his girlfriend that they have to alert the Sheriff and the press. "Both of you saw it"!, he declares.
"But it's buried now", replies Barbara Rush. "No one will believe us".
It turns out she is right. No one believes that a Space Ship is buried at the bottom of the crater. Furthermore, the Sheriff and the local reporters don't trust Richard Carlson to begin with. He is an Egghead, always talking about complex ideas, so now that he's insisting that Aliens have landed, they straight up think he's crazy. There is strength in numbers where this type of mentality is concerned, so Carlson is ostracized to the point where the Sheriff is ready to punch him out.
But then, something happens.
Russell Johnson is working on a telephone line, way out in the desert. This is before he became The Professor on "Gilligan's Island". So he's out there with his partner, and suddenly they hear a rustling noise in the underbrush. Johnson goes over to inspect, and......doesn't come back.
His partner drives back to town to report the disappearance, and from there things get weird (which is always good, right?)
Pretty soon, Johnson's partner goes missing too, and when they finally turn up, they don't seem like their old selves anymore. Yeah, it's one of those deals like in "Invasion Of The Body Snatchers", except this movie came first!
What eventually happens is that the Sheriff is forced to take Carlson seriously. He finally has to send out a team to dig out all the rock so they can see what's down there at the bottom of the crater, but by the time they do this, Barbara Rush has disappeared. Richard Carlson now has a personal stake in the matter, and goes searching the desert for her, following the lead of phosphorescent trails that temporarily appear and then disappear. The trails lead to an old abandoned mine, and.......
That's all I'm gonna tell you.
But you've most likely seen the movie anyway, right? I mean, you couldn't have missed it all these years like I did, could you?
At any rate, "It Came From Outer Space" is an All Time Freakin' Classic of Sci-Fi. It almost plays like a Noir, filmed mostly at night in the desert, partly at the Alabama Hills, and with a lot of day-for-night photography also. It looks incredible, never cheesy, and the direction is solid behind Jack Arnold, who is the dean of 1950s sci-fi directors. He did "Tarantula" and "Creature From The Black Lagoon", just to name two. He also directed a boatload of "Gilligan's Island" episodes, which may account for the Russell Johnson connection, but anyway - yeah, he has created another classic here.
Two Gigantic Thumbs Up for "It Came From Outer Space", a major league epic of classic science fiction. I can't believe it took me so long to see it, but it also gives me hope that there are other confusingly-titled movies out there that I have assumed I've seen but have not. ////
That's all for the moment. I will now head over to Von's on a quick resupply mission before going back to Pearl's for the Supper Shift. See you later tonight, as usual!
Tons of love. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Sunday, August 25, 2019
Rod Serling's "Patterns" starring Van Heflin, Everett Sloane and Ed Begley
Tonight I watched a riveting drama called "Patterns" (1955), written by Rod Serling and starring Van Heflin as an up and coming young engineer who has been promoted to an executive position at the corporation for which he works. The CEO of this company is a ruthless man named Mr. Ramsey (played by the always excellent Everett Sloane), who has built his enterprise into the giant it now is by never losing sight of the bottom line, which of course is profits. In reality, his father may have had more to do with the success of the business, but Ramsey is a megalomaniac and he takes all the credit. By all accounts, he does have the corporation on a solid footing, and is looking to expand it's horizons, but he achieves these goals via the expertise of his executive board, men who have all been chosen for their knowledge in a specific area. These vice-presidents write proposals and Mr. Ramsey makes the final decisions on how the company will move forward. In his business acumen, Mr. Ramsey would seem no different from a lot of CEOs, but there is one feature of his board meetings that is excessive : he is constantly yelling, loud enough to be heard in the hallway by the secretaries.
However, he is not a one dimensional tyrant. He does possess insight into the psychologies of the men he has chosen to work for him, and he manipulates them like chess pieces, moving some forward by praise while denigrating others to remove them from the board. In the movie, Mr. Ramsey has one man singled out for removal, a Mr. Briggs (Ed Begley), who has been with the company for 40 years. Briggs had worked under Ramsey's father as a top engineer and business strategist, and was instrumental in the company's rise to the top of the stock market ratings.
Now, however, Ramsey the son is in charge. He sees Mr. Briggs as an old, unproductive relic, and even though it isn't true, Ramsey is determined to see him gone. This is why he has hired Van Heflin and moved him from a company plant in Ohio to the executive headquarters in New York. Heflin is to be groomed as Mr. Briggs' replacement. Ramsey cannot simply fire Briggs, though. That would run against a business tradition against pulling the rug out from under long time, loyal employees. Even Mr. Ramsey won't stoop that low, if only because it would make him look bad.
Instead, he intends to make life at the office so miserable for Mr. Briggs that he will resign, sooner rather than later. Briggs is old and has a heart condition. Mr. Ramsey doesn't care; he hounds Briggs daily and screams at him in every meeting, humiliating him in front of the other veeps.
The catch is that Van Heflin, the new man in the executive suite, who isn't aware that he will be replacing Mr. Briggs, has taken a liking to Briggs. Despite his own business prowess, Heflin is a nice guy, and unlike Mr. Ramsey, he doesn't believe in profit above all, no matter the cost in human terms.
At a certain point, Heflin will catch on to what Mr. Ramsey is doing to Mr. Briggs, i.e. trying to force him to quit, and he will confront the boss, saying that he wants no part of such a heartless scheme.
It is on this point that Rod Serling's script will turn, and an ingenious script it is.
Which is exactly what you'd expect from Uncle Rod. :)
I was watching the movie and was about two thirds of the way through when it hit me : "Oh yeah...this must be the movie that Mom used to talk about, the one that broke Rod into the big time". When I found "Patterns" during a library search, maybe for Van Heflin movies (I don't recall), I did not recall ever hearing of it before. I saw that it was written by Rod Serling, who as you may know worked alongside my parents at radio station WLW in Cincinnati during the late 40s/early 50s. The dvd was being released on a new restoration label called The Film Detective (who do excellent work, btw), so I thought, "Hmmm, I've never heard of this one by Rod, but it must be a good one if they've restored it".
So I checked it out, as as I got to the 2/3rds point, I remembered - Mom used to mention a show that Rod had written before "Twilight Zone".....
"It was called 'Patterns' ", she said. "They ended up making a movie version of it and Rod's career really took off after that".
I saw on IMBD that the first, televised version won him his first Emmy, and if you watch the movie (which has the same script), you will see why. It's just fantastic writing, with all the moral implications you would expect from Rod. The acting is also top quality, especially Everett Sloane who plays "Mr. Ramsey" as ferocious and uncaring but not cliche.
"Patterns" is the story of the Rat Race, and how it operates at the highest level in the executive boardroom. Rod wrote it when he was 32. His deep insight into human nature is already very apparent.
I give "Patterns" Two Huge Thumbs Up, not only for the superb writing and acting, but also for some fine location cinematography in New York City. The hustle and bustle of the street and tension of the office building are both captured in black and white.
Definitely look for this one, especially if you are a Rod Serling fan. I think it's one of the best things he's ever written, and that's saying a lot. Highest recommendation. /////
Well, that's all for the moment. I am gonna head out to the store, then to West Valley Libe (open on Sundays, hooray!) to look for more movies before I head back to Pearl's. We had good singing in church. Hope you are enjoying your weekend. See you tonight at the Usual Time.
Tons of love! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
However, he is not a one dimensional tyrant. He does possess insight into the psychologies of the men he has chosen to work for him, and he manipulates them like chess pieces, moving some forward by praise while denigrating others to remove them from the board. In the movie, Mr. Ramsey has one man singled out for removal, a Mr. Briggs (Ed Begley), who has been with the company for 40 years. Briggs had worked under Ramsey's father as a top engineer and business strategist, and was instrumental in the company's rise to the top of the stock market ratings.
Now, however, Ramsey the son is in charge. He sees Mr. Briggs as an old, unproductive relic, and even though it isn't true, Ramsey is determined to see him gone. This is why he has hired Van Heflin and moved him from a company plant in Ohio to the executive headquarters in New York. Heflin is to be groomed as Mr. Briggs' replacement. Ramsey cannot simply fire Briggs, though. That would run against a business tradition against pulling the rug out from under long time, loyal employees. Even Mr. Ramsey won't stoop that low, if only because it would make him look bad.
Instead, he intends to make life at the office so miserable for Mr. Briggs that he will resign, sooner rather than later. Briggs is old and has a heart condition. Mr. Ramsey doesn't care; he hounds Briggs daily and screams at him in every meeting, humiliating him in front of the other veeps.
The catch is that Van Heflin, the new man in the executive suite, who isn't aware that he will be replacing Mr. Briggs, has taken a liking to Briggs. Despite his own business prowess, Heflin is a nice guy, and unlike Mr. Ramsey, he doesn't believe in profit above all, no matter the cost in human terms.
At a certain point, Heflin will catch on to what Mr. Ramsey is doing to Mr. Briggs, i.e. trying to force him to quit, and he will confront the boss, saying that he wants no part of such a heartless scheme.
It is on this point that Rod Serling's script will turn, and an ingenious script it is.
Which is exactly what you'd expect from Uncle Rod. :)
I was watching the movie and was about two thirds of the way through when it hit me : "Oh yeah...this must be the movie that Mom used to talk about, the one that broke Rod into the big time". When I found "Patterns" during a library search, maybe for Van Heflin movies (I don't recall), I did not recall ever hearing of it before. I saw that it was written by Rod Serling, who as you may know worked alongside my parents at radio station WLW in Cincinnati during the late 40s/early 50s. The dvd was being released on a new restoration label called The Film Detective (who do excellent work, btw), so I thought, "Hmmm, I've never heard of this one by Rod, but it must be a good one if they've restored it".
So I checked it out, as as I got to the 2/3rds point, I remembered - Mom used to mention a show that Rod had written before "Twilight Zone".....
"It was called 'Patterns' ", she said. "They ended up making a movie version of it and Rod's career really took off after that".
I saw on IMBD that the first, televised version won him his first Emmy, and if you watch the movie (which has the same script), you will see why. It's just fantastic writing, with all the moral implications you would expect from Rod. The acting is also top quality, especially Everett Sloane who plays "Mr. Ramsey" as ferocious and uncaring but not cliche.
"Patterns" is the story of the Rat Race, and how it operates at the highest level in the executive boardroom. Rod wrote it when he was 32. His deep insight into human nature is already very apparent.
I give "Patterns" Two Huge Thumbs Up, not only for the superb writing and acting, but also for some fine location cinematography in New York City. The hustle and bustle of the street and tension of the office building are both captured in black and white.
Definitely look for this one, especially if you are a Rod Serling fan. I think it's one of the best things he's ever written, and that's saying a lot. Highest recommendation. /////
Well, that's all for the moment. I am gonna head out to the store, then to West Valley Libe (open on Sundays, hooray!) to look for more movies before I head back to Pearl's. We had good singing in church. Hope you are enjoying your weekend. See you tonight at the Usual Time.
Tons of love! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Saturday, August 24, 2019
"The Secret Garden" starring Margaret O'Brien, Herbert Marshall and Dean Stockwell
(this blog was begun on the night of August 23, 2019)
Tonight I watched "The Secret Garden" (1949), starring Margaret O'Brien, Herbert Marshall and Dean Stockwell. As often happens, I saw a few minutes of it on TCM here at Pearl's, and it looked intriguing so I sought it out in the library database. Surprisingly, they didn't have it. Usually the Libe has everything. They did have another version, produced by the BBC in the 80s or 90s (can't remember which), but I wanted the original so I just bought it on Amazon. It turned out to be an excellent purchase.
Two words : "Wow" and "sigh"......
"The Secret Garden" was, as you may know, originally a book published in 1911 by an author named Frances Hodgson Burnett. Interesting to me is the number of prominent female authors and poets in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It seems to me that one of the first and strongest steps towards the recognition of womens' equality was via the written word. Of course, it was ridiculous that women had to fight for equality in the first place (and they are still fighting), but I have noticed that in the early era of movies there were many female screenwriters, and many scripts based on books written by women. It was as if they were saying, "well, we'll get our voices heard this way", i.e through authorship.
The works of Bronte sisters became very popular, and we reviewed Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre" a couple of nights ago. There was also Jane Austen, who came to prominence nearly a century earlier. I am far from a literary historian, in fact I only know what my limited exposure to certain movies tells me, but it seems to me that women, as authors, may have explored in greater depth the inner emotional lives of their characters, which may have been what made their works so popular at a time when the examination of emotion was not something that was contemplated in day to day life, especially in Stiff Upper Lip England.
Thinking back, I had probably heard of "The Secret Garden" during elementary school, though whether as a book or movie I can't recall. It's a phrase that, as a title, would stick with you, so I know I've been aware of it for a long time. But it's not the kind of book a boy would generally seek out. It's a story for all children - and adults too - but because the lead character is a twelve year old girl, that is the audience who I would imagine are most familiar with the story : adolescent girls, and most likely girls who lived during the time the book was first popular, over one hundred years ago. But the story has survived to this day, and like "Jane Eyre", many versions have been filmed over the years. It is a story with great staying power. All you have to do is watch the 1949 release to see why.
I am only going to give you the very basics, because I want you to see this movie for yourself.
Margaret O'Brien is "Mary Lennox" a young girl orphaned in India during a cholera epidemic. Her parents were wealthy Colonialists. She is used to privilege, being surrounded by finery and having servants to do her bidding . Now that her parents have died, she is sent back to England to live with her Uncle in his forbidding mansion, which is once again reminiscent of the houses in "Jane Eyre", "Rebecca" and "Wuthering Heights". It's a Mansion On The Moors, with fog rolling in and screams coming from secret rooms. But there the similarities to the other films end. Like "Jane Eyre", this is a story in which children take center stage, but unlike Charlotte Bronte's tale, this is less a story of children's struggle against the adult world than their belief that they can overcome it through their own uncorrupted power, manifested by a belief in the goodness of the world itself. The power of a childlike awareness of magic, if you will.
Mary is told by the mansion's caretaker, a mean older woman, that she is to stay in her own appointed area of the house. She must never explore it's other rooms. But of course she ignores this order because she hears loud screaming coming through the hallways.
In the course of her investigation she discovers a young boy in a hidden room. He is about her age, twelve, and he is bedridden. He is also her Uncle's son, which makes them cousins. He cannot walk, and wears braces on his legs. His incessant screaming is his way of getting attention. He calls it what it is, "throwing a tantrum", and it turns out that, despite being an obvious candidate for sympathy, he is quite a brat. He manipulates all the servants through his tantrums, which he throws at whim.
Only Margaret O'Brien sees through his act, and she calls him on it. The boy is played by Dean Stockwell, in one of the most amazing child performances you will ever see.
There is a third child, another boy who lives down the road. His name is Dickon (played by Brian Roper). He comes from a simple farm family and has a way with animals. Margaret O'Brien has heard rumor of a garden on her Uncle's property that is hidden away. It has been locked up for many years and she wants to find it and get inside, so she enlists Dickon to help.
When they find it, a whole new world will open up for the three children - including Dean Stockwell - and it will be their secret, not to be divulged to the adults, especially O'Brien's Uncle.
That is all I will reveal.
I was blown away by this movie. It is pure magic in the same way as "The Wizard Of Oz", though very different in content.
Also, it is what I call a "perfect movie" in purely cinematic terms, in that each scene leads right into the next, the pacing is even and nothing extra is added to divert from the story. The script and direction are both first rate, and the scenes between the children are as well acted as any by adult actors even in the heaviest drama.
In short, when the movie was over I thought : "This is gonna be one of my favorite movies of all time".
If you are still in touch with your Inner Child, it might become one of your favorites, too.
One thing is for sure : I have quite simply never seen a movie that is better than "The Secret Garden".
It is as good as a film can be, and it gets my highest possible recommendation.
No amount of Thumbs will suffice, but put 'em up anyway,
And bring a box of Kleenex, just in case. :) ///////
That's all for now. Today is Pearl's 95th birthday. I am gonna go get her some Chinese food for dinner, and we will have a little celebration. See you back here tonight at the Usual Time.
Tons of love. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Tonight I watched "The Secret Garden" (1949), starring Margaret O'Brien, Herbert Marshall and Dean Stockwell. As often happens, I saw a few minutes of it on TCM here at Pearl's, and it looked intriguing so I sought it out in the library database. Surprisingly, they didn't have it. Usually the Libe has everything. They did have another version, produced by the BBC in the 80s or 90s (can't remember which), but I wanted the original so I just bought it on Amazon. It turned out to be an excellent purchase.
Two words : "Wow" and "sigh"......
"The Secret Garden" was, as you may know, originally a book published in 1911 by an author named Frances Hodgson Burnett. Interesting to me is the number of prominent female authors and poets in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It seems to me that one of the first and strongest steps towards the recognition of womens' equality was via the written word. Of course, it was ridiculous that women had to fight for equality in the first place (and they are still fighting), but I have noticed that in the early era of movies there were many female screenwriters, and many scripts based on books written by women. It was as if they were saying, "well, we'll get our voices heard this way", i.e through authorship.
The works of Bronte sisters became very popular, and we reviewed Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre" a couple of nights ago. There was also Jane Austen, who came to prominence nearly a century earlier. I am far from a literary historian, in fact I only know what my limited exposure to certain movies tells me, but it seems to me that women, as authors, may have explored in greater depth the inner emotional lives of their characters, which may have been what made their works so popular at a time when the examination of emotion was not something that was contemplated in day to day life, especially in Stiff Upper Lip England.
Thinking back, I had probably heard of "The Secret Garden" during elementary school, though whether as a book or movie I can't recall. It's a phrase that, as a title, would stick with you, so I know I've been aware of it for a long time. But it's not the kind of book a boy would generally seek out. It's a story for all children - and adults too - but because the lead character is a twelve year old girl, that is the audience who I would imagine are most familiar with the story : adolescent girls, and most likely girls who lived during the time the book was first popular, over one hundred years ago. But the story has survived to this day, and like "Jane Eyre", many versions have been filmed over the years. It is a story with great staying power. All you have to do is watch the 1949 release to see why.
I am only going to give you the very basics, because I want you to see this movie for yourself.
Margaret O'Brien is "Mary Lennox" a young girl orphaned in India during a cholera epidemic. Her parents were wealthy Colonialists. She is used to privilege, being surrounded by finery and having servants to do her bidding . Now that her parents have died, she is sent back to England to live with her Uncle in his forbidding mansion, which is once again reminiscent of the houses in "Jane Eyre", "Rebecca" and "Wuthering Heights". It's a Mansion On The Moors, with fog rolling in and screams coming from secret rooms. But there the similarities to the other films end. Like "Jane Eyre", this is a story in which children take center stage, but unlike Charlotte Bronte's tale, this is less a story of children's struggle against the adult world than their belief that they can overcome it through their own uncorrupted power, manifested by a belief in the goodness of the world itself. The power of a childlike awareness of magic, if you will.
Mary is told by the mansion's caretaker, a mean older woman, that she is to stay in her own appointed area of the house. She must never explore it's other rooms. But of course she ignores this order because she hears loud screaming coming through the hallways.
In the course of her investigation she discovers a young boy in a hidden room. He is about her age, twelve, and he is bedridden. He is also her Uncle's son, which makes them cousins. He cannot walk, and wears braces on his legs. His incessant screaming is his way of getting attention. He calls it what it is, "throwing a tantrum", and it turns out that, despite being an obvious candidate for sympathy, he is quite a brat. He manipulates all the servants through his tantrums, which he throws at whim.
Only Margaret O'Brien sees through his act, and she calls him on it. The boy is played by Dean Stockwell, in one of the most amazing child performances you will ever see.
There is a third child, another boy who lives down the road. His name is Dickon (played by Brian Roper). He comes from a simple farm family and has a way with animals. Margaret O'Brien has heard rumor of a garden on her Uncle's property that is hidden away. It has been locked up for many years and she wants to find it and get inside, so she enlists Dickon to help.
When they find it, a whole new world will open up for the three children - including Dean Stockwell - and it will be their secret, not to be divulged to the adults, especially O'Brien's Uncle.
That is all I will reveal.
I was blown away by this movie. It is pure magic in the same way as "The Wizard Of Oz", though very different in content.
Also, it is what I call a "perfect movie" in purely cinematic terms, in that each scene leads right into the next, the pacing is even and nothing extra is added to divert from the story. The script and direction are both first rate, and the scenes between the children are as well acted as any by adult actors even in the heaviest drama.
In short, when the movie was over I thought : "This is gonna be one of my favorite movies of all time".
If you are still in touch with your Inner Child, it might become one of your favorites, too.
One thing is for sure : I have quite simply never seen a movie that is better than "The Secret Garden".
It is as good as a film can be, and it gets my highest possible recommendation.
No amount of Thumbs will suffice, but put 'em up anyway,
And bring a box of Kleenex, just in case. :) ///////
That's all for now. Today is Pearl's 95th birthday. I am gonna go get her some Chinese food for dinner, and we will have a little celebration. See you back here tonight at the Usual Time.
Tons of love. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Thursday, August 22, 2019
Rush "Cinema Strangiato" at AMC Warner Center
(this blog was begun on the night of August 21, 2019)
Tonight was a little different. I went with Grimsley to the AMC Theater in Warner Center to see "Cinema Strangiato", a brand new Rush concert movie filmed in their hometown of Toronto in 2015 during their final tour. I wasn't aware of this movie until I saw an ad for it on Facebook about a week ago. It was gonna be one of those "one night only" screenings of the kind put on by Fathom Events, only this company was called Atom. By the time I checked the ticket link, the showing was almost sold out, but I managed to score a pair of seats in the second row near the center.
Hey! That sounds just like what you'd say if you just got lucky on a pair of actual concert seats.
"Second Row Center"! Man, I used to get so jazzed when I got incredible seats to shows in the old days. That was back when Rock Was Everything. Nowdays there aren't many bands left, and Rush is gone, but we got to see 'em tonight on the big screen, up close from second row center, so that in itself is a minor victory against the passage of time, and it was a really great concert movie to boot.
I saw Rush 32 times during their career (hmm, can you call a rock band's tenure a "career"? Sounds too Establishment), but anyway, where was I? I use too many parenthetical asides, and sometimes when I come out of my parentheses, I forget what I was saying, so lemme go back and check. :)
Okay, so yeah - I saw Rush 32 times between 1978 and 2015, the first time being at the Long Beach Arena in November '78 on the "Hemispheres" tour, and the last time being at The Forum in Inglewood on August 1, 2015, which was also the final Rush concert. I wasn't quite there from the beginning, but I was there for the long haul and at the very end, and Rush was amazing every time I saw them.
This is captured for posterity and with digital clarity, up close and personal, for all the Rush fans who saw them in concert and for all those yet to come who will not have had the chance. "Cinema Strangiato" is one of the best filmed concert movies I've seen. You really feel like you are either sitting in the best seat in the arena or standing onstage next to the guys. My biggest takeaway was watching their fingers move, and realizing once again just what incredible players Alex, Geddy and Neil are, and were as a band. The other thing I noticed is how the three of them were able to play all those thousands of notes and phrasings and yet not get in the way of one another. Though each guy is absolutely shredding in every song, it never sounds jumbled or just like a slurry of notes, but always very musical. Each one of the trio plays in the space left open by the other two, and a complex tapestry is woven.
Rush may have been the first band - that I am aware of anyway - to retire in large part for physical reasons, much like athletes retire. Neil Peart simply couldn't do it anymore. He had developed severe tendinitis in various joints and was reported to be playing in great pain at some shows. Though he looks okay in the movie, you can understand by watching him play how he could have sore joints after all these years. How many rock bands play and tour for 40 years, anyway? How many even last that long with all the original members? Yeah, I know : Neil wasn't the original drummer. But he was the one who made Rush into what they became. He played on every album but the first one, and he was with them for 41 years.
Every so often I will do another run-through of who I consider to be The Greatest Rock Bands Of All Time. I'm a big fan of lists, as you know. When I draw up my Greatest Bands list, I will usually do a Top Ten or Top Twenty, maybe a Top Twenty Five if I'm really "in the mood" (hey, did you see what I did there? You did if you are a Rush fan, haha).
And every time I do my list, Rush either comes out at #1, or they are at least in the Top Three.
Let's do a Top Ten right now, just for the heck of it.
#1: Rush
#2 : Ritchie Blackmore (includes all his work)
#3 : King's X
#4 : Todd Rundgren
#5 : Emerson, Lake and Palmer
#6 : Van Halen
#7 : Yes
#8 : Pink Floyd
#9 : Judas Priest
#10 : Sparks
I would say that the top three listed above could be interchangeable, as I have listed each at #1 in the past, going back several decades. There is no doubt that King's X was my #1 all through the '90s, and Ritchie (in Deep Purple and Rainbow) would've been my #1 in the 70s and part of the 80s. Heck, Van Halen were my Superheroes for a long time, Eddie in particular.
But overall, it always comes back to Rush.
That's how great they were. If you didn't see "Cinema Strangiato" this time around, make sure you caatch it next year. Yep, it's apparently gonna be screened as an annual event, kinda like a Grateful Dead memorial trip for Rush fans. It's a way of keeping Rush alive, in our minds and hearts, and with our eyes and ears. /////
That's all for now. See you tonight at the Usual Time! Dare me to finish a blog in one night, I dare ya.
Tons of love! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Tonight was a little different. I went with Grimsley to the AMC Theater in Warner Center to see "Cinema Strangiato", a brand new Rush concert movie filmed in their hometown of Toronto in 2015 during their final tour. I wasn't aware of this movie until I saw an ad for it on Facebook about a week ago. It was gonna be one of those "one night only" screenings of the kind put on by Fathom Events, only this company was called Atom. By the time I checked the ticket link, the showing was almost sold out, but I managed to score a pair of seats in the second row near the center.
Hey! That sounds just like what you'd say if you just got lucky on a pair of actual concert seats.
"Second Row Center"! Man, I used to get so jazzed when I got incredible seats to shows in the old days. That was back when Rock Was Everything. Nowdays there aren't many bands left, and Rush is gone, but we got to see 'em tonight on the big screen, up close from second row center, so that in itself is a minor victory against the passage of time, and it was a really great concert movie to boot.
I saw Rush 32 times during their career (hmm, can you call a rock band's tenure a "career"? Sounds too Establishment), but anyway, where was I? I use too many parenthetical asides, and sometimes when I come out of my parentheses, I forget what I was saying, so lemme go back and check. :)
Okay, so yeah - I saw Rush 32 times between 1978 and 2015, the first time being at the Long Beach Arena in November '78 on the "Hemispheres" tour, and the last time being at The Forum in Inglewood on August 1, 2015, which was also the final Rush concert. I wasn't quite there from the beginning, but I was there for the long haul and at the very end, and Rush was amazing every time I saw them.
This is captured for posterity and with digital clarity, up close and personal, for all the Rush fans who saw them in concert and for all those yet to come who will not have had the chance. "Cinema Strangiato" is one of the best filmed concert movies I've seen. You really feel like you are either sitting in the best seat in the arena or standing onstage next to the guys. My biggest takeaway was watching their fingers move, and realizing once again just what incredible players Alex, Geddy and Neil are, and were as a band. The other thing I noticed is how the three of them were able to play all those thousands of notes and phrasings and yet not get in the way of one another. Though each guy is absolutely shredding in every song, it never sounds jumbled or just like a slurry of notes, but always very musical. Each one of the trio plays in the space left open by the other two, and a complex tapestry is woven.
Rush may have been the first band - that I am aware of anyway - to retire in large part for physical reasons, much like athletes retire. Neil Peart simply couldn't do it anymore. He had developed severe tendinitis in various joints and was reported to be playing in great pain at some shows. Though he looks okay in the movie, you can understand by watching him play how he could have sore joints after all these years. How many rock bands play and tour for 40 years, anyway? How many even last that long with all the original members? Yeah, I know : Neil wasn't the original drummer. But he was the one who made Rush into what they became. He played on every album but the first one, and he was with them for 41 years.
Every so often I will do another run-through of who I consider to be The Greatest Rock Bands Of All Time. I'm a big fan of lists, as you know. When I draw up my Greatest Bands list, I will usually do a Top Ten or Top Twenty, maybe a Top Twenty Five if I'm really "in the mood" (hey, did you see what I did there? You did if you are a Rush fan, haha).
And every time I do my list, Rush either comes out at #1, or they are at least in the Top Three.
Let's do a Top Ten right now, just for the heck of it.
#1: Rush
#2 : Ritchie Blackmore (includes all his work)
#3 : King's X
#4 : Todd Rundgren
#5 : Emerson, Lake and Palmer
#6 : Van Halen
#7 : Yes
#8 : Pink Floyd
#9 : Judas Priest
#10 : Sparks
I would say that the top three listed above could be interchangeable, as I have listed each at #1 in the past, going back several decades. There is no doubt that King's X was my #1 all through the '90s, and Ritchie (in Deep Purple and Rainbow) would've been my #1 in the 70s and part of the 80s. Heck, Van Halen were my Superheroes for a long time, Eddie in particular.
But overall, it always comes back to Rush.
That's how great they were. If you didn't see "Cinema Strangiato" this time around, make sure you caatch it next year. Yep, it's apparently gonna be screened as an annual event, kinda like a Grateful Dead memorial trip for Rush fans. It's a way of keeping Rush alive, in our minds and hearts, and with our eyes and ears. /////
That's all for now. See you tonight at the Usual Time! Dare me to finish a blog in one night, I dare ya.
Tons of love! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Wednesday, August 21, 2019
"Jane Eyre" (1943) starring Joan Fontaine and Orson Welles
Tonight I watched "Jane Eyre", the 1943 version with Joan Fontaine and Orson Wells. I'd seen part of it earlier in the year on TCM, which is the default channel here at Pearl's, and it looked really good - ultra mysterious and gothic. I ordered it from the Libe back in May or June, but they sent me a different version from the 1990s with William Hurt in the Wells role. Nothing against William Hurt (except that he always does his William Hurt impression in every movie he's in), but I didn't watch that version because I wanted the original one. Tonight I checked on IMDB, and there are like a dozen versions of "Jane Eyre", maybe more. It's got to be one of the most filmed stories of all time.
Yesterday I was at the Northridge Libe, scanning the dvd racks for something to watch, and I came upon a Korean copy of the 1943 film. I own a few Korean "official releases" of other movies, and they've all been watchable prints, so I checked out the "Jane Eyre" dvd because it was the Wells/Fontaine version, the one that had me intrigued because it was so mysterious.
It's one of those old melodramas, like "Wuthering Heights" or Hitchcock's "Rebecca", which had also starred Fontaine three years earlier. You know the kind of story I mean, set in the Moors of England, or high in a castle against a fog-bound cliff on some faraway island. There's always a Mansion that has A Name. There also has to be a young woman who is newly arrived as a governess or in a similar employ, and who is frightened at first by her gothic surroundings and the creepy inhabitants, but who is also Stoic and Bound By Duty to stay on the job. Finally, there has to be an older man who is Filled With Inner Turmoil Because Of A Long Kept Secret Having To Do With His Past, or His Family's Past.
If you've got all those ingredients, you've got a movie like "Jane Eyre", which was of course originally a book written by Charlotte Bronte in the mid-19th century. My Mom was a fan of the Bronte sisters, and of Jane Austen, so I'm sure she mentioned the 1943 movie to me also. No doubt she would have seen it on it's initial release.
Like my Mom, Jane Eyre is an orphan, living with her cruel aunt in Victorian England. Luckily for Mom, and for my family, she was adopted at six months by a nice couple in Ohio. Jane Eyre is not so fortunate. Her wealthy aunt, who could easily raise her if she chose, has instead decided to persecute the poor little girl, denouncing her as being "of the Devil" because Jane has dared to stand up to the unwarranted punishments meted out by her aunt (Agnes Moorehead). Because she has "talked back" to her aunt, she is sent away, at nine years of age, to a place called Lowood Institute, a reformatory for girls run by a Puritanical religious fanatic (Henry Daniell).
I must interject here to say that, if America has the black cloud of slavery hanging over it's past, then England has the cloud of institutionalized child abuse.
Jane's life with her aunt has been a horror show, and it will only get worse under the tutelage of Mr. Brocklehurst at Lowood. He clearly hates the girls in his charge, and he singles out Jane for special punishment because of her outspokenness and sincerity. Brocklehurst has ordered the other girls to shun Jane, but one disobeys. She is Helen (played by a young and uncredited Elizabeth Taylor), who becomes Jane's only friend at the Institute. Mr. Brocklehurst is determined to break the bond between these two children, and he is successful, though I shant describe how because it is too depressing.
Now we will fast forward ten years. Jane, who is made of tough stuff, has spent a decade at Lowood and is ready to graduate. Mr. Brocklehurst, in an attempt to keep her captive, offers her a teaching job at the Institute, but she declines, much to his chagrin.
Instead, she advertises in the newspaper, looking to be hired as a governess. Shortly a letter arrives, from an Edward Rochester (Orson Welles), hiring Jane to look after a small girl in his care (Margaret O'Brien). She is the daughter of a French dancer Welles was engaged to. The dancer died and her little daughter remained with Welles in his mansion. She is not technically his daughter but he has raised her as such, though he is gone for long periods and spends little time with her.
Jane Eyre arrives at the darkened mansion to find Rochester absent as usual. She is shown around the mansion by his maid Mrs. Fairfax, who also introduces her to Adele (O'Brien), the neglected little daughter.
Jane settles in and begins to do her job, but notices some strange goings-on inside the place. Noises at night. A high-pitched cackle coming from behind a door. Several days later Mr. Rochester returns home. He is by turns brusque and polite with Jane, and though she feels faintly intimidated by him, she also senses in Mr. Rochester a deep hurt, something she is attuned to in others from her own life experience.
As a result, she and Mr. Rochester will come to confide in one another. A relationship will develop, but they keep it under wraps because she is his servant. In time, however, as the mystery within the house deepens, and secrets are closer to being revealed, Welles will rely on Jane for his very survival.
But will she be there for him?
This version of "Jane Eyre", which I take to be the original, is superb, with Joan Fontaine shining in the lead role as Jane, the soul of empathy. Orson Welles is also at his Shakespearean best, grand and eloquent. It's always a treat to have Margaret O'Brien in any movie, and she is charming as usual though she doesn't have much to do. Elizabeth Taylor delivers an emotion packed brief role as Helen, Jane's only friend at the Lowood Institute, and Agnes Moorehead is wicked and aloof as Jane's cruel Aunt.
It's an incredible cast and a high caliber production, filmed on sets at 20th Century Fox. The Korean print I watched was passable, but I wish Criterion would do a restoration of this film so it's dark imagery would stand out in all it's morbid glory.
Two Huge Thumbs Up for "Jane Eyre", the 1943 version. Look for it when you're in the mood for melodrama. ////
That's all for now. I'm heading out for an afternoon stroll and then back to Pearl's.
See you tonight at the Usual Time. Tons of love, with millions of x's & o's! xoxoxoxoxoxoxo, etc. :):)
Yesterday I was at the Northridge Libe, scanning the dvd racks for something to watch, and I came upon a Korean copy of the 1943 film. I own a few Korean "official releases" of other movies, and they've all been watchable prints, so I checked out the "Jane Eyre" dvd because it was the Wells/Fontaine version, the one that had me intrigued because it was so mysterious.
It's one of those old melodramas, like "Wuthering Heights" or Hitchcock's "Rebecca", which had also starred Fontaine three years earlier. You know the kind of story I mean, set in the Moors of England, or high in a castle against a fog-bound cliff on some faraway island. There's always a Mansion that has A Name. There also has to be a young woman who is newly arrived as a governess or in a similar employ, and who is frightened at first by her gothic surroundings and the creepy inhabitants, but who is also Stoic and Bound By Duty to stay on the job. Finally, there has to be an older man who is Filled With Inner Turmoil Because Of A Long Kept Secret Having To Do With His Past, or His Family's Past.
If you've got all those ingredients, you've got a movie like "Jane Eyre", which was of course originally a book written by Charlotte Bronte in the mid-19th century. My Mom was a fan of the Bronte sisters, and of Jane Austen, so I'm sure she mentioned the 1943 movie to me also. No doubt she would have seen it on it's initial release.
Like my Mom, Jane Eyre is an orphan, living with her cruel aunt in Victorian England. Luckily for Mom, and for my family, she was adopted at six months by a nice couple in Ohio. Jane Eyre is not so fortunate. Her wealthy aunt, who could easily raise her if she chose, has instead decided to persecute the poor little girl, denouncing her as being "of the Devil" because Jane has dared to stand up to the unwarranted punishments meted out by her aunt (Agnes Moorehead). Because she has "talked back" to her aunt, she is sent away, at nine years of age, to a place called Lowood Institute, a reformatory for girls run by a Puritanical religious fanatic (Henry Daniell).
I must interject here to say that, if America has the black cloud of slavery hanging over it's past, then England has the cloud of institutionalized child abuse.
Jane's life with her aunt has been a horror show, and it will only get worse under the tutelage of Mr. Brocklehurst at Lowood. He clearly hates the girls in his charge, and he singles out Jane for special punishment because of her outspokenness and sincerity. Brocklehurst has ordered the other girls to shun Jane, but one disobeys. She is Helen (played by a young and uncredited Elizabeth Taylor), who becomes Jane's only friend at the Institute. Mr. Brocklehurst is determined to break the bond between these two children, and he is successful, though I shant describe how because it is too depressing.
Now we will fast forward ten years. Jane, who is made of tough stuff, has spent a decade at Lowood and is ready to graduate. Mr. Brocklehurst, in an attempt to keep her captive, offers her a teaching job at the Institute, but she declines, much to his chagrin.
Instead, she advertises in the newspaper, looking to be hired as a governess. Shortly a letter arrives, from an Edward Rochester (Orson Welles), hiring Jane to look after a small girl in his care (Margaret O'Brien). She is the daughter of a French dancer Welles was engaged to. The dancer died and her little daughter remained with Welles in his mansion. She is not technically his daughter but he has raised her as such, though he is gone for long periods and spends little time with her.
Jane Eyre arrives at the darkened mansion to find Rochester absent as usual. She is shown around the mansion by his maid Mrs. Fairfax, who also introduces her to Adele (O'Brien), the neglected little daughter.
Jane settles in and begins to do her job, but notices some strange goings-on inside the place. Noises at night. A high-pitched cackle coming from behind a door. Several days later Mr. Rochester returns home. He is by turns brusque and polite with Jane, and though she feels faintly intimidated by him, she also senses in Mr. Rochester a deep hurt, something she is attuned to in others from her own life experience.
As a result, she and Mr. Rochester will come to confide in one another. A relationship will develop, but they keep it under wraps because she is his servant. In time, however, as the mystery within the house deepens, and secrets are closer to being revealed, Welles will rely on Jane for his very survival.
But will she be there for him?
This version of "Jane Eyre", which I take to be the original, is superb, with Joan Fontaine shining in the lead role as Jane, the soul of empathy. Orson Welles is also at his Shakespearean best, grand and eloquent. It's always a treat to have Margaret O'Brien in any movie, and she is charming as usual though she doesn't have much to do. Elizabeth Taylor delivers an emotion packed brief role as Helen, Jane's only friend at the Lowood Institute, and Agnes Moorehead is wicked and aloof as Jane's cruel Aunt.
It's an incredible cast and a high caliber production, filmed on sets at 20th Century Fox. The Korean print I watched was passable, but I wish Criterion would do a restoration of this film so it's dark imagery would stand out in all it's morbid glory.
Two Huge Thumbs Up for "Jane Eyre", the 1943 version. Look for it when you're in the mood for melodrama. ////
That's all for now. I'm heading out for an afternoon stroll and then back to Pearl's.
See you tonight at the Usual Time. Tons of love, with millions of x's & o's! xoxoxoxoxoxoxo, etc. :):)
Tuesday, August 20, 2019
"The Leech Woman" starring Coleen Gray and Grant Williams
Tonight I watched the fifth and final film from my Ultimate Sci-Fi Collection Volume Two dvd set. It was called "The Leech Woman" (1960), which turned out to be a misleading title because I was expecting another Insect Extravaganza. Not the kind where the military fights a Giant Bug, but more along the lines of a movie called "The Wasp Woman", where A Woman does indeed morph into A Wasp. I figured : "Wasp Woman", "Leech Woman". Gotta be the same genre. In retrospect I am glad I guessed wrong, because "The Wasp Woman" isn't a very good movie. It's a Roger Corman cheapie, which tells you all you need to know.
I should've trusted the folks at Universal, who'd presented me with mostly stellar movies thus far in my Ultimate Collection, in both Volumes One and Two. Especially on their label "Universal International", the flicks have been uniformly good and even great in a couple of cases (see "The Deadly Mantis").
I would rate "The Leech Woman" as good, if for no other reason than that it's unusual. Once again I hesitate to call it sci-fi, and definitely not of the Atomic Age variety. Instead, it's equal parts domestic drama, African jungle adventure, and a murder mystery set in Los Angeles.
The movie opens at the office of an endocrinologist (Phillip Terry) who specializes in anti-aging treatments for women. He is in the middle of a bitter argument with his wife (Coleen Gray), who has shown up asking for a divorce. She is several years his senior and is a hopeless alcoholic, but we sympathize with her because we see how he treats her; condescendingly and with contempt. He married her when she was younger and very beautiful, but now that she has aged he has no more interest. So, she drinks and wants out of the marriage.
Outside in the hallway, an old woman enters the doctor's office. Unlike his wife, who is in late middle age, this woman is very elderly. His nurse, who announces her presence to the doctor, describes her in a whisper as "looking like a mummy", and indeed she does.
The old woman has a cryptic persona. She wants some tests done to prove her age, which turns out to be......hold on to your hats......152 years old!
Good Jeeminy Christmas and Great Googley Moogely! But the thing is, she looks it. She, or the makeup department, or a combination of both, did an admirable job.
So now that she has proven her age, she wants to demonstrate to the doctor the she, in fact, already has access to a superior anti-aging formula, discovered long ago by her tribe in Tanganyika. This herbal concoction, prepared from the extract of an orchid that only grows in that region, will extend life well beyond it's statistical expectation. But it will only do this for women.
In addition to it's life extension properties, the extract also has the capability of returning women to a state of youth, but only when combined with a secret ingredient, which the old woman is not willing to divulge to the doctor. Instead, she relays a message to his distraught wife, by way of a Weird Pronouncement on her way out the door. She tells the wife that her abusive husband will soon be dead, and that she - the wife - will have her youth restored as a result.
Everyone in the office is creeped out by the old lady, and the doctor tries to smooth things over by apologizing to his wife for his callousness. But in the interim, what we know that the wife doesn't is that the 152 year old woman has given the doctor a private demonstration of her youth-restoring powers. He is so excited by what he has seen that he decides to mount an expedition to Tanganyika on the spot. He cozies up to his wife because he needs her to come along. His apology is fake.
The next thing you know they are on safari, accompanied by an English guide (a Big Game Hunter by trade) and several Tangyanikan natives as carriers.
I can't tell you any more about what happens in the jungle, because it involves the discovery of the old woman's Secret Ingredient for her youth formula, and her method of extracting it.
However, suffice it to say that the action eventually returns to Los Angeles. The alcoholic wife no longer seeks to divorce her husband, but has started dating other men, one of whom happens to be her husband's lawyer (Grant Williams of "The Incredible Shrinking Man"). He is engaged to another woman, which puts him - and the doctor's wife - in quite a fix when his fiancee finds out.
Meanwhile, the cops are asking around about a murder that has taken place nearby. A local con-man has been found dead in his car, with a certain business card in his possession.
Is that convoluted enough for ya? That's why "The Leech Woman" is a good movie, because of the strange plot and different settings. It keeps throwing curveballs at you. So, despite the misleading title and lack of a Giant Bug, I am giving "The Leech Woman" Two Solid Thumbs Up. It has the added advantage of being shot in black and white, and as a bonus is has a lively jazz score, used creatively by the filmmakers.
Give "The Leech Woman" a look, but don't go on a date with her! And be sure to check out both Volumes of The Ultimate Sci-Fi Collection. There are eleven movies total, almost all of 'em good, a few even great and classic, and for probably around twenty bucks for both dvd sets, total. /////
That's all for now! To the produce market I go. Gotta get a new jar of turmeric while I'm there. It really helps my sore hiking knees, a highly recommended product.
See you tonight at the Usual Time. Tons of love! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
I should've trusted the folks at Universal, who'd presented me with mostly stellar movies thus far in my Ultimate Collection, in both Volumes One and Two. Especially on their label "Universal International", the flicks have been uniformly good and even great in a couple of cases (see "The Deadly Mantis").
I would rate "The Leech Woman" as good, if for no other reason than that it's unusual. Once again I hesitate to call it sci-fi, and definitely not of the Atomic Age variety. Instead, it's equal parts domestic drama, African jungle adventure, and a murder mystery set in Los Angeles.
The movie opens at the office of an endocrinologist (Phillip Terry) who specializes in anti-aging treatments for women. He is in the middle of a bitter argument with his wife (Coleen Gray), who has shown up asking for a divorce. She is several years his senior and is a hopeless alcoholic, but we sympathize with her because we see how he treats her; condescendingly and with contempt. He married her when she was younger and very beautiful, but now that she has aged he has no more interest. So, she drinks and wants out of the marriage.
Outside in the hallway, an old woman enters the doctor's office. Unlike his wife, who is in late middle age, this woman is very elderly. His nurse, who announces her presence to the doctor, describes her in a whisper as "looking like a mummy", and indeed she does.
The old woman has a cryptic persona. She wants some tests done to prove her age, which turns out to be......hold on to your hats......152 years old!
Good Jeeminy Christmas and Great Googley Moogely! But the thing is, she looks it. She, or the makeup department, or a combination of both, did an admirable job.
So now that she has proven her age, she wants to demonstrate to the doctor the she, in fact, already has access to a superior anti-aging formula, discovered long ago by her tribe in Tanganyika. This herbal concoction, prepared from the extract of an orchid that only grows in that region, will extend life well beyond it's statistical expectation. But it will only do this for women.
In addition to it's life extension properties, the extract also has the capability of returning women to a state of youth, but only when combined with a secret ingredient, which the old woman is not willing to divulge to the doctor. Instead, she relays a message to his distraught wife, by way of a Weird Pronouncement on her way out the door. She tells the wife that her abusive husband will soon be dead, and that she - the wife - will have her youth restored as a result.
Everyone in the office is creeped out by the old lady, and the doctor tries to smooth things over by apologizing to his wife for his callousness. But in the interim, what we know that the wife doesn't is that the 152 year old woman has given the doctor a private demonstration of her youth-restoring powers. He is so excited by what he has seen that he decides to mount an expedition to Tanganyika on the spot. He cozies up to his wife because he needs her to come along. His apology is fake.
The next thing you know they are on safari, accompanied by an English guide (a Big Game Hunter by trade) and several Tangyanikan natives as carriers.
I can't tell you any more about what happens in the jungle, because it involves the discovery of the old woman's Secret Ingredient for her youth formula, and her method of extracting it.
However, suffice it to say that the action eventually returns to Los Angeles. The alcoholic wife no longer seeks to divorce her husband, but has started dating other men, one of whom happens to be her husband's lawyer (Grant Williams of "The Incredible Shrinking Man"). He is engaged to another woman, which puts him - and the doctor's wife - in quite a fix when his fiancee finds out.
Meanwhile, the cops are asking around about a murder that has taken place nearby. A local con-man has been found dead in his car, with a certain business card in his possession.
Is that convoluted enough for ya? That's why "The Leech Woman" is a good movie, because of the strange plot and different settings. It keeps throwing curveballs at you. So, despite the misleading title and lack of a Giant Bug, I am giving "The Leech Woman" Two Solid Thumbs Up. It has the added advantage of being shot in black and white, and as a bonus is has a lively jazz score, used creatively by the filmmakers.
Give "The Leech Woman" a look, but don't go on a date with her! And be sure to check out both Volumes of The Ultimate Sci-Fi Collection. There are eleven movies total, almost all of 'em good, a few even great and classic, and for probably around twenty bucks for both dvd sets, total. /////
That's all for now! To the produce market I go. Gotta get a new jar of turmeric while I'm there. It really helps my sore hiking knees, a highly recommended product.
See you tonight at the Usual Time. Tons of love! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Monday, August 19, 2019
"First Men In The Moon" by H.G. Wells
Tonight's movie, "First Men In The Moon" (1964) was based on another H.G. Wells story. Like "Things To Come", which we saw and reviewed a week ago, it is futuristic, except in this case we are kind of going back to the future. Hey, that would make a great title for a movie! (now wait a minute, Ad...)
But yeah, even though the story begins in the future, we have to go back several decades to tell it, because.....well, it'll make more sense if I start at the beginning.
You've gotta hand it to H.G. Wells. The guy was amazing, as far as predicting the coming of airplanes, space flight and even laser weapons, and he did all this when the telephone and electric lights were in their infancy, and radio had yet to become a household item (and television was four decades away). Yeah, he really was a super genius, and in his book "The First Men In The Moon", he wrote about a scientist who discovers an anti-gravity compound that will enable him and his neighbor to make a trip to the Moon. He wrote this in 1901, sixty eight years before we finally got there. More importantly, he was talking about anti-gravity as a propulsion system, as far as I know the first author to do so.
According to IMDB, the movie has added scenes that aren't in the book. The most important of these scenes comes at the beginning. As the movie opens, we see a modern day (1964) spacecraft about to make a lunar landing. This is only five years prior to the real thing, and the filmmakers got the details right. They show that the whole world is watching the landing on TV, just as it would actually happen in 1969. They have a landing module that looks not too different than the LEM of Apollo 11, and the landing as depicted in the movie has similarities to what we all saw on TV on July 20 1969. This 12 minute opening sequence was added to Wells' original story to give the movie some currency during the Space Race of the 1960s.
The point of the opening is that the whole world is watching the astronauts land on the Moon, and everyone takes for granted that they are the first men ever to set foot there. But then, shortly after they exit the capsule to begin their exploration of the lunar surface, one of the astronauts discovers some artifacts that are instant proof of a prior visitor. Among the items are a tattered British flag (and please pronounce British in the appointed way), and a note with a woman's name on it.
All of this is broadcast worldwide as it is happening, so the British news media erupts into a frenzy of trying to track down the woman whose name appeared on the note. But the note was dated "1899", 65 years in the past, so even if the woman is still alive, she would be very elderly and maybe non compos mentis.
Or she might be still on the Moon!
Through due diligence, emissaries from the Space Agency (modeled on NASA) are able to locate a man who, in 1899, was an associate of the Moon Woman. Actually he was her boyfriend. Now, he is 97 years old and living in a nursing home, but he is lucid and has quite a story to tell.
It seems that in 1899, he was a young playwright, staying for the Summer at a rented home in the English countryside, where he hoped to get some work done. He has a girlfriend he hopes will become his fiance, and he also has a rather eccentric neighbor, a Mr. Cavor, a scientist from whose house a lot of racket emanates, sometimes from a minor explosion.
The playwright's girl doesn't like Mr. Cavor, and sends her boyfriend over to complain, but he is short circuited from that mission by what he sees inside the house, and by Cavor's energy and enthusiasm in describing his work. The interior of the home is a laboratory (and please pronounce it in the British way). Through years of experimentation, Cavor has concocted a liquid compound he calls "Cavorite" in honor of himself. When cavorite is painted on an object, such as a chair, and then left to harden, the object will after a short time rise from the ground very rapidly. He demonstrates this to the playwright, who shortly thereafter is pinned to the ceiling!
His directive to complain to Mr. Cavor is all but forgotten. Now he wants to invest in the production of Cavorite! Then Cavor announces his ultimate goal, which is to use the Cavorite to propel himself to the Moon, in a capsule he has already built. He shows the playwright the capsule, and persuades him to come along. As you can imagine, the playwright's girl (Martha Hyer) is now even more furious with Mr. Cavor.
It's all very Steampunk, and this first hour or so of the movie is quite enjoyable, propelled by the energy of Lionel Jeffries as Mr. Cavor. They do get to the Moon, of course, with Martha Hyer in tow, and at that point things get a little dicier in the art department. You have to be ready to cut the movie a little slack for it's early 60s "papier mache" moonscape. The surface of the Moon looks awesome, as do all the Outer Space and rocket effects, thanks to Ray Harryhausen. It's when they go underground that the film takes on that "1960s" look with the fake cave walls and colored lights. But it's still highly enjoyable because of the Selenites, the Alien race the trio will encounter on their journey.
Martha Hyer has brought along a large hunting rifle - an "Elephant Gun" - even though Mr. Cavor told her not to, because "what if we run into some creature up there"?
They do run into a whole bunch of creatures, and the presence of the gun will figure prominently in what Wells' will use as a moral of the story.
That's all I will tell you, but definitely give "First Men In The Moon" a watch, especially during this historic anniversary Summer of Apollo and the real first trip to the Moon.
It gets Two Thumbs Up from me, just regular thumbs but solid ones, and it's a lot of fun. //////
That's all for now. Gotta go to the store and then to the Libe for more movies! Have a great afternoon and I'll see ya tonight at the Usual Time, and maybe one of these nights I can get squared back around and finish a blog all in one sitting!
Tons of love. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
But yeah, even though the story begins in the future, we have to go back several decades to tell it, because.....well, it'll make more sense if I start at the beginning.
You've gotta hand it to H.G. Wells. The guy was amazing, as far as predicting the coming of airplanes, space flight and even laser weapons, and he did all this when the telephone and electric lights were in their infancy, and radio had yet to become a household item (and television was four decades away). Yeah, he really was a super genius, and in his book "The First Men In The Moon", he wrote about a scientist who discovers an anti-gravity compound that will enable him and his neighbor to make a trip to the Moon. He wrote this in 1901, sixty eight years before we finally got there. More importantly, he was talking about anti-gravity as a propulsion system, as far as I know the first author to do so.
According to IMDB, the movie has added scenes that aren't in the book. The most important of these scenes comes at the beginning. As the movie opens, we see a modern day (1964) spacecraft about to make a lunar landing. This is only five years prior to the real thing, and the filmmakers got the details right. They show that the whole world is watching the landing on TV, just as it would actually happen in 1969. They have a landing module that looks not too different than the LEM of Apollo 11, and the landing as depicted in the movie has similarities to what we all saw on TV on July 20 1969. This 12 minute opening sequence was added to Wells' original story to give the movie some currency during the Space Race of the 1960s.
The point of the opening is that the whole world is watching the astronauts land on the Moon, and everyone takes for granted that they are the first men ever to set foot there. But then, shortly after they exit the capsule to begin their exploration of the lunar surface, one of the astronauts discovers some artifacts that are instant proof of a prior visitor. Among the items are a tattered British flag (and please pronounce British in the appointed way), and a note with a woman's name on it.
All of this is broadcast worldwide as it is happening, so the British news media erupts into a frenzy of trying to track down the woman whose name appeared on the note. But the note was dated "1899", 65 years in the past, so even if the woman is still alive, she would be very elderly and maybe non compos mentis.
Or she might be still on the Moon!
Through due diligence, emissaries from the Space Agency (modeled on NASA) are able to locate a man who, in 1899, was an associate of the Moon Woman. Actually he was her boyfriend. Now, he is 97 years old and living in a nursing home, but he is lucid and has quite a story to tell.
It seems that in 1899, he was a young playwright, staying for the Summer at a rented home in the English countryside, where he hoped to get some work done. He has a girlfriend he hopes will become his fiance, and he also has a rather eccentric neighbor, a Mr. Cavor, a scientist from whose house a lot of racket emanates, sometimes from a minor explosion.
The playwright's girl doesn't like Mr. Cavor, and sends her boyfriend over to complain, but he is short circuited from that mission by what he sees inside the house, and by Cavor's energy and enthusiasm in describing his work. The interior of the home is a laboratory (and please pronounce it in the British way). Through years of experimentation, Cavor has concocted a liquid compound he calls "Cavorite" in honor of himself. When cavorite is painted on an object, such as a chair, and then left to harden, the object will after a short time rise from the ground very rapidly. He demonstrates this to the playwright, who shortly thereafter is pinned to the ceiling!
His directive to complain to Mr. Cavor is all but forgotten. Now he wants to invest in the production of Cavorite! Then Cavor announces his ultimate goal, which is to use the Cavorite to propel himself to the Moon, in a capsule he has already built. He shows the playwright the capsule, and persuades him to come along. As you can imagine, the playwright's girl (Martha Hyer) is now even more furious with Mr. Cavor.
It's all very Steampunk, and this first hour or so of the movie is quite enjoyable, propelled by the energy of Lionel Jeffries as Mr. Cavor. They do get to the Moon, of course, with Martha Hyer in tow, and at that point things get a little dicier in the art department. You have to be ready to cut the movie a little slack for it's early 60s "papier mache" moonscape. The surface of the Moon looks awesome, as do all the Outer Space and rocket effects, thanks to Ray Harryhausen. It's when they go underground that the film takes on that "1960s" look with the fake cave walls and colored lights. But it's still highly enjoyable because of the Selenites, the Alien race the trio will encounter on their journey.
Martha Hyer has brought along a large hunting rifle - an "Elephant Gun" - even though Mr. Cavor told her not to, because "what if we run into some creature up there"?
They do run into a whole bunch of creatures, and the presence of the gun will figure prominently in what Wells' will use as a moral of the story.
That's all I will tell you, but definitely give "First Men In The Moon" a watch, especially during this historic anniversary Summer of Apollo and the real first trip to the Moon.
It gets Two Thumbs Up from me, just regular thumbs but solid ones, and it's a lot of fun. //////
That's all for now. Gotta go to the store and then to the Libe for more movies! Have a great afternoon and I'll see ya tonight at the Usual Time, and maybe one of these nights I can get squared back around and finish a blog all in one sitting!
Tons of love. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Sunday, August 18, 2019
Elizabeth + "Kiss Me Deadly" directed by Robert Aldrich
Elizabeth, I just want to say right off the bat how great I think your new cello piece sounds - even just the few seconds I heard - and how happy I am that you are recording in the studio with classical musicians, or at least the one musician (the cellist). Maybe there are others, I don't know, but I just think it's wonderful, and if it's not presumptuous of me to say, I am also so proud of you and what you've accomplished. Congratulations! Is the piece that is being recorded the same one you were working on in your last post, the one that you said you might finish? It's hard to tell from the short clip of the cellist. The melody is different, I think, but it's along the same lines as the one you posted previously, so maybe it's another part of the same piece. Anyway, I am excited for you. I see that the cellist (and you, I assume) are recording in a professional studio. Has your music been commissioned as part of an outside project, or is this something you have undertaken yourself? Only your further posts will tell....... :)
So, post further if you get a chance. :):) And keep writing and exploring themes. I know you have said that classical music was your first love, and believe me, you have the ability to really branch out now with your composing. You can write for solo or multiple instruments in any mode you choose.
Just listen to what your musical ear is telling you. /////
I did, of course, watch a movie this evening, a really weird noir called "Kiss Me Deadly" (1955) that was directed by Robert Aldrich, whose "Emperor Of The North" we just watched last week. "Kiss Me Deadly" was made much earlier in his career, but is no less accomplished even though it is somewhat formulaic in structure. The movie is based on a Mickey Spillane mystery novel and stars Ralph Meeker as Spillane's renegade Private Eye Mike Hammer.
As the movie opens, Hammer is driving his sports car at night, in the darkness of what looks to be one of the beach area canyons of Los Angeles. Suddenly, a woman (a very young Cloris Leachman, or "Clorox Bleachman" as my Dad would say) appears in his headlights. She is running down the middle of the road, barefoot and wearing only a trenchcoat. Hammer swerves to avoid her and nearly wrecks his car in the process. She is in distress, so of course he gives her a ride, and it turns out that she has just escaped from a mental institution.
Bleachman engages in all kinds of non sequitorial double talk with Mike Hammer, and then asks to be let off at the nearest bus stop. But before he can do that, his car is forced off the road by anonymous hoodlums, who we see only from the waist down, and then he and the girl are beaten, drugged and pushed off a Malibu cliff in Hammer's car, which explodes into a ball of fire.
That should be the end of them, and Clorox Blea...I mean Cloris Leachman is indeed dead, but Mike Hammer has somehow escaped. The next we see him is in the hospital, where he has awakened from a three week coma.
This is another plot that I can't reveal too much of, because it might lead you to guess what the mystery is all about in this movie, and believe me, that would ruin all the fun because as I said, this is one weird film noir. As Hammer's girlfriend Velda says to him, "you're after the Big Whatzit, aren't you"?
Ralph Meeker, who was so great as one of the mutinous passengers in the legendary TV movie "Lost Flight", is an excellent choice to play Mike Hammer, handsome and brutal in equal measure. He's a big hit with the ladies, and at one point in the movie I had to laugh because gets out of his car, a woman walks up to him, and they are making out within five seconds. And he's never met her. :):)
But he's also the kind of guy who bites off more than he can chew. In this case he is trying to solve, that begins with the death of Leachman and leads down a twisted alley, he assumes he knows better than the cops what is taking place, and more importantly what is literally being covered up.
When he finds out what it is, you might say he is blindsided by his discovery.
If you are gonna see "Kiss Me Deadly", don't read anything about it beforehand. Also, don't worry if you can't always follow the plot or understand every character's motivation. I couldn't, and neither can Mike Hammer.
I give it Two Big Thumbs Up, because director Robert Aldrich keeps things moving and interesting. Meeker and the other actors hit all the right notes, and the whole thing looks terrific in nighttime black and white. Aldrich also captured some great 1950s Southern California atmosphere, using old time roadside gas stations, auto repair shops and old Victorian homes as some of the locations.
"Kiss Me Deadly" is highly recommended, a unique and really weird film noir. /////
We had good singing in church this morning. Hope you are enjoying your Sunday afternoon and I will see you back here later tonight at the Usual Time.
Tons of love! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
So, post further if you get a chance. :):) And keep writing and exploring themes. I know you have said that classical music was your first love, and believe me, you have the ability to really branch out now with your composing. You can write for solo or multiple instruments in any mode you choose.
Just listen to what your musical ear is telling you. /////
I did, of course, watch a movie this evening, a really weird noir called "Kiss Me Deadly" (1955) that was directed by Robert Aldrich, whose "Emperor Of The North" we just watched last week. "Kiss Me Deadly" was made much earlier in his career, but is no less accomplished even though it is somewhat formulaic in structure. The movie is based on a Mickey Spillane mystery novel and stars Ralph Meeker as Spillane's renegade Private Eye Mike Hammer.
As the movie opens, Hammer is driving his sports car at night, in the darkness of what looks to be one of the beach area canyons of Los Angeles. Suddenly, a woman (a very young Cloris Leachman, or "Clorox Bleachman" as my Dad would say) appears in his headlights. She is running down the middle of the road, barefoot and wearing only a trenchcoat. Hammer swerves to avoid her and nearly wrecks his car in the process. She is in distress, so of course he gives her a ride, and it turns out that she has just escaped from a mental institution.
Bleachman engages in all kinds of non sequitorial double talk with Mike Hammer, and then asks to be let off at the nearest bus stop. But before he can do that, his car is forced off the road by anonymous hoodlums, who we see only from the waist down, and then he and the girl are beaten, drugged and pushed off a Malibu cliff in Hammer's car, which explodes into a ball of fire.
That should be the end of them, and Clorox Blea...I mean Cloris Leachman is indeed dead, but Mike Hammer has somehow escaped. The next we see him is in the hospital, where he has awakened from a three week coma.
This is another plot that I can't reveal too much of, because it might lead you to guess what the mystery is all about in this movie, and believe me, that would ruin all the fun because as I said, this is one weird film noir. As Hammer's girlfriend Velda says to him, "you're after the Big Whatzit, aren't you"?
Ralph Meeker, who was so great as one of the mutinous passengers in the legendary TV movie "Lost Flight", is an excellent choice to play Mike Hammer, handsome and brutal in equal measure. He's a big hit with the ladies, and at one point in the movie I had to laugh because gets out of his car, a woman walks up to him, and they are making out within five seconds. And he's never met her. :):)
But he's also the kind of guy who bites off more than he can chew. In this case he is trying to solve, that begins with the death of Leachman and leads down a twisted alley, he assumes he knows better than the cops what is taking place, and more importantly what is literally being covered up.
When he finds out what it is, you might say he is blindsided by his discovery.
If you are gonna see "Kiss Me Deadly", don't read anything about it beforehand. Also, don't worry if you can't always follow the plot or understand every character's motivation. I couldn't, and neither can Mike Hammer.
I give it Two Big Thumbs Up, because director Robert Aldrich keeps things moving and interesting. Meeker and the other actors hit all the right notes, and the whole thing looks terrific in nighttime black and white. Aldrich also captured some great 1950s Southern California atmosphere, using old time roadside gas stations, auto repair shops and old Victorian homes as some of the locations.
"Kiss Me Deadly" is highly recommended, a unique and really weird film noir. /////
We had good singing in church this morning. Hope you are enjoying your Sunday afternoon and I will see you back here later tonight at the Usual Time.
Tons of love! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Saturday, August 17, 2019
Charles Manson, MKUltra and Louis Jolyon West
(This blog was begun the night of August 16, 2019 and completed the following afternoon)
I don't have a movie review tonight because I watched Episode Six of Spielberg's "Taken" instead. It's an amazing show, a ten part, fifteen hour miniseries that has many many threads and is way too complex for me to detail, which is why I haven't been writing about it. I think I did give a synopsis of the first two episodes, but then the storyline branched out too far for me to continue. All I can say is that if you are a fan of Alien Abduction stories (which I normally am not), or if you are interested in the Roswell story (now that's more like it) or Aliens in general (ditto) and the possibility that hybrids may already be living among us, then this is the show for you. It does get a little bit soap opera-y (pronounced "Opera - ee") in places, and you wish Spielberg......um, wait a sec, let me turn the italics off.....you wish Spielberg would reign in some of his "human condition" tendencies to concentrate on the secret military aspect of the tale, but that's a small quibble. It's a pretty awesome show, and 17 years old now, at that. Give it a view if you are so inclined. Spielberg won't let you down.
Since I don't have a movie, I'd like to write instead about the book I've just finished, "Chaos : Manson, the CIA and the Secret History of the Sixties" by Tom O'Neil. I mentioned in an earlier blog that I was being blown away by what I was reading in the book, and now that I have finished, I think it is certain that Vincent Bugliosi's "Helter Skelter" theory was not simply erroneous but was deliberately fabricated, and that it was fabricated to cover up a far more sinister set of complications behind the Manson murders - i.e., that they were the result of an MKUltra experiment gone wrong (or perhaps "gone right", as one Federal Agent put it in the book).
Before I go into a tirade - and I may not even do so tonight if I become too tired - I'd like to ask you to consider something. Have you ever heard of Dr. Josef Mengele, the "Angel Of Death" of Auschwitz? Indeed you might have heard of him, for he is well known in history as a diabolical person. Have you ever heard of Shiro Ishii? He was the Japanese equivalent of Mengele, a doctor who during WW2 worked out of a facility called Unit 731 that studied the offensive potentials of biological warfare, a new prospect at the time. His studies utilized human guinea pigs in the same way as did Josef Mengele, in a vicious and amoral method. If you read about his experiments, you may think him even worse, if such a subjective conclusion was possible between two monsters such as these men.
And now that I have asked you if you have heard of Drs. Mengele and Ishii, I would like to ask you if you've ever heard of Sidney Gottlieb? I'm not sure if he had a doctorate in anything, but he was a chemist and a scientist who came to work for the CIA and to eventually create and head up their MKUltra program, which was carried out in the strictest secrecy.
If you research Sidney Gottlieb (beyond phoney baloney propaganda on Wikipedia and the like), and if you read enough books on the extent of the MKUltra project, you will have no choice, unless you are an unresolved equivocator, than to conclude that Sidney Gottlieb was America's own Dr. Mengele or Dr. Ishii - a sociopath who saw human beings as objects. With MkUltra, he created a project that would study the effects of mind control on unwitting subjects, using techniques like hypnosis and surreptitiously administered drugs like LSD. You'd have to study the subject yourself, for it is far too involved for me to thoroughly describe in a blog, but you can trust me when I tell you that if you were to research Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA's project of MKUltra, you would hardly be able to come to any other conclusion than that Gottlieb was a monster on the same level as Mengele and Ishii.
My point is that you would have to conclude, if you were being honest with yourself, that we here in America have had diabolical and inhuman sadists - monsters is the correct term - operating under the guise and protection of governmental "research", who have been every bit as cruel and evil as the despicable monster scientists we have catalogued and abhorred from Nazi Germany and Imperialist Japan.
They have had the historically recorded Mengele and Ishii. We have had Sidney Gottlieb. The difference is that we as a nation have yet to acknowledge his crimes. Gottlieb is not yet in the history books as a psychopath, though hopefully he is on his way. Joining him, one also hopes, will be another monster named Louis Jolyon West.
West was a psychiatrist who began his career in the Air Force. Eventually he came to work for the CIA as part of the MKUltra mind control program. Author Tom O'Neil did extensive research on West, and has documented proof, written in West's own words, that he had developed the ability to implant false memories in subjects, and to create secondary personalities (i.e. "split" personalities) in people, using drugs like LSD and other hallucinogenics, combined with hypnotism.
In his career, "Jolly" West examined Jack Ruby, who "went insane" after their meeting while Ruby was in jail for killing Lee Harvey Oswald. After being examined by West, Ruby was no longer coherent and was no longer of any use as a witness for either the prosecution or defense in his case. In other words, whatever he knew about a conspiracy to kill JFK, he could no longer tell it.
"Jolly" West also examined Sirhan Sirhan, a more or less proven Manchurian Candidate, and finally he examined Timothy McVeigh as well. For an excellent and thoroughly researched book on the OKC Bombing case, I highly recommend reading "Aberration In The Heartland Of The Real : The Secret Lives Of Timothy McVeigh" by Wendy Painting. If you read this book, you will see just what kind of human experimentation secret agencies in this country are capable of.
Was McVeigh a Manchurian Candidate? Read the book and decide for yourself. I know what my answer is.
Which brings us to the case of Charles Manson.
Was he ever examined by Louis Jolyon "Jolly" West? We know that one aim of the MKUltra program was to create mindless killers who could be programmed to kill on command. We also know that LSD experimentation for the purpose of mind control was one of the main goals of the CIA in it's MKUltra program. In his book "Chaos" (et al), Tom O'Neil has researched Manson's activities in the year 1967, from the day he was paroled from Federal prison in March of that year. Manson immediately headed for San Francisco, even though traveling away from Los Angeles County was a violation of his parole.
Manson would be treated with unheard of leniency throughout his 2 1/2 years of freedom between his parole and his re-arrest in October 1969 for the Tate murders. During that time he committed multiple crimes, that not only his parole officer was aware of, but also the District Attorney of more than one county and detectives from both the LAPD and LA County Sheriff's Office.
Why was Charles Manson treated with kid gloves by these law enforcement agencies?
Could it be that he was under the supervision of the CIA?
And was he ever in contact with "Jolly" West, the Agency's top shrink?
There is circumstantial evidence to suggest the possibility, but that is all I have time to relate to you now, because I have to head back to Pearl's. I will try to finish up my thoughts on the matter this evening. See you then. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
I don't have a movie review tonight because I watched Episode Six of Spielberg's "Taken" instead. It's an amazing show, a ten part, fifteen hour miniseries that has many many threads and is way too complex for me to detail, which is why I haven't been writing about it. I think I did give a synopsis of the first two episodes, but then the storyline branched out too far for me to continue. All I can say is that if you are a fan of Alien Abduction stories (which I normally am not), or if you are interested in the Roswell story (now that's more like it) or Aliens in general (ditto) and the possibility that hybrids may already be living among us, then this is the show for you. It does get a little bit soap opera-y (pronounced "Opera - ee") in places, and you wish Spielberg......um, wait a sec, let me turn the italics off.....you wish Spielberg would reign in some of his "human condition" tendencies to concentrate on the secret military aspect of the tale, but that's a small quibble. It's a pretty awesome show, and 17 years old now, at that. Give it a view if you are so inclined. Spielberg won't let you down.
Since I don't have a movie, I'd like to write instead about the book I've just finished, "Chaos : Manson, the CIA and the Secret History of the Sixties" by Tom O'Neil. I mentioned in an earlier blog that I was being blown away by what I was reading in the book, and now that I have finished, I think it is certain that Vincent Bugliosi's "Helter Skelter" theory was not simply erroneous but was deliberately fabricated, and that it was fabricated to cover up a far more sinister set of complications behind the Manson murders - i.e., that they were the result of an MKUltra experiment gone wrong (or perhaps "gone right", as one Federal Agent put it in the book).
Before I go into a tirade - and I may not even do so tonight if I become too tired - I'd like to ask you to consider something. Have you ever heard of Dr. Josef Mengele, the "Angel Of Death" of Auschwitz? Indeed you might have heard of him, for he is well known in history as a diabolical person. Have you ever heard of Shiro Ishii? He was the Japanese equivalent of Mengele, a doctor who during WW2 worked out of a facility called Unit 731 that studied the offensive potentials of biological warfare, a new prospect at the time. His studies utilized human guinea pigs in the same way as did Josef Mengele, in a vicious and amoral method. If you read about his experiments, you may think him even worse, if such a subjective conclusion was possible between two monsters such as these men.
And now that I have asked you if you have heard of Drs. Mengele and Ishii, I would like to ask you if you've ever heard of Sidney Gottlieb? I'm not sure if he had a doctorate in anything, but he was a chemist and a scientist who came to work for the CIA and to eventually create and head up their MKUltra program, which was carried out in the strictest secrecy.
If you research Sidney Gottlieb (beyond phoney baloney propaganda on Wikipedia and the like), and if you read enough books on the extent of the MKUltra project, you will have no choice, unless you are an unresolved equivocator, than to conclude that Sidney Gottlieb was America's own Dr. Mengele or Dr. Ishii - a sociopath who saw human beings as objects. With MkUltra, he created a project that would study the effects of mind control on unwitting subjects, using techniques like hypnosis and surreptitiously administered drugs like LSD. You'd have to study the subject yourself, for it is far too involved for me to thoroughly describe in a blog, but you can trust me when I tell you that if you were to research Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA's project of MKUltra, you would hardly be able to come to any other conclusion than that Gottlieb was a monster on the same level as Mengele and Ishii.
My point is that you would have to conclude, if you were being honest with yourself, that we here in America have had diabolical and inhuman sadists - monsters is the correct term - operating under the guise and protection of governmental "research", who have been every bit as cruel and evil as the despicable monster scientists we have catalogued and abhorred from Nazi Germany and Imperialist Japan.
They have had the historically recorded Mengele and Ishii. We have had Sidney Gottlieb. The difference is that we as a nation have yet to acknowledge his crimes. Gottlieb is not yet in the history books as a psychopath, though hopefully he is on his way. Joining him, one also hopes, will be another monster named Louis Jolyon West.
West was a psychiatrist who began his career in the Air Force. Eventually he came to work for the CIA as part of the MKUltra mind control program. Author Tom O'Neil did extensive research on West, and has documented proof, written in West's own words, that he had developed the ability to implant false memories in subjects, and to create secondary personalities (i.e. "split" personalities) in people, using drugs like LSD and other hallucinogenics, combined with hypnotism.
In his career, "Jolly" West examined Jack Ruby, who "went insane" after their meeting while Ruby was in jail for killing Lee Harvey Oswald. After being examined by West, Ruby was no longer coherent and was no longer of any use as a witness for either the prosecution or defense in his case. In other words, whatever he knew about a conspiracy to kill JFK, he could no longer tell it.
"Jolly" West also examined Sirhan Sirhan, a more or less proven Manchurian Candidate, and finally he examined Timothy McVeigh as well. For an excellent and thoroughly researched book on the OKC Bombing case, I highly recommend reading "Aberration In The Heartland Of The Real : The Secret Lives Of Timothy McVeigh" by Wendy Painting. If you read this book, you will see just what kind of human experimentation secret agencies in this country are capable of.
Was McVeigh a Manchurian Candidate? Read the book and decide for yourself. I know what my answer is.
Which brings us to the case of Charles Manson.
Was he ever examined by Louis Jolyon "Jolly" West? We know that one aim of the MKUltra program was to create mindless killers who could be programmed to kill on command. We also know that LSD experimentation for the purpose of mind control was one of the main goals of the CIA in it's MKUltra program. In his book "Chaos" (et al), Tom O'Neil has researched Manson's activities in the year 1967, from the day he was paroled from Federal prison in March of that year. Manson immediately headed for San Francisco, even though traveling away from Los Angeles County was a violation of his parole.
Manson would be treated with unheard of leniency throughout his 2 1/2 years of freedom between his parole and his re-arrest in October 1969 for the Tate murders. During that time he committed multiple crimes, that not only his parole officer was aware of, but also the District Attorney of more than one county and detectives from both the LAPD and LA County Sheriff's Office.
Why was Charles Manson treated with kid gloves by these law enforcement agencies?
Could it be that he was under the supervision of the CIA?
And was he ever in contact with "Jolly" West, the Agency's top shrink?
There is circumstantial evidence to suggest the possibility, but that is all I have time to relate to you now, because I have to head back to Pearl's. I will try to finish up my thoughts on the matter this evening. See you then. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Friday, August 16, 2019
"Call It Murder" featuring (but not starring) Humphrey Bogart
(this blog was begun the night of August 15, 2019 and finished today)
Tonight I am writing once again from Pearl's. I had a nice week off but now I am back on the job for another month. I'm so used to my schedule by now, though, that it's second nature to jump right back in. I did watch a movie, of course : "Call It Murder" (1934), starring an early actress named Sidney Fox and an older gentleman named O.P. Heggie, whose IMDB shows that he was in some prominent films, though his name did not ring a bell. "Call It Murder" was originally titled "Midnight", which was the name of the play it was based upon. It was released as "Midnight" in 1934, but then re-released under it's new name in 1947, to cash in on Humphrey Bogart's fame. Bogie has limited screentime in the film, and his role is that of a secondary character, but because he had achieved major stardom by 1947, he is first billed in the re-edited title sequence.
The movie opens in a courtroom, where a woman is on trial for the murder of her husband. The prosecution is trying to prove premeditation, which will allow a conviction on First Degree Murder. In those days that was an automatic death sentence that was normally carried out in rapid fashion. As the jurors are listening to closing arguments, the jury foreman interjects to ask a question of the defendant : did she steal her husband's bank savings after the murder? The woman is scared. She answers truthfully. "Yes, I did steal the money". This answer seals her fate. What could have been a charge reduced to manslaughter is now a certain first degree conviction and a likely trip to the electric chair.
She is taken away to Death Row, to be executed on August 15th, which by weird coincidence was tonight! Except for 85 years in the past.....(man, spooky..)
Now the plot will shift to it's main focus, where the spotlight will be on the jury foreman, on whose last minute courtroom question the verdict seemed to hinge. He is holed up in his house, surrounded by his family as reporters crowd his front lawn. They pound on his door, demanding a statement. "Do you feel responsible for sending a woman to the electric chair"? His wife and children urge him to ignore the questions, but we can see that he is feeling some pangs of conscience. Finally he throws open his front door and shouts that "murder is murder! It makes no difference if it was committed by man or woman. Both are equal in the eyes of the law. The woman admitted her crime, the law stipulates the punishment"!
"I was only following the law", he declares.
No regard is made for whether the woman was a victim of abuse, which may be a possibility. The Press is interested in the moral aspect of sentencing a woman to death, versus a man, who in those days if found guilty was always considered a hardened criminal worthy of no sympathy whatsoever.
But here, the focus is on the jury foreman. Actor O.P. Heggie was 56 when he played this role (I looked it up), but he appears to be between 75 and 80, and it's not because of makeup. He may have been chosen for his frail and bewildered appearance, and while he is mesmerizing in the lead role, his performance is somewhat at odds with the rest of the cast. To me it looks as if Heggie was working from ingrained techniques that would have been holdovers from Silent films. His timing is markedly slower than the other actors in any given scene, and at times he seems somnambulistic, leaving long pauses in his phrases of dialogue. As awkward as his performance looks at times, it can be seen as a success because it stands out among the other characterizations in the movie. There is also a chance he was not well during the filming, as he passed away two years later in 1936. As I say, he was only in his late 50s but looked like Father Time.
Actors and actresses lived fast and hard in those days, smoking and drinking with abandon, and taking pills too, which is why so many of them only lived into their mid-fifties, if that long.
But back to the story. Several things are taking place on the night of August 15th, as the convicted murderess awaits execution at Midnight (hence the movie's original title). For one, a hotshot reporter (Henry Hull) has conspired with the jury foreman's son-in-law to bring a radio set into the house, ostensibly to pick up a live broadcast of the execution proceedings. The reporter's real motive, however, is to note the foreman's reaction to the execution, and then to write a heavy-handed story about his imagined guilt. In this regard, there is a thread of a capital punishment debate being played out, especially where it concerns women.
For another thing, the foreman's daughter is distraught about the verdict. She attended the trial and felt sorry for the convicted woman. Now, on the night her death sentence is to be carried out, she begs her father to make a phone call to the warden or governor, to explain why he asked his pivotal question at the trial, and to ask the officials for a postponement until the case can be re-examined.
But old Mr. Heggie will not budge. Then another character arrives at the house. It is Humphrey Bogart, looking very young and handsome, and already exuding the charisma that will make him a star. He was also a regular at the trial, and by the end, he and the daughter had developed a relationship. Tonight he wants to take her on a date, but he is something of a shady character, and her in-laws and siblings who are also at the house, don't want her to go with him. She is anxious to get away from the tension, though, and doesn't want to hear the radio broadcast, so she does leave with Bogie, against her father's wishes.
And there the plot will turn, because Bogie's pretense of taking her on a date is only that : an excuse to get her out of the house, alone with him.
That is all I shall tell you of the story, but the plot is quite involving all the way through. The only demerits I would give the film all have to do with the production itself, or perhaps the direction. Sometimes when I see an early sound film, I notice what I will call an "uneveness" in the way the actors play a scene. They can seem out of synch, or acting in varying degrees or styles of technique. Sometimes an actor will gesture in a way that indicates he has yet to evolve from Silent techniques. The camera work and editing will not always flow together and most of all, the sound quality may be poor, with no added music or soundtrack whatsoever, just the static voices of characters in a scene, which, if the actors are using non-homogenous vocal styles, as in "Call It Murder", serves to throw the film off balance. This film is one of those early sound efforts that suffers from these problems. Now, by 1934, the bigger studios had licked all of these problems that led to substandard productions, and were, by and large, making slick and glossy films by that time. But perhaps "Call It Murder" was a low budget affair, I don't know.
It's not really a major complaint, because I still give the film Two Higher Than Average Thumbs Up. It's got a great script and plot, and for the most part is well-acted, including by O.P. Heggie. It's just that the direction or timing or sound or something feels off, and for that reason a viewer will have to be patient if he or she is not used to this kind of early sound movie.
Still, "Call It Murder" is very much recommended (even just because of it's weirdness!), and should be sought out by Bogie fans like me, who are trying to see every movie he made. /////
That's all for now. Gotta try to finish my book : "Chaos : Manson, The CIA and The Secret History Of The Sixties". Then I'll tell you all about it! See you tonight at the Usual Time.
Tons of love. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox :):)
Tonight I am writing once again from Pearl's. I had a nice week off but now I am back on the job for another month. I'm so used to my schedule by now, though, that it's second nature to jump right back in. I did watch a movie, of course : "Call It Murder" (1934), starring an early actress named Sidney Fox and an older gentleman named O.P. Heggie, whose IMDB shows that he was in some prominent films, though his name did not ring a bell. "Call It Murder" was originally titled "Midnight", which was the name of the play it was based upon. It was released as "Midnight" in 1934, but then re-released under it's new name in 1947, to cash in on Humphrey Bogart's fame. Bogie has limited screentime in the film, and his role is that of a secondary character, but because he had achieved major stardom by 1947, he is first billed in the re-edited title sequence.
The movie opens in a courtroom, where a woman is on trial for the murder of her husband. The prosecution is trying to prove premeditation, which will allow a conviction on First Degree Murder. In those days that was an automatic death sentence that was normally carried out in rapid fashion. As the jurors are listening to closing arguments, the jury foreman interjects to ask a question of the defendant : did she steal her husband's bank savings after the murder? The woman is scared. She answers truthfully. "Yes, I did steal the money". This answer seals her fate. What could have been a charge reduced to manslaughter is now a certain first degree conviction and a likely trip to the electric chair.
She is taken away to Death Row, to be executed on August 15th, which by weird coincidence was tonight! Except for 85 years in the past.....(man, spooky..)
Now the plot will shift to it's main focus, where the spotlight will be on the jury foreman, on whose last minute courtroom question the verdict seemed to hinge. He is holed up in his house, surrounded by his family as reporters crowd his front lawn. They pound on his door, demanding a statement. "Do you feel responsible for sending a woman to the electric chair"? His wife and children urge him to ignore the questions, but we can see that he is feeling some pangs of conscience. Finally he throws open his front door and shouts that "murder is murder! It makes no difference if it was committed by man or woman. Both are equal in the eyes of the law. The woman admitted her crime, the law stipulates the punishment"!
"I was only following the law", he declares.
No regard is made for whether the woman was a victim of abuse, which may be a possibility. The Press is interested in the moral aspect of sentencing a woman to death, versus a man, who in those days if found guilty was always considered a hardened criminal worthy of no sympathy whatsoever.
But here, the focus is on the jury foreman. Actor O.P. Heggie was 56 when he played this role (I looked it up), but he appears to be between 75 and 80, and it's not because of makeup. He may have been chosen for his frail and bewildered appearance, and while he is mesmerizing in the lead role, his performance is somewhat at odds with the rest of the cast. To me it looks as if Heggie was working from ingrained techniques that would have been holdovers from Silent films. His timing is markedly slower than the other actors in any given scene, and at times he seems somnambulistic, leaving long pauses in his phrases of dialogue. As awkward as his performance looks at times, it can be seen as a success because it stands out among the other characterizations in the movie. There is also a chance he was not well during the filming, as he passed away two years later in 1936. As I say, he was only in his late 50s but looked like Father Time.
Actors and actresses lived fast and hard in those days, smoking and drinking with abandon, and taking pills too, which is why so many of them only lived into their mid-fifties, if that long.
But back to the story. Several things are taking place on the night of August 15th, as the convicted murderess awaits execution at Midnight (hence the movie's original title). For one, a hotshot reporter (Henry Hull) has conspired with the jury foreman's son-in-law to bring a radio set into the house, ostensibly to pick up a live broadcast of the execution proceedings. The reporter's real motive, however, is to note the foreman's reaction to the execution, and then to write a heavy-handed story about his imagined guilt. In this regard, there is a thread of a capital punishment debate being played out, especially where it concerns women.
For another thing, the foreman's daughter is distraught about the verdict. She attended the trial and felt sorry for the convicted woman. Now, on the night her death sentence is to be carried out, she begs her father to make a phone call to the warden or governor, to explain why he asked his pivotal question at the trial, and to ask the officials for a postponement until the case can be re-examined.
But old Mr. Heggie will not budge. Then another character arrives at the house. It is Humphrey Bogart, looking very young and handsome, and already exuding the charisma that will make him a star. He was also a regular at the trial, and by the end, he and the daughter had developed a relationship. Tonight he wants to take her on a date, but he is something of a shady character, and her in-laws and siblings who are also at the house, don't want her to go with him. She is anxious to get away from the tension, though, and doesn't want to hear the radio broadcast, so she does leave with Bogie, against her father's wishes.
And there the plot will turn, because Bogie's pretense of taking her on a date is only that : an excuse to get her out of the house, alone with him.
That is all I shall tell you of the story, but the plot is quite involving all the way through. The only demerits I would give the film all have to do with the production itself, or perhaps the direction. Sometimes when I see an early sound film, I notice what I will call an "uneveness" in the way the actors play a scene. They can seem out of synch, or acting in varying degrees or styles of technique. Sometimes an actor will gesture in a way that indicates he has yet to evolve from Silent techniques. The camera work and editing will not always flow together and most of all, the sound quality may be poor, with no added music or soundtrack whatsoever, just the static voices of characters in a scene, which, if the actors are using non-homogenous vocal styles, as in "Call It Murder", serves to throw the film off balance. This film is one of those early sound efforts that suffers from these problems. Now, by 1934, the bigger studios had licked all of these problems that led to substandard productions, and were, by and large, making slick and glossy films by that time. But perhaps "Call It Murder" was a low budget affair, I don't know.
It's not really a major complaint, because I still give the film Two Higher Than Average Thumbs Up. It's got a great script and plot, and for the most part is well-acted, including by O.P. Heggie. It's just that the direction or timing or sound or something feels off, and for that reason a viewer will have to be patient if he or she is not used to this kind of early sound movie.
Still, "Call It Murder" is very much recommended (even just because of it's weirdness!), and should be sought out by Bogie fans like me, who are trying to see every movie he made. /////
That's all for now. Gotta try to finish my book : "Chaos : Manson, The CIA and The Secret History Of The Sixties". Then I'll tell you all about it! See you tonight at the Usual Time.
Tons of love. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox :):)
Thursday, August 15, 2019
"Sunrise" by F.W. Murnau
Tonight's movie was a classic from the Silent Era : "Sunrise" (1927), directed by the legendary F.W. Murnau of German Expressionist fame. I'd been meaning to see "Sunrise" for many years now, perhaps a decade, after first watching the director's "Nosferatu" and then later on his lesser known works "Faust" and "The Last Laugh". Early on, I had wanted to buy a copy of "Sunrise", but for a while it was hard to find, an expensive collector's item. Then as the years passed, it simply went on the cinematic back burner, not forgotten but pushed aside by the ever changing vagaries of my viewing habits. You know me, I watch almost a movie a night, recently well over 200 a year, and I go on binges. Sometimes I'll watch Westerns for months on end, or Film Noir. Then I'll get stuck on Judy Garland or John Wayne for a week or two, or Steve McQueen or Barbara Stanwyck. It the early days of Criterion and all during the years of the CSUN Cinematheque I tried to see as many great foreign films as I could get my hands on. I'm constantly searching for movies, anything and everything (except Sandler, Schwarzenegger, DeVito, et al, you know my slogan), and so over the course of sixteen years of dvd watching, there have been several films I've been intent on seeing that I never got around to for one reason or another. "Sunrise" was one of those films, until tonight.
I'm afraid I won't be comfortable revealing too much about the plot. I know that I usually go into great detail, but that is because we are often watching films with complex storylines. We watch a lot of films from the golden era of screenwriting, when a talented writer could pack a truckload of story, and multiple threads, into an 80 or 90 minute movie. With "Sunrise", we are dealing with a very simple story, not because Murnau or his collaborators are incapable - far from it - but because they are presenting us with a moral fable rather than an everyday plot. As the title cards put it at the beginning of the film, "this is a song of a man and his wife, of any place or no place".
It's a story of human nature that could befall anyone, if his or her guard was down, or if he or she were feeling dissatisfied in life.
Let me see how much I can describe without giving too much away.
A farmer and his wife live in the mountains, near a vacation resort popular with travelers. The location could be Europe, but it was actually shot at Big Bear Lake, right here in Southern California. One vacationer, whom you might call a Modern Woman of the 1920s, has remained at her cabin for weeks past the usual Summer term of most visitors. I will tell you that she is staying on because she has her eyes on the farmer, whom she spies around the village. He is a handsome hunk, played by the future star George O'Brien. A flashback shows that he has had a happy marriage, for the most part, but that work on the farm and a newly arrived baby have caused a strain of the affection between him and his wife, who is played by Janet Gaynor, one of the earliest of female film stars.
There you have the basic plot, or possible plot since I don't wish to give it away. You have a farmer and his wife, living a simple existence and raising their baby, and you have this woman from the city, vacationing nearby with temptation on her mind.
The film gets to the point very quickly without much preamble, which leads to a highly dramatic first act. This is followed by a long interlude which takes up about half the film. In watching this second act, you begin to wonder if the plot is going to resume, because as I say, it is a very long, continuous sequence of events in which there is more or less no conflict or drama.
But then you begin to appreciate what it is that Murnau is doing, which is letting the pictures do the talking. The entire middle sequence, running about 45 minutes, takes us away from the countryside and into a modern city, with amazing art deco structures enhanced by Expressionist sets. As we tour cafes, shops and what looks like an indoor amusement park, our mood is gradually lifted along with that of the characters. One reviewer referred to it as "visual poetry" and that is an apt description. Poems don't always have explicit meaning but suggest it instead. Now, we can see how the tour of the city is affecting our characters, but not much is happening dramatically. Rather, it is a nuance of moods that is being suggested by the photography.
There will be a return to plot, back into the darkness of the night (and of the soul), but I will leave it at that.
I think because of it's title, I was expecting "Sunrise" to be a basically sunny story about a young couple starting life together in rural America. I had no idea what it was about. As it turned out, it was very similar in tone and style to "Last Laugh" or "Faust". "Nosferatu" is straight up horror, and therefore in a separate category. But Murnau makes dark-themed films, and "Sunrise" is one of them, though there is always hope in his movies as well.
Really what he was, was one of the early visual geniuses of cinema, who utilized camera movement to create audience involvement. You feel "inside" his movies, with their surreal sets. He was also one of the first directors to use specific angles from which to picture his characters in close up, so as to suggest what they might be thinking or feeling.
"Sunrise" was honored at the very first Academy Awards ceremony in 1929, winning an Oscar for "Most Unique Artistic Production", the only time that category was presented. It also won for Best Cinematography (easy to see why), and Janet Gaynor won for Best Actress, the first ever to receive that award.
Normally, I might add a disclaimer because "Sunrise" is a Silent film, and often, for uninitiated viewers this can be a problem. As an aside, I also think that if any fan of cinema were to give Silents a chance, to develop a taste for them slowly and on their own merits, that most anyone could become a fan, as I have. Early on it was a little difficult but nowdays I have no problem watching a Silent Movie, so long as it is a good film.
But none of this applies to "Sunrise", and I don't need disclaimer because, even though it is Silent, it is such a visual feast and such an involving story on an emotional level, that I think it can be enjoyed by anyone, even if they've never seen a Silent before.
Really, it's a Masterpiece of the highest order, which I think will be enhanced by repeat viewings.
Two Gigantic Thumbs Up, then, for "Sunrise" and for the genius of F.W. Murnau. Look for it! /////
I am back at work today, so I will try and return to a normal writing schedule. No hikes this afternoon, just getting everything back in order at Pearl's and settling in for another cycle.
I've been listening to Dodgers games whenever possible. Man, is this team incredible or what? Every guy is an offensive threat, everyone can play multiple positions. When they call a guy up from the minors, he contributes instantly (see Will Smith).
This may just be the greatest Dodger team since the 1970s. This is their year to finally win the World Series. :)
That's all for now. Hope you are having a great day. See you tonight at the Usual Time.
Tons of love. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
I'm afraid I won't be comfortable revealing too much about the plot. I know that I usually go into great detail, but that is because we are often watching films with complex storylines. We watch a lot of films from the golden era of screenwriting, when a talented writer could pack a truckload of story, and multiple threads, into an 80 or 90 minute movie. With "Sunrise", we are dealing with a very simple story, not because Murnau or his collaborators are incapable - far from it - but because they are presenting us with a moral fable rather than an everyday plot. As the title cards put it at the beginning of the film, "this is a song of a man and his wife, of any place or no place".
It's a story of human nature that could befall anyone, if his or her guard was down, or if he or she were feeling dissatisfied in life.
Let me see how much I can describe without giving too much away.
A farmer and his wife live in the mountains, near a vacation resort popular with travelers. The location could be Europe, but it was actually shot at Big Bear Lake, right here in Southern California. One vacationer, whom you might call a Modern Woman of the 1920s, has remained at her cabin for weeks past the usual Summer term of most visitors. I will tell you that she is staying on because she has her eyes on the farmer, whom she spies around the village. He is a handsome hunk, played by the future star George O'Brien. A flashback shows that he has had a happy marriage, for the most part, but that work on the farm and a newly arrived baby have caused a strain of the affection between him and his wife, who is played by Janet Gaynor, one of the earliest of female film stars.
There you have the basic plot, or possible plot since I don't wish to give it away. You have a farmer and his wife, living a simple existence and raising their baby, and you have this woman from the city, vacationing nearby with temptation on her mind.
The film gets to the point very quickly without much preamble, which leads to a highly dramatic first act. This is followed by a long interlude which takes up about half the film. In watching this second act, you begin to wonder if the plot is going to resume, because as I say, it is a very long, continuous sequence of events in which there is more or less no conflict or drama.
But then you begin to appreciate what it is that Murnau is doing, which is letting the pictures do the talking. The entire middle sequence, running about 45 minutes, takes us away from the countryside and into a modern city, with amazing art deco structures enhanced by Expressionist sets. As we tour cafes, shops and what looks like an indoor amusement park, our mood is gradually lifted along with that of the characters. One reviewer referred to it as "visual poetry" and that is an apt description. Poems don't always have explicit meaning but suggest it instead. Now, we can see how the tour of the city is affecting our characters, but not much is happening dramatically. Rather, it is a nuance of moods that is being suggested by the photography.
There will be a return to plot, back into the darkness of the night (and of the soul), but I will leave it at that.
I think because of it's title, I was expecting "Sunrise" to be a basically sunny story about a young couple starting life together in rural America. I had no idea what it was about. As it turned out, it was very similar in tone and style to "Last Laugh" or "Faust". "Nosferatu" is straight up horror, and therefore in a separate category. But Murnau makes dark-themed films, and "Sunrise" is one of them, though there is always hope in his movies as well.
Really what he was, was one of the early visual geniuses of cinema, who utilized camera movement to create audience involvement. You feel "inside" his movies, with their surreal sets. He was also one of the first directors to use specific angles from which to picture his characters in close up, so as to suggest what they might be thinking or feeling.
"Sunrise" was honored at the very first Academy Awards ceremony in 1929, winning an Oscar for "Most Unique Artistic Production", the only time that category was presented. It also won for Best Cinematography (easy to see why), and Janet Gaynor won for Best Actress, the first ever to receive that award.
Normally, I might add a disclaimer because "Sunrise" is a Silent film, and often, for uninitiated viewers this can be a problem. As an aside, I also think that if any fan of cinema were to give Silents a chance, to develop a taste for them slowly and on their own merits, that most anyone could become a fan, as I have. Early on it was a little difficult but nowdays I have no problem watching a Silent Movie, so long as it is a good film.
But none of this applies to "Sunrise", and I don't need disclaimer because, even though it is Silent, it is such a visual feast and such an involving story on an emotional level, that I think it can be enjoyed by anyone, even if they've never seen a Silent before.
Really, it's a Masterpiece of the highest order, which I think will be enhanced by repeat viewings.
Two Gigantic Thumbs Up, then, for "Sunrise" and for the genius of F.W. Murnau. Look for it! /////
I am back at work today, so I will try and return to a normal writing schedule. No hikes this afternoon, just getting everything back in order at Pearl's and settling in for another cycle.
I've been listening to Dodgers games whenever possible. Man, is this team incredible or what? Every guy is an offensive threat, everyone can play multiple positions. When they call a guy up from the minors, he contributes instantly (see Will Smith).
This may just be the greatest Dodger team since the 1970s. This is their year to finally win the World Series. :)
That's all for now. Hope you are having a great day. See you tonight at the Usual Time.
Tons of love. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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