tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21948462034263170972024-03-20T04:38:04.251-07:00RJE's Friends of JuniorVim...Vigor...Vitriol...Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08471050778285550824noreply@blogger.comBlogger66125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194846203426317097.post-2972378450202110242013-06-11T16:22:00.000-07:002013-06-11T16:22:15.604-07:00"So Frigid a Fiction to Frosted Birth..."<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I'm fighting my way back to this blog and resuming the reviews.<br />
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In the meantime, perhaps you'd like to enjoy some of my fiction work. I've recently endeavored to construct my own miniature epic in verse: a semi-epic of sorts. And now, I'd like to invite you, the reader, to experience another side of my wordsmithing. I certainly hope you enjoy it.<br />
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<a href="http://bit.ly/13zESk1">A Boread</a>Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08471050778285550824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194846203426317097.post-49273488551516569342013-05-14T10:38:00.000-07:002013-05-23T18:18:11.044-07:00"Yeah, Yeah, Liars Always Start That Way..."One of the most interesting aspect of the digital age is being able to see how people found their way to whatever you are posting. Of course, this is also how advertisers and marketers try to figure out how to shill more products to you whether you want them or not. That aside, every now and again, I like to sift through and see what it is about what I put up that brings in my audience. The one that keeps popping out to me is that my coverage of the strange tone of gang rape v. comedy in <i><a href="http://friendsofjunior.blogspot.com/2012/07/the-first-lady-gunfighter.html">Hannie Caulder</a></i> starring Raquel Welch has been a frequent tag that brings in the public. That's not so good.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A nicely laid out poster...with unfortunate whiffs of <i>Hannie Caulder </i>to come...</td></tr>
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On the lighter side, people looking for stuff on Dean Martin movies also find their searches directed my way. And now, I've been provided an opportunity to bring both those tastes together (...although, I'm not sure how to feel about this...) as well as close the book on Raquel's trilogy of western films with a look at <i>Bandolero!</i> (1968).<br />
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The posters for <i>Bandolero!</i> promise a new fangled look at the old fashioned oater, which makes perfect sense as Sergio Leone had breathed new life into the Western in the U.S. following the release of <i>A Fistful of Dollars</i> in 1967. Try as they may, Hollywood never quite figured out the spaghetti western formula, and they shouldn't have: spaghetti's reflect an outsider's view of the media version of the Wild West, and Hollywood's spaghetti imitators were trying to reflect that reflection while being unable to escape the ties to the culture they themselves came from. Make sense? <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dino does not buy my convoluted explanations...</td></tr>
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Casting Dean Martin and Jimmy Stewart seems to me a stab at trying to bring in an older audience to this new, grittier version of the West. Casting Raquel...well...I think we all know that was a stab at bringing anything with a Y chromosome to the theater. In the movie, Martin plays Dee Bishop, an outlaw gunslinger formerly of the Confederacy, who ends up caught with his gang after a bank robbery goes south by Sheriff July Johnson (George Kennedy). During the skirmish, Dee's gang shoots the husband of Maria Stoner (Welch), which opens a relationship door for the amorous sheriff. Former Union soldier turned drifter Mace Bishop (Stewart), discovering that his brother's misdeeds will be leading him to the gallows, launches a plan that will free his brother and end up in kidnapping the young widow. This leads to the Sheriff going on a long chase after the gang into bandit country in Mexico where Mace will try and convince Dee to leave his life of crime.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is the Jimmy that was sent after bad Jimmy impersonations...which is most of them...</td></tr>
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The opening third of the movie, from the bank robbery to the eventual escape, is pure, thrilling movie adventure, but unfortunately the middle third sags from too much time in the saddle and a few too many heart-to-hearts between the brothers in between brush-ups between Mace and Dee's surly gang. The final third picks up the pace but is unfortunately a little too predictable from the moment we see, or rather, don't really see the bloodthirsty arrival of the Mexican bandits who slaughter the Sheriff's posse. And while Welch and Martin have the makings of some fun onscreen chemistry, the "falling for the bad boy" angle isn't quite enough to sell her falling so soon for the man who was responsible for her husband's death. Without getting into the details, there wasn't necessarily a lot of love lost in Mr. Stoner's death for Mrs. Stoner, but for a girl who worked her way up from nothing, to prostitution, to some creature comfort, doesn't quite add up to her going for the guy who murdered her meal ticket.<br />
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Having said all that, the movie works more than well enough, and I had a fine time watching it. While Raquel doesn't get a whole lot of screen time, Maria was definitely one of her better dramatic roles, and certainly of greater depth than the beautiful harpy she would play the following year in <i><a href="http://friendsofjunior.blogspot.com/2013/02/all-they-need-isa-better-script.html">100 Rifles</a></i>. Martin and Stewart are, of course, old hands at this sort of thing. While they don't look anything like brothers, their natural ease of delivery sells it well enough, and they are a joy to watch together even when the riffs of their dialogue grows a little tired. The standout in many ways is Kennedy as July Johnson, an intriguing figure for a movie sheriff, who seems more interested in giving chase to these outlaws due to his love or lust for Mrs. Stoner than the sense of justice he keeps touting. In fact, it must've made an impression on Larry McMurtry who also named a sheriff in <i>Lonesome Dove</i>, July Johnson. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">And this is the George Kennedy that could put <i>Cool Hand Luke</i>'s George Kennedy in jail...</td></tr>
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So if early Westerns are a little too white hat v. black hat for you, and spaghettis are a little too operatic v. nihilistic for you, then <i>Bandolero! </i>might provide a nice middle ground between the two: it's matured from the former, and doesn't strain itself trying to be the latter. For comparison, I would also recommend <i>The Professionals</i> (1966) starring Lee Marvin, Burt Lancaster, and Claudia Cardinale, which also featured a long chase into Mexico that involves a woman. It too features a cast of familiar and enjoyable old hands, but also has a few more twists to the plotting.<br />
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<br />Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08471050778285550824noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194846203426317097.post-83319592291401280422013-05-07T17:23:00.000-07:002013-05-07T17:23:20.973-07:00"What about Junior?"Inspired by the <a href="http://ilovedinomartin.blogspot.com/">ilovedinomartin</a> blog's wonderful reception to my past looks at the Dean Martin filmography, I decided to rewind the tape even further back to Dean's early forays into cinema as half of the comedy team Martin & Lewis. I knew Martin & Lewis as one of comedy's most famous duos and perhaps as comedy's most infamous feud. What started as a nightclub act, pairing Dean Martin's music with Jerry Lewis comedy, soon led to television appearances and then onto the silver screen with <i>My Friend Irma</i> (1949). I sat down with <i>That's My Boy </i>(1951), their fourth film together, and I can't help but wonder if the couple of "Best of..." lists I looked at hadn't led me wrong.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGJU0pnN7IM1hDLgpH3_ALo-3cYpQa71l4AMyEmxtzpc0uBKBx9VO0PNfFyuVX54lI28EaWgbRxq0eTMjT9F8W0-Ywcdw2C2GpOEhhYocLIe6i7UIXOQcCVm_U3mU80-nTGNHmn_XW18E/s1600/myboy01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGJU0pnN7IM1hDLgpH3_ALo-3cYpQa71l4AMyEmxtzpc0uBKBx9VO0PNfFyuVX54lI28EaWgbRxq0eTMjT9F8W0-Ywcdw2C2GpOEhhYocLIe6i7UIXOQcCVm_U3mU80-nTGNHmn_XW18E/s320/myboy01.jpg" width="207" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Unfortunately NOT the exploitation movie about Siamese twin graduates...</td></tr>
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The story concerns an overbearing tycoon and former college football star who lords over his son, Junior (Jerry Lewis) to the extent that he saddles him with all manner of psychosomatic illnesses and allergies. In a mutually beneficial deal, the tycoon pays for Bill Baker (Martin), a poor but rising football star, to pal up with Junior at his alma mater and help him to be a success on the field. Unfortunately, though Junior's got heart, he's no great athlete, and matters are further complicated by the formation of a love triangle between Bill, Junior and the lovely Terry Howard (Marion Marshall).<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jerry does a spot on imitation of me watching this movie...</td></tr>
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The plot's essentially sitcom nature would be forgivable if not for the fact that it seems like the comedy duo has little to do. Lewis fares better than Martin in that he gets a bigger character and more face-time, but the movie suffers from long unfunny jags where neither performer is to be seen. Following the opening credits, twenty minutes pass before Jerry shows up for the first time, and almost that much more before we see Dino. The relationship between Junior and his father has more to do with Sissy Spacek's relationship with Piper Laurie in <i>Carrie</i> (1976) than it does with comedy. I realize that a good part of this is the difference in attitude between then and now, but Junior's dad is so loud, brutish, and relentlessly domineering that there's no surprise that any kid would turn out as nebbish as Junior. In comedy, even the bad guy still has to have some kind of relatable soft spot.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dino thinks romance, movies...and whether he should start drinking...</td></tr>
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The romance angle seems wedged in just to give Dino something to do, and it was this kind of thinly developed romantic lead that would eventually sour Dino on doing these pictures. So when Dino puts in his best turn in a scene where he drunkenly expresses his regret at having taken this deal for his future, the acting is spot on and shows where Dino would eventually get dramatically, but is robbed of any resonance by the weak storytelling. Luckily, early on, Dino gets a fun song-and-dance number with co-star Polly Bergen at a graduation dance while Jerry hams it up by himself in the corner. (Full marks to Jerry managing to kick his own shoe into his face, which was probably my only laugh out loud moment during this viewing.) The film's initial football training sequence was also quite enjoyable, but has been done and redone in far too many sports comedy films since.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDSqhWcHyy_OYVVNDoOKlfKP14Kd6YEs81IMJRgOQQ20YqQ9gXQ6G_rdNdyDXkVimUUx8_8_5ZyciFbhSab8sAQep5sPircgYgwho_hKR6q6qMHXWW6C3fbDG7L0O9F4xnvgFVh3TGZfY/s1600/myboy04.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDSqhWcHyy_OYVVNDoOKlfKP14Kd6YEs81IMJRgOQQ20YqQ9gXQ6G_rdNdyDXkVimUUx8_8_5ZyciFbhSab8sAQep5sPircgYgwho_hKR6q6qMHXWW6C3fbDG7L0O9F4xnvgFVh3TGZfY/s320/myboy04.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jerry demonstrates a 50's craze: Chin Woogies...</td></tr>
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If anything, from what I've learned of Martin & Lewis's time on-screen, it's that few things have changed in the past 50-60 years when Hollywood tries to figure out how to turn showbiz success offscreen into even bigger success onscreen. The formula's pretty simple: cook up a simple if inane plot idea, plug in hot commodity, let the chips fall where they may quality-wise, and rely on an adoring public to pay to see whatever comes out. I'm at a loss to think of one where this actually generated true movie gold, and am instead reminded of the spectacularly goofy nonsense that was <i>KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park</i> (1978).<br />
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In the end, I can't really recommend <i>That's My Boy</i>, which is sad since I can certainly admire the talents of both performers, both together and apart. What I can instead recommend was the Marx Brothers' collegiate football romp <i>Horse Feathers</i> (1932). I kept thinking of it all during the runtime of this movie. It too had a story thinner than a sheet of tracing paper, but that was more because it gave the Marx's free reign to do their brand of comedic insanity. That's exactly what I feel like was missing here: the room to let Martin & Lewis do what Martin & Lewis could do.<br />
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<br />Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08471050778285550824noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194846203426317097.post-70918943881503263552013-04-30T16:58:00.002-07:002013-04-30T16:58:54.363-07:00One...Two...Three...Four...Five...Deadly Venoms(This entry is another flashback that originally appeared on my other blog in 2004. It's been modified to make me look like less of a jackass. Enjoy!)<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9vVf4uqui6nm-jiWYGJvUaC0wMyhmKyaRtIxeT2hnEZvNkL4l8ncne3Rk_wPqlzEhqCjPIY8wQH6Q6UuLnw-dS_qg2-zV4ISFX6shv9nO5Tl0DhyphenhyphenykyAykBWVAaJGkZ4MI-g8xAvuU_4/s1600/5ven01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9vVf4uqui6nm-jiWYGJvUaC0wMyhmKyaRtIxeT2hnEZvNkL4l8ncne3Rk_wPqlzEhqCjPIY8wQH6Q6UuLnw-dS_qg2-zV4ISFX6shv9nO5Tl0DhyphenhyphenykyAykBWVAaJGkZ4MI-g8xAvuU_4/s320/5ven01.jpg" width="225" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I'd like to take this moment to suggest a change to the Chinese Zodiac...</td></tr>
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How many of you remember when they used to have things like Saturday/Sunday morning/afternoon Kung Fu/Martial Arts theater? How many of you watched no matter how bad the dubbing or how incomprehensible the storyline? For the life of me, I can't remember many of the titles for nearly any of these movies. I remember them because of weird fight scenes. I remember them because of wacky weapons. I remember them for being the early times or heyday of an actor who showed up in some action movie more recently. I'm not sure what it is, but there's a certain charm to that.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3zh3JPKgmRk5kAaWLVXqk2AwE3axuKPSg2alH9mJZ42s_NxbBqxNiF7wcNZgvPkVLAn8aom3XogLIyyf2dMRxy4KUcrQFb2gip1MGhRHETib04v1N6dkc2bC5ncRcLoBL09Ma6tEO0Cs/s1600/5ven02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="136" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3zh3JPKgmRk5kAaWLVXqk2AwE3axuKPSg2alH9mJZ42s_NxbBqxNiF7wcNZgvPkVLAn8aom3XogLIyyf2dMRxy4KUcrQFb2gip1MGhRHETib04v1N6dkc2bC5ncRcLoBL09Ma6tEO0Cs/s320/5ven02.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"First a tune from our favorite Beijing Opera...then to the ass-kicking..."</td></tr>
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It's easy to remember Chang Cheh's <em>Five Deadly Venoms</em> ( <span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17.265625px;">五毒</span>, 1978) because of the characters and their fighting styles: The Centipede, The Snake, The Scorpion, The Toad, and The Lizard. The story is a sort of martial arts whodunit, wherein an aging martial arts master sends his final pupil, Yan Tieh, to search out his five former venomous pupils who he fears may using their skills to diabolical ends. And, of course, some of them are. After, all this isn't the <i>Five Friendly Venoms</i> (though that's a wonderfully oxymoronic title). There's one weensy-teensy catch: the master doesn't know their names or faces. So Yan heads off to the nearest town in order to uncover the Venoms one by one in a plot of treachery, greed and intrigue. And, a whole lot of fighting in really weird ways.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The fall of my favorite Venom, the Toad (?!?)</td></tr>
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Director Chang Cheh was one of the Shaws' most successful and prolific directors, and would go on to make a variety of films with some or all of the stars, who became popularly known as the Five Venoms or Venom Mob. Why am I prefacing this paragraph this way? Well, like most first efforts or trendsetters, the formula obviously hadn't hit yet. <i>Five Deadly Venoms</i>, overall, is fun and colorful, and while everyone seems to be having a good time, it's a little slow and stilted in places compared to the Venom films that followed. At the same time, as a first, it certainly deserves its spot on many martial arts movies favorites lists. However, if you enjoy this film, may I suggest popping in another Venoms picture, <i>The Crippled Avengers</i> (1978) for perhaps one of the most over-the-top, bizarre kung fu movies ever committed to celluloid (I may have to return to review that one.). But, back to my original premise with this entry...<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Before dancing on ceilings was a glimmer in Lionel Richie's mind...</td></tr>
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There's a funny loss with these movies following the restoration of the original language tracks. On the plus side, the lips match the words, and more importantly, for once you appreciate that a lot of these guys can actually act. On the other hand, those of us who grew up with these movies can't help but feel a certain nostalgia for the overdone, hammy, mismatched English dialogue track. It will always be a part of the experience, as that's how we first saw them. The same goes double for Godzilla movies, which, in pop culture consciousness, became synonymous with bad lip synch. For many of the bottom of the barrel kung fu movies, the laughs generated by the dialogue are the only things that make them worth watching. (I'd like to reiterate that <i>Five Deadly Venoms</i> is by no means one of these.)<br />
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My first DVD copy of the first Venoms looked as though it was from a 1986 video dub. To be fair, it was released when the movie was still public domain, but it still looked dreadful. For years after digital transfers became the norm, I often wondered - Why if they have a pristine restored digital transfer of something like Carpenter's <em>Escape from New York</em> do they still show the video copy that was made in '86 on TV? Celestial pictures has re-released many the Shaw Brothers' films cleaned up and unedited on DVD (Though many an on-line forum has seen complaints about changed or missing music amongst other tiffs). The only problem is that they're region coded for Asia. Miramax eventually made some deal with them, and began releasing many of the bigger hits on DVD under the Dragon Dynasty label for North America; however, many of the more rare titles have never become available in the States...at least, not through conventional means.<br />
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<br />Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08471050778285550824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194846203426317097.post-26166603020597974922013-04-16T14:38:00.001-07:002013-05-11T22:44:02.988-07:00"I hate you so much, I think I'm going to die from it."In the past few years, I've noticed that every cinephile, including myself, has a number of omissions, often embarrassing to the rabid movie goer in question, of films they'd always meant to see or should've seen, but, for whatever reason, had just never gotten around to. In a recent casual movie trivia contest, one friend admitted that he'd never seen <i>The Blues Brothers</i> (1980), so to help him cover his shame I replied that I'd only recent gotten around to seeing <i>The Sting</i> (1973). So every now and again, when I think about it, I try to make a conscious effort to try and fill in some of these gaps.<br />
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You can never see them all, but you can always try to tick one or two more off the never ending checklist.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From the "Formerly Socially Acceptable" File</td></tr>
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So I sat down with 1946's <i>Gilda</i>, starring Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford, and George Macready. If memory serves, this was the first Rita Hayworth vehicle I've watched. This forces me to admit that Orson Welles' <i>The Lady from Shanghai</i> is another of these gaps on my list. Ford I had just seen in Fritz Lang's excellent noir <i>The Big Heat</i>, which also starred a very young, and very vicious Lee Marvin as the lead villain. In fact, I had almost forgotten that Ford played a key part in one of my childhood favorites as Pa Kent in the first Christopher Reeve <i>Superman</i> (1978). The distinctly voiced and distinctly scarred Macready is one of those character actors that even if you don't know him, you know him. Much like Peter Lorre or Erich Von Stroheim, Macready's villainous portrayals have somehow transcended into pop culture consciousness. The movie's director, Charles Vidor (née Károly Vidor), a Hungarian by birth, was yet another of the long list of European filmmakers who immigrated to Hollywood as the Nazis rose to eminence before the second World War.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Hey, I didn't get a 'hubba hubba' out of that guy!"</td></tr>
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The film's story is narrated by Johnny Farrell (Ford), a down on his luck gambler newly arrived in Argentina, who's saved from a mugging by the erudite Bailin Mundson (Macready). Johnny finds work at Mundson's illegal casino, rising through the ranks to quickly become the floor manager, but while he rules the casino, he's kept at arm's length from Mundson's other interests which involve a tungsten mine, some patents, and a shady group of Germans. When he's introduced to Mundson's wife, Gilda (Hayworth) it's all too apparent that Johnny and Gilda share a past that is tantalizingly kept in permanent secrecy. The heat gets turned up as Johnny's forced to babysit his former flame as she lives it up with a host of handsome suitors while her husband's nefarious interests go south. The cork is truly popped once Mundson is forced to flee the authorities, faking his own death, which leaves Gilda in control of his fortune and Johnny as the his executor of both his estate and his illicit affairs.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The alluring scent of cheeks...</td></tr>
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<i>Gilda</i> is frequently considered a noir, and it is in ways. I found it had more in common with a movie like <i>Casablanca </i>(1942), wherein a seedy cast of characters make their way through a plot of entanglements, romantic and otherwise, in an exotic locale. In any event, it's an excellent potboiler wherein the danger and the emotions get cranked up step by step, and it becomes harder to tell whether the explosion's going to come from pent up emotions or from the pistols floating about. The film's only misstep is the lengthy loss of Mundson in the film's final third. The dynamic between the film's main trio is electrifying, and when Mundson's taken out of the plot, it also robs some of the fire in the love/hate inferno between Johnny and Gilda.</div>
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And, I must confess, despite Hayworth's absolute radiance and appeal, there were a few too many lengthy musical numbers toward the end that began to grate on me just a hair. (Though not nearly as much as Dino and Ricky Nelson's last minute musical entry at the end of <i><a href="http://friendsofjunior.blogspot.com/2012/11/a-game-legged-old-man-and-drunk-thats.html">Rio Bravo</a></i> (1959).)</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">...v. the irresistible pull of the pin-stripe.</td></tr>
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Nevertheless, <i>Gilda</i> creates one of those excellent fictional worlds that attracted me so deeply to film in the first place. The fact that the setting is Argentina is inconsequential. It could've been Morocco or Japan or anywhere on a globe. It's a movie world. The sets are striking. The clothing is sharp and sumptuous. And the dialogue can crack like a whip. It's an inviting and immersive world of classically styled romance and intrigue...with, yes, that old Hollywood hint of sexual aberration. It's one of those old, black & white movies that is perfect to win over people who hate old, black & white movies. Simply put, if you can't find something to enjoy about this movie, it suggests that there's more wrong with you than with this all too enjoyable film.</div>
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Stand out line: Johnny Farrel: "Statistics show that there are more women in the world than anything else...except insects."<br />
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Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08471050778285550824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194846203426317097.post-76945447669605114182013-04-09T10:49:00.001-07:002013-04-09T10:49:18.843-07:00A Final Escapade<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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A friend recently brought up his love for Adrian Lyne's <i>Jacob's Ladder</i>, which led to a discussion of its progenitor, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce. Bierce's story was the grandaddy of all "life flashing before one's eyes" stories, a sort of subset of the "it was all a dream" motif. Much like Connell's "The Most Dangerous Game" and Hammett's <i>Red Harvest</i>, "Owl Creek Bridge" has seen its basic tenets hashed and rehashed in numberless stories since its publication.<br />
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So it was a sort of odd coincidence that I should happen to throw on Claude Chabrol's <i>Alice ou la dernière fugue</i> (aka. <i>Alice or The Last Escapade</i>, 1977). The film is the tale of Alice Carroll, played by Sylvia Kristel, the Dutch actress best known for her portrayal of the infamously sensual Emmanuelle, who leaves her husband into a torrential downpour in the French countryside. Forced to stop by a cracked windshield, she finds herself welcomed into an old chateau, wherein she has a bizarre series of encounters among the denizens of the grounds while discovering that she can't seem to leave her rest stop. There's no real way to say SPOILER ALERT at this point, but if you look back to the first paragraph, you might just be able to tell where this story goes from there.<br />
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As I mentioned, most cineastes and literary fiends are all too familiar with the Bierce plot to experience any sort of surprise at the twist to this particular tale. It makes for unfair bias when looking back to a time before the plot device had become a touch on the hackneyed side. So how does the rest of the film hold up despite that? That's harder to say. More scholarly critics than myself saw a great depth to this film that I felt it lacked. It's definitely made by the steady, controlled hand of a master: it's beautifully shot, makes fantastic use of its location, has wonderful atmosphere, and was remarkably compelling for how little interaction there is between Kristel and the film's other characters.<br />
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However, while it makes stabs at depth, it never seems to make it past an entry level course on philosophy. For fantastic films of possible afterlives, I was instantly reminded of Cocteau's <i>Orpheus</i> films, which I found to have a more artful approach to the material as well a more relatable thoughtfulness about them. I could follow the progression of Chabrol's film, but never felt terribly engaged with the discussion. Furthermore, the film is also an allusion to Lewis Carroll's <i>Alice in Wonderland</i>, which it also never quite plumbed to any real depth, so that what little tie there was to the celebrated Victorian tale seemed trite. In all, a gorgeous but unsatisfying film...but perhaps, my wondering if it's not I that's missing something says quite a bit in and of itself.<br />
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Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08471050778285550824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194846203426317097.post-42808839441474296352013-04-04T16:29:00.000-07:002013-04-04T16:34:06.130-07:00From the Vault: The Weekend in Movies(This is an updated and modified post from March 2004 off of my previous blog. ENJOY!)<br />
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On Friday, I half watched <i>The Storm Riders</i> (1998, HK), starring Aaron Kwok and Ekin Cheng. I say half because I was doing other things, and I've already seen the movie a dozen times or so. In the movie, two young men, Wind and Cloud, are raised by Conqueror (the great Sonny Chiba), the man who killed each of their fathers during his ongoing struggle to rule the world. Unfortunately for Conqueror, the Mud Budha has prophecied that Conqueror will be invincible for the first half of this life, but in the second half, Wind and Cloud will be his undoing. Naturally, Conqueror doesn't believe it, and fate takes care of the rest.<br />
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Believe me, despite that literally being the story and literally how they talk about it in the dialogue, it's not as silly somehow while watching it. If you've never seen it, I don't necessarily recommend rushing out to grab it now. The special effects, at the time for Hong Kong, were strong and inventive, but were still behind Hollywood and now behind for both. I can handle movies that have cheeseball effects or that look dated, but I know that a lot of folks just can't. I do, however, harbor a soft spot for it. It's a pretty strongly realized fantasy martial arts film that tells a far more developed story than most.<br />
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On Saturday night, I talked several friends into rewatching <i>Hero</i> (2002, China, d. Zhang Yimou). <i>Hero</i> concerns a county official who is brought before the emperor after vanquishing three of his most dreaded foes. Through the emperor's close cross examination of his savior's tale, the true story slowly emerges.<br />
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Like so many movies based on fragmented narratives or dissenting perspectives, <i>Hero</i> certainly owes a debt to <i>Rashomon</i> in its style of storytelling. But, <i>Rashomon</i> is based on three different people's understanding of the same story. <i>Hero</i>, however, is based on a lie, and the combing over of the story elements slowly unravels the various tendrils of fabrication. This film has a breathtaking production design and a skillful use of vibrant color and texture. At the same time, it's painterly tendencies to maintain style sometimes leaves it a little cold and distancing.<br />
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Miramax is supposed to release <i>Hero</i> in the U.S., but don't be surprised if it is chopped up and dubbed. In fine Hollywood form, they are apparently suing a man for supplying links to websites carrying original versions of these foreign films. There's a weird conundrum to the whole thing: The majority of people who see these movies are hardcore movie people who want the original version, but the studio butchers them for a broad audience that likely won't go see them anyway. Go figure. (ed. note: Luckily, perhaps having learned a lesson from <i>Shaolin Soccer</i>, <i>Hero</i> was released in its original form in Mandarin.)<br />
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Spread between Sunday morning and Sunday evening in two viewings was <i>Battle Royale II</i> (2003, Japan). (Am I pushing it with the Asian cinema?) Boy oh boy...whoa nelly...and by golly. This movie seemed like it wanted to say a hundred things at the same time, and didn't say any of them well. A modern day techno-version of <i>Lord of the Flies</i>, the first <i>Battle Royale</i> was the story of a near future law that tries to reign in rioting children by picking a random class of ninth graders and flying them to a remote spot where they are forced to eliminate one another. <i>Battle Royale II </i>revolves around the terrorist movement created by the survivors of the first movie in an effort to free the children of the world from adult oppression. The tie-in is a new game which sends the random class of 9th graders to the terrorist base where they must infiltrate and kill the terrorist leader.<br />
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The most basic failure was really managing to drum up sympathy for any of the characters. The first movie almost suffered from this problem, but two things almost consistently worked for it: early victims got a sympathy vote for looking like helpless children before being killed in nasty ways, while the later victims had some character defining action or backstory to flesh them out during the course of the game. The second film had little to give the new kids or the terrorist children other than a horrific death that because of their anonymity failed to drum up much emotion. This isn't to say the movie was without emotion. Depending on your political leanings, there are certain things in this film that I would hope would speak to anyone, but the whole movie keeps picking up and falling apart around them.<br />
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I can't really go through the other problems in the film without doing a point by point breakdown, which would be a lot like the second half of the film: endless. After long jags of scattershot pacing, the film kept gearing up to end and would then keep going (I almost felt like I was watching <i>AI</i> again. The horror. The horror.). Most of this I ascribe to the directionlessness (that has to be a word if it isn't) of the whole thing. If you don't know where you're going, how do you know that you're there? It should be said that the director Kinji Fukasaku passed away during the film's making, and so it was passed on to his son, Kenta. From that vantage, dissection of what made it to the screen becomes a battle of what if's concerning Kenta's capabilities, or whether Kinji would have held the project together better.<br />
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The movie's in the can. It just happens to be a thoughtful mess in a can.<br />
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The final viewing which took place late Friday night, and finished early on Saturday was Sergio Corbucci's second western, <i>Minnesota Clay</i> (1965, Italy). <i>Minnesota Clay</i> is the story of gunslinger who escapes from prison in order to save his town and his daughter from rival gangs, one of which is led by the man who could prove his innoncence. Clay's primary difficulty is that his skills with a pistol are being lost to the blindness taking over his eyes.<br />
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Not bad, not bad at all. The quality of the DVD was surpisingly good. Corbucci, of course, didn't hit stride with westerns until <i>Django</i>, a spaghetti masterpiece. (I think Corbucci was truly the master of what is thought of as the spaghetti western. Leone's films were in a whole other bigger ball park . They just happened to be Euro-westerns.) <i>Minnesota Clay</i> is definitely of that early mold of spaghetti where they conformed highly to Hollywood standards and stories, but it isn't bad in terms of either. Cameron Mitchel is well cast as the aging and ailing gunslinger who's still got more than enough steely-eyed vengeance in him. My primary complaint, as with many of these films, some of the dubbed dialogue (and all of them were, whether in Italian or not) gets laughable just to make sure the character says something when his mouth is open.<br />
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Anyhow, not my favorite spaghetti, but a worthy entry into the genre.<br />
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<br />Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08471050778285550824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194846203426317097.post-85004791889734173492013-03-26T12:07:00.000-07:002013-03-26T12:07:17.826-07:00"6 Feet 2' And All of it Dynamite!"Though mainstream Hollywood had had its fair share of leading ladies in dramatic roles, for everything else, and for minorities, I always felt that genre cinema was one of the few places where new ground in portrayals of all kinds could first be broken. Looking back over time, of the few stand-out ladies of whoop-ass action, blaxploitation produced two of the most iconic in the form of one Pam Grier and Tamara Dobson.<br />
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Tamara Dobson had worked as a fashion model and commercial actress before being launched onto the silver screen versus an exceptionally crazy Shelley Winters in the original <i>Cleopatra Jones</i> (1973). Cleo, a sort of drug enforcement version of James Bond, returns to Los Angeles from ridding the world of the drug trade to zip around town in a tricked-out Corvette in order to stop local drug kingpin, Mommy, who's had the cops leaning on her boyfriend's community drug rehabilitation center to get revenge on Cleo.<br />
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Created by legendary entertainer Max Julien, Cleopatra Jones' greatest fault is that she's...well...a little too indestructible. Even Bond occasionally got hurt or captured, but never once does Cleo seem like she may not quite get out of the scrape. So most of what little emotional resonance there is in the picture falls to perpetual movie pimp/dealer/fall guy Antonio Fargas as the gangster Doodlebug. Fargas stands out as the second most memorable character in the film and delivers a monologue about his hair that was almost worth the run time of the movie. The most memorable is far and away Shelley Winters at her scenery-chewing best as the red-haired, leather clad, evil lesbian villainess, Mommy. She hams it up to her evil best, but almost seems like a good replacement for Frankie and Annette's nemesis, Eric Von Zipper in the 60's Beach movies. In all, it's a very fun flick with plenty of action and excitement, a little intrigue, some creative movie deaths, and about as kooky as you can get in 60's fashion...until you get to...<br />
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Cleo's second outing, <i>Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold</i> (1975). This time the creative team moved the production to Hong Kong and partnered with martial arts movie legend Run Run Shaw of the Shaw Brothers. This time, Cleo's cohorts, the Johnson brothers, are captured while trying to bust a heroin ring, and Cleo arrives to join forces with a local Chinese detective team to complete the bust on the "Dragon Lady" Bianca Javin (Stella Stevens).<br />
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The sets are bigger and more lavish. The action is way more over-the-top. The outfits for Cleo are more colorful and outrageous. But is it a better movie than the original? In a way, yes. I was generally more entertained, much in the way most martial arts movies' acrobatics and choreography can carry even the thinnest storylines. However, Cleo comes off just as indestructible as ever, and most of her dialogue is a series of stilted one-liners. Dobson, who was every bit a statuesque and beautiful lady, lacks the smoldering sexiness and vulnerability that made the aforementioned Pam Grier so great. In some respects, especially in this sequel, she's almost more of an animated part of the set than the leading lady of the movie. Also, this one trades one evil lesbian villainess for another, and while Stella Stevens is adequately menacing as Bianca, she's nowhere near as indelible as Winters' Mommy. Nevertheless, Cleopatra Jones is definitely an icon of the blaxploitation era, and I genuinely had a good time watching both films.<br />
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On a trivial side note, I had a good chuckle that each film featured a staple of my youthful television watching. The first film had Esther Rolle, who I grew up watching as Florida Evans in <i>Good Times</i>, and the second featured Norman Fell, who I first new as Mr. Roper on <i>Three's Company</i>.<br />
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<br />Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08471050778285550824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194846203426317097.post-47755050048016981352013-03-21T13:54:00.000-07:002013-03-28T15:55:30.715-07:00"You Know Much About Guns, Mr. Bond?" "No, but I Know a Little About Women."<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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James Bond's nemesis, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, leader of SPECTRE (SPecial Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion) is often cited as the prototype for the master-villain, the faceless brain behind mass conspiracies of villainy. For his first two appearances in Bond films, he was more or less depicted solely as an arm before finally being revealed in <i>You Only Live Twice </i>(1967) played by the bald, scarred-eye, Nehru-collared form of Donald Pleasance...an image used and reused both seriously and for parody in countless movies and TV programs since. Though he's in six of the canon Bond films, he's only in three of Fleming's original novels: <i>Thunderball</i>, <i>On Her Majesty's Secret Service</i>, and <i>You Only Live Twice</i>, otherwise known as the Blofeld trilogy. Having been given a copy of <i>Majesty's</i>, I found myself having to track down <i>Thunderball</i> to get started.<br />
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After all, it seems strange when he's revealed if you haven't seen the movies in order...so I figured it'd be just as strange if not stranger to read the books out of order.<br />
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The book opens with James Bond in sorry shape. He's been drinking and smoking a little too much after having been beaten up a bit too much by his work. So M, on a health kick, sends him to a spa in the English countryside. There, a brusque brush-up with one of the other spa visitors ends up tying into a conspiracy that involves the theft of an RAF plane and it's payload of two nuclear weapons, which are then used to try and blackmail $100, 000, 000 ransom from the world governments.<br />
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Naturally, this is the work of Blofeld and SPECTRE. Blofeld, who came up through government bureaucracy was immersed in the world of espionage during the second World War and has since used his ability to buy and sell information to form a dangerous network of spies and criminals into a global conspiracy. No one knows where the plane went. No one knows where the bombs are. And Bond is dispatched into the field to try and stop this plot. So...on M's hunch, Bond is sent to Nassau in the Bahamas where he meets the "treasure-hunter" Emilio Largo and his kept woman, the lovely Domino. With the help of Felix Leiter, Bond begins to assemble clues that point to Largo as the man behind hi-jacking the plane and stealing the bombs.<br />
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In all, Fleming's novel moves at a pretty good clip and Blofeld is introduced in grand style with a well-built background for evil. Largo, too, is an enjoyable antagonist: the rich playboy, who is, in fact, a total scumbag who knows how to torture with a cigar and some ice. Bond is, well Bond, and benefits from the presence of the ever plucky Leiter (who is always whole in the movies, but after events in the book <i>Live and Let Die</i>, is missing an arm). And Domino, for the books, is one of Bond's more remarkable conquests, although she leads Fleming into one of the most hilarious sexist rants about women-drivers I've ever read. Domino, of course, is a great driver, and the sole exception to the diatribe.<br />
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I did, however, have a couple of problems with how the book played out. For one, though the events and resutls of the time at the health spa are amusing, they meander for a bit too long, and are tied into the main plot by only the flimsiest of threads. So inevitably they end up eating up a fair bit of time, as does many of Fleming's various asides about a variety of topics from technology to a dinner menu. Detail often brings a world to life, but in several cases in this book (and in other Bond novels I've read) it just seems like an oddly placed editorial. It's not as off-putting as some of the pages and pages of technical jargon in modern spy/military thrillers, but it does throw off the plotting. And finally, too much of the initial part of the main plot rely on hunches and coincidences (ie. With no idea who or where SPECTRE is, Bond just happens to end up in the right place at the right time for no real good reason but happenstance.) Still and all, these aren't documentaries on spying but meant as entertainment, and on that score, <i>Thunderball</i> was largely successful despite these distractions.<br />
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Of course, one can't address <i>Thunderball</i> without addressing the controversy over the book that lead to a decades long legal dispute. Before Albert Broccoli and Sean Connery made a little movie called <i>Dr. No</i> (1962), Fleming and his friend Ivar Bryce teamed up with an Irish filmmaker, Kevin McClory, to form a production company to produce a Bond film, whose plot elements eventually became <i>Thunderball</i>. While that movie was never made, Fleming adapted certain characters and elements from what had been fleshed out for the film project into the novel which later became its own movie and so on without McClory receiving any credit. While I don't seek to settle what all transpired between these men, suffice it to say that McClory's legal pursuit of restitution from Fleming and his estate led to the loophole that allowed for a remake of <i>Thunderball</i>, which saw the return of Connery to the role that he made famous and that made him a star in this here...<br />
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<br />Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08471050778285550824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194846203426317097.post-71143715964895990392013-03-12T10:55:00.000-07:002013-03-12T10:59:07.427-07:00"Somebody Warn the West..."After covering the last Fred Williamson Western <i><a href="http://friendsofjunior.blogspot.com/2013/02/all-they-need-isa-better-script.html">Adios Amigo</a></i>, I figured I'd cover two of Fred's earlier Western entries, which have become infamous if only for their titles.<br />
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It appears to be proof of just how much of a comeback the Western had had thanks to the European set that this blaxploitation flick got off the ground a year before Fred starred in perhaps his biggest hit of the era with <i>Black Caesar</i>, and the fact that Fred was coming off his run on the groundbreaking and tender TV series <i>Julia</i> (1968-1971) that <i>The Legend of N*gger Charley </i>(1972) made it to the big screen. And people at the time were no more comfortable with the title than they are now. The story concerns a slave blacksmith who's given his freedom by his dying master only to have it revoked by an abusive heir. In a fit of rage-fueled revenge, Charley kills the heir and escapes to the West with his two compatriots, Tobey and Joshua. They're pursued by a fugitive-slave hunter and his posse, and after confronting them in a western town shootout, they're hired by a farmer to rid himself of a crazy outlaw preacher and his gang.<br />
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Sound like too much for one movie? Well, simply put: it is. Any one of the three acts of the story could've been enough for a decently constructed movie, but as it is, it just kinda ends up as a structural mess. When Charley and gang have the shootout with the slave-hunter in the middle of the movie, it seems as though that would be the end except that we're given a whole new storyline that doesn't have enough time to be set up properly for their to be any kind of tension before it's all over. As it is, it's an adequate if disjointed piece of entertainment. Fred is his usual charming self. D'urville Martin is competent comic relief. And for being on the lower end of the genre, it's not a wholly bad looking film (although the print I saw was awful). And both villains, the slave hunter and the outlaw reverend both seemed ripe for being entertaining villains if only either of them had enjoyed adequate screen time or development.<br />
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In the end, <i>Legend</i> was either successful enough or demand was still great enough, that Paramount (yup, the big movie studio paid for both of these movies) put Fred back in the saddle for <i>The Soul of N*gger Charley</i> (1973) the following year. This time Charley's mythos has spread through the West, and when he comes across a murderous band of former Confederates capturing former slaves to take to a new slave state in the Mexican wilds, you know damned well Charley's going to put a stop to it. This bigger and badder affair features a Quaker community, crazy Confederates, a big train robbery of $100,000 in gold, and more bandidos than you can shake a six-shooter at.<br />
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As a story, <i>Soul</i> is a far more cohesive affair that dumps you right into the action with an opening massacre, but occasionally stalls out with unnecessarily long riding sequences. A good twenty minutes could've been stricken from the run-time merely by cutting to the chase so to speak with many of these long vista rides. Still and all, it doesn't quite gel into a great Western as their are still a sizable number of gaps in logic and in both movies, there's a tendency to hit jags of unnecessary and out of place moments of melodrama. And again, there was a lack of development on the part of the villains. Primary villain, Colonel Blanchard is adequately crazy and creepy, if his crack squad of soldiers seem appallingly inept much of the time, but it almost feels as though it needed more of just how awful the evil new Confederacy they were building was going to be. I suppose it's like what I call "Nazi Shorthand", meaning that if you make an obvious villain/s the villain/s you don't have to waste time developing him, her, or them. And while most of us are all too familiar with the evils of the slave plantations, the movie barely answers what that would look like in the north of Mexico. In any event, a superior effort, if lacking a bit of the vitality, to the original.<br />
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(Sorry folks, couldn't find any trailer to go with these.)Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08471050778285550824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194846203426317097.post-44072662154694493412013-03-05T09:31:00.000-08:002013-03-05T09:31:10.272-08:00Penultimate Killers<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I've been some kind of overdue for sitting down to a heapin' helpin' of the Spaghetti West...so here's a couple I took in recently.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">We'll start with <i>The Last Killer</i> (<i>L'ultimo Killer</i>, 1967), a lower budget affair with Anthony Ghidra and Euro-exploitation staple George Eastman. Now, the title of this Italian oater often has a "Django" slapped in front of it (as in <i>Django - The Last Killer</i>), as it was yet another cash-in on the popular name, which turned Ghidra's original character name from 'Rezza' to yet another in a long line of Django's. (Speaking of changing names, Anthony Ghidra was the stage name for </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 19.1875px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 19.1875px;">Serbian actor</span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"> Dragomir 'Gidra' Bojani<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.1875px;">ć.) </span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 19.1875px;">The story concerns a group of local farmers being persecuted by a wealthy landowner, Barret, whose "business partner" is a deadly gunfighter, Bart (naturally), and his gang; however, Barret hires local gun-for-hire, Rezza/Django, to take out the unstable Bart while keeping his gang. After Bart's gang kills the family of one peaceful farmer, his son, Ramon (Eastman), is fatally wounded by Rezza while seeking revenge. Rezza takes the boy back to his cabin where he nurses him back to health and trains him to finish his plot for vengeance, which inevitably leads to a number of showdowns. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.1875px;">I</span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 19.1875px;">t's almost 2/3's a strong spaghetti. The first half hour's logic is shaky at best (Ramon's robbed by the hired gang that work for Barret, the man he's going to pay, but this doesn't register before he goes to talk to Barret about why he doesn't have the money?), but once the training begins, Ghidra does a fine job as the wizened gunfighter whose dialogue was reminiscent of a fair few characters played by the great Lee Van Cleef. The rest plays out fairly predictably, but had it shown some of the high atmosphere and theatrics of a Leone or Corbucci, it could've been rather remarkable instead of a second or third tier effort. Also, while Eastman is passable, he lacks a certain earthy quality to be taken seriously as the gun-slinging peone...a role that Tomas Milian played to the hilt in a number of spaghetti westerns.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.1875px;">And by happy coincidence, the second Spaghetti feature I watched, </span></span><i style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 19.1875px;">The Ugly Ones</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 19.1875px;"> (aka. </span><i style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 19.1875px;">The Bounty Killer</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 19.1875px;">, </span><i style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 19.1875px;">El precio de un hombre</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 19.1875px;">, 1967),</span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.1875px;"> did contain a strong performance by Milian. This is the only Spaghetti I can think of based on an American pulp novel (also called </span></span><i style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 19.1875px;">The Bounty Killer</i><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 19.1875px;"> by Marvin H. Albert, not remotely to be confused with Marv Albert). And it contained far more of the tension and drama that </span><i style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Last Killer</i><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> almost utterly lacked.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The populace of a tiny town aids an escaped Mexican bandit, José Gomez (Milian), by helping him to take surly bounty hunter, Luke Chilson (Richard Wyler), hostage. The townspeople believe Gomez to be a lost soul forced into a life of crime to survive, but when Gomez's gang shows up intending to take everything they own while destroying their homes in the process, they decide to free Chilson who had been warning them all along that Gomez was not who they thought he was. Helmed by Spanish director Eugenio Martín, who also directed <i>Requiem for a Gringo</i> (another spaghetti I need to get around to), </span><i style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 19.1875px;">The Ugly Ones </i><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 19.1875px;">holds a great tension that, while it focuses on the unlikable Chilson and the (initially) charming Gomez, relies more on the shift in attitude of the townspeople. The photography of the sandy hills of Almería is strong (with many recognizable locations from other Spaghettis) while the interiors have an almost heavy gothic atmosphere. While still not Top 10 material, </span><i style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 19.1875px;">The Ugly Ones</i><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 19.1875px;"> was an enjoyable effort that definitely fell far closer to the top of the heap than the middle or bottom.</span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 19.1875px;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 19.1875px;"><br /></span>Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08471050778285550824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194846203426317097.post-63651706854392203682013-02-26T11:26:00.000-08:002013-02-26T11:26:19.138-08:00All They Need Is....A Better Script!Today's quickie review is a two-fer.<br />
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We'll kick off with the bigger disappointment. Pretend you're a filmmaker in the 1970's. You want to make a western, which are on the fade again...BUT you want it to be funny, which thanks to <i>Blazing Saddles</i> (1974), should be a go. You take the handsome, charismatic hot black property, Fred Williamson, and you take the hottest black comedian of the time, Richard Pryor...and you should be able to spin gold, yes?<br />
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Of Fred Williamson's four forays into Westerns, <i>Adios Amigo</i> (1976) is far and away the most disappointing, especially as it was his last one. Now Richard Pryor...well, Richard's motion picture legacy despite his stand-up genius is wildly uneven, mostly skewing to the not-so-great, unless Gene Wilder is around. If you don't agree or don't believe me, spend the evening with <i>Adios Amigo</i> double-featured with <i>Superman III</i> and see if you still feel the same. The story is simple, Fred gets into a fight in town, which thanks to corrupt locals gets him shipped to prison on a stagecoach that's robbed by Pryor setting Fred free. Inexplicably, instead of going home to avenge himself on the corrupt townsfolk that ran him off, Fred chases after Pryor for his part of the loot from the robbed stagecoach. What follows is a repetitive formula of Pryor encountering people, messing with them, stealing from them, and running off, leaving the pursuing Fred to take the blame in a series of mostly flat scenes that are neither funny nor exciting. Fred as usual seems earnest and game for the antics, but they're just not there...and neither really is Pryor who seems to mumble his way through most scenes as if half-asleep/half-crazed and/or half-drunk, which, sadly, he may have been all at the same time. Even the dread <i><a href="http://friendsofjunior.blogspot.com/2012/11/this-is-seven-shot-six-shooter.html">Cactus Jack</a></i> (1979) had more inspired moments than this and it too was awful.<br />
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But being no stranger to the weird and the awful, I tried again. So this time we're going to rewind the clock back to 1969. Now we're in the hot stretch for Westerns following Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy, and Hollywood wants to cash in. You've got young up-and-comer Burt Reynolds whose already been in one Italian oater (<i>Navajo Joe</i>, 1966), and you've got black football sensation Jim Brown whose was in one of the action hits of the 60's, <i>The Dirty Dozen</i> (1967). Add to that the smoldering sex-pot that is Raquel Welch, and again, you should have gold, yes?<br />
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Well....<i>100 Rifles</i> (1969) seems to take much of its direction for the great Sergio Corbucci's <i>The Mercenary</i> (<i>Il Mercenario</i>), which also featured a cunning peone, a hard-fighting foreign outsider, and a hot girl in the midst of some Mexican revolutionizing. But while <i>Rifles</i> seems to have the characters and have the chemistry, it never coheres into the adventure that <i>The Mercenary</i> pulls off. Instead it sort of wobbles, betwixt endless chase scenes, between half-comical banter and Peckinpah-esque brutality. Still, it's not all a bad time, if you can get past the stunning gaps in character-driven logic. All I know is, if I'm trying to escape from a pursuing Mexican general, who's a tad on the butchery side, and his well-armed troops, I don't stop for a chat or a fistfight until I'm way way way far away. Having said that, it was a generally enjoyable way to pass some time. Burt was well on his way to being Burt. Raquel Welch has a sexy shower under a train cooling tower. And the film was cut or banned in a number of places for some smoldering horizontal monster mashing between Jim Brown and Raquel. The movie's well-shot, the scenery gorgeous, and the action, especially the finale, exciting...it just never adds up to much.<br />
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<br />Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08471050778285550824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194846203426317097.post-77164442672889236722013-02-19T10:43:00.000-08:002013-02-19T10:43:19.543-08:00"I Curse You With My Name! You Shall Be...Blacula!!!"Let's jump right into this quickie review of perhaps the first Blaxploitation movie I ever saw, 1972's <i>Blacula</i>...and while we're at it, the follow-up, 1973's <i>Scream Blacula Scream</i>. <div>
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The first time I saw it, I was probably around 10 years old or so and switched on the TV to some UHF station. I remember it was sunny outside, but once I caught my first glance of William Marshall as the Black Prince of Darkness I sat it out until the end. Revisiting it the other day, I could still see the finale as clear as on that sunny afternoon of my youth when Blacula mounts the stairs...Well, I don't want to say too much.</div>
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So, the movie opens with African prince Mamuwalde (Marshall) and his lovely wife at Count Dracula's castle trying to convince the Count to join him on a campaign to get the European powers to end slavery. The Count, more than a little dismissive of the proposition, starts a fight and gives Mamuwalde the damning bite of the vampire before sealing him with his wife into an oubliette in the castle walls. Years later, in the 1970's, two offensively flamingly gay antiques dealers buy the castle and set Blacula free. But in his quest to wed the young Tina (Vonetta McGee), the spitting image of his dead wife (could be because she played his dead wife in the opening sequence... ;-) ), he leaves a trail of newly undead shambling around which put the disbelieving cops on his trail. </div>
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I'll just say now that summarizing <i>Scream Blacula Scream</i> is a spoiler alert in and of itself. So much for my effort to not give away the ending of <i>Blacula</i> above. When an aged voodoo priestess dies and chooses her apprentice Lisa (Pam Grier) over her son Willis (Richard Lawson) to take over their group, Willis resurrects Blacula to exact his revenge. However, Willis merely ends up a vampire himself, while Blacula tries to get Lisa to exorcise him of the evil bestowed upon him by Count Dracula while, once again, the cops are closing in due to all the non-corpse corpses running around.</div>
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Now, neither one of these movies was ever meant to be award-winners but both were quite enjoyable, thought not without considerable shortcomings. First of all, one has to get past the name Blacula, and the ludicrous way it's worked into the plot (see Drac's quote in the review title above). From there, the first film is a fairly by the numbers vampire flick whose main difference is its urban setting and black cast. William Marshall does his damnedest to add enough gravitas to keep the proceedings from delving into purely hokey drivel, and he's fantastic at creating a sympathetic villain. The filmmakers, however, can't seem to resist adding enough cornball to keep it from being something more akin to <i>Shaft: The Vampire Years </i>(which, to my mind, would've been awesome)...still, it does fair far better than <i>Blackenstein</i> (1973).</div>
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<i>Scream Blacula Scream</i> is much the same only it can't help but just get purely silly. To set the tone: Moments after Willis performs his voodoo resurrection rites over the bones of Blacula (which must've been cow bones or some large animal because they're far too large and thick to be human bones), he leaves the room, plunks down in a chair, and drinks a cool Coors with his back to the room he just left, leaving himself wide open for resurrected vampire attack. At least it makes sense why his mom didn't pick him to take over. The rest of move pretty much follows suit. Sadly, the effects have gotten better since the first film, but like I said, everything else has gotten sillier. </div>
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On a side note, both films contain fantastic graphic displays for their title sequences...if you're into that sort of thing. </div>
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So in summary: If you're just looking for a good time and a good laugh...something to go with a cool Coors 12 oz. on a lazy afternoon or weekend evening...then, by all means, enjoy <i>Blacula</i> and its sequel. If, however, you want a surreal arty conceptualization of a black vampire, I recommend Bill Gunn's wild<i> Ganja and Hess</i> (1973).</div>
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Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08471050778285550824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194846203426317097.post-89272037867285166862013-02-07T13:17:00.000-08:002013-02-07T13:17:25.073-08:00"Ain't No Cure For Them Jungle Blues..."Australia is one of the few places that during it's early colonial era experienced a history not disimilar to the Wild West of the United States. But much like I would've never expected an Aussie to write a Southern Gothic novel as Nick Cave did with <i>And the Ass Saw the Angel</i>, nor would I expect one to record not one but two albums of country blues mixed with hints of ragtime and calypso as C.W. Stoneking has. And he's done it well.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7Wyr4M0vt2HsQ7SKlcty4oRv69UG8npqqPvz6czPOp46ixeWuwJcLPOZRBCoCxPQk2Wea5PVAaVliWVgsYJ1TJTGUSNmvqnGkFo9CdWSD4jhUu7U8wY_BmxBbDWWdeKeC7eAM3Og9qG0/s1600/jung01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7Wyr4M0vt2HsQ7SKlcty4oRv69UG8npqqPvz6czPOp46ixeWuwJcLPOZRBCoCxPQk2Wea5PVAaVliWVgsYJ1TJTGUSNmvqnGkFo9CdWSD4jhUu7U8wY_BmxBbDWWdeKeC7eAM3Og9qG0/s320/jung01.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Stoneking's 2008 <i>Jungle Blues</i> is an enjoyable trip through a kaleidoscope of a rich musical past. "Jailhouse Blues" is every bit country blues as "The Love Me or Die" is flavored with the Caribbean, while the title track, "Jungle Blues," has a heavy streak of vaudevillian carnival that a Tom Waits track might warble over. He's obviously well-immersed in his chosen genres, and plays the music as more of a continuation rather than as merely a pale throwback. While a few tracks have some affectation, Stoneking has thankfully kept from immersing his entire album in canned scratches, hiss, and pops unlike a fair few modern revivalists, but as the sound seems to come from so genuine a place, they would hardly be necessary.<br />
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The album's only problem is that for the uninitiated to these earlier forms of music, the steam might run out for them a couple of tracks before the end. Either the album might have benefited from one or two more hookier upbeat numbers or at least a jostle to the track order, but it's hard to believe someone with a passion for this form of artistry would be trying to grab a mainstream audience. In the end, I would think it beneficial for a first-time listener to not know or try and forget Stoneking's pedigree to keep this from merely coming off as a striking novelty record. At the right moment in the right setting (I'm thinking late in the evening, a few drinks in, maybe a smokey game of pool being played...) throw C.W. Stoneking's <i>Jungle Blues</i> on the old juke, and you'd be in for a treat.<br />
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<br />Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08471050778285550824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194846203426317097.post-8624316246335229062013-02-05T11:46:00.000-08:002013-02-05T13:09:55.096-08:00Blaxploitation One-Two PunchAfter revisiting Jackie Brown, it seemed appropriate to run a blaxploitation double feature. So let's cover a couple of quickies.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih0NH-6hAShyphenhyphenJDfzQ5a8-OPKQUqhBZOmMdCM6ddyzgRpBzp1W47r66WCmS87YhCGcEkR1pVAesuW9nPAl1ifLmLRT-UjrBqWwRfCrWjCPClCE3naF1sttJRZQNcwajBQd-2enWTX8dx8Y/s1600/blax12.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih0NH-6hAShyphenhyphenJDfzQ5a8-OPKQUqhBZOmMdCM6ddyzgRpBzp1W47r66WCmS87YhCGcEkR1pVAesuW9nPAl1ifLmLRT-UjrBqWwRfCrWjCPClCE3naF1sttJRZQNcwajBQd-2enWTX8dx8Y/s320/blax12.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Note: I will not be addressing the terrible joke of this title.</td></tr>
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<i>Black Eye</i> (1974) saw Fred Williamson as the former cop turned private investigator, Stone, whose investigation into a murdered friend turns into a chase for a dead movie star's cane while also searching for a missing girl. Could the two cases be connected? Of course they are, but it takes a long, loose, and seedy trip behind the scenes of 70's Hollywood glam, through porn sets, "psychics", hippie Jesus freaks and an informant named "Worm" to get there.<br />
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Despite the giallo-esque elements of the poster up there, <i>Black Eye</i> is an enjoyable if by-the-numbers 70's mystery that probably could've benefited from some of that gothic atmosphere. In many ways, it reminded me of a 70's version of <i>The Big Sleep</i>, though Stone is no Philip Marlowe. Having said that, however, Fred's just as handsome and charming as ever, and his general charisma carries the picture through the slow or rough patches. I've seen Fred do better, but I've also seen Fred do far worse. The most entertaining aspect was to spot various familiar locations around Los Angeles starting with the main entrance to the Venice Boardwalk.<br />
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There was a fair share more of this tour of LA's past to be found in Rudy Ray Moore's return as Dolemite, <i>The Human Tornado</i> (1976). Successful stand-up act, Dolemite, is donating his money and his home as a children's shelter when the small town sheriff performs a raid on the benefit party. Dolemite and his buddies skip town for Los Angles where they find nightclub owner Queen Bee embroiled in a war with rival nightclub gangsters. Naturally, it's time for Dolemite to bust a lot of kung fu ass-whoopin's to settle the score.<br />
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The plot of dueling nightclubs in many ways has a mighty resemblance to Moore's <a href="http://friendsofjunior.blogspot.com/2013/01/dont-give-me-that-supernatural-sht.html"><i>Petey Wheatstraw</i></a> only without the supernatural angle (although there is a witch woman that reminded me of the PCP hallucinations from <i>Disco Godfather</i> (1979)). It's the usual fast, loose, and often disconnected Rudy Ray Moore effort (whatever happened to the kids' shelter?) with stand-up, musical numbers, the world's funniest kung fu noises, and occasionally some plot. Off the top of my head, there are two moments that will decide whether you can enjoy this movie: 1) The lead character displaying his name on a large flowing cape in the opening credits, and 2) a climatic shoot-out which results in the lead character's being shot only to invoke the name of the movie and walk away. Now, can you dig it?<br />
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<br />Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08471050778285550824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194846203426317097.post-17800697081594573622013-01-29T12:06:00.000-08:002013-01-29T12:06:44.060-08:00"My @ss May be Dumb, But I Ain't no Dumb@$$."<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In light of Quentin Tarantino's return to blaxploitation with <i>Django Unchained</i>, I thought I would go back and rewatch <i>Jackie Brown</i>. I hadn't seen the movie since 1997 when I originally watched it in the theater. While I thought it a solid effort back then, it wasn't my favorite, especially following the stellar <i>Pulp Fiction</i>. Two factors had me curious about revisiting it: a) I've seen even more movies (and B-movies) since then which might help me plumb the depths with QT a bit more, and I was no longer on the high of QT's sophomore effort.<br />
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Based on the Elmore Leonard novel <i>Rum Punch</i>, <i>Jackie Brown</i> concerns an aging down-on-her-luck stewardess' effort to escape a smuggling conviction while also getting out from under the thumb of her gun-running benefactor. With the help of a lonely bail bondsman, Jackie cooks up a plot to rob Ordell, the arms dealer, while selling him out to the ATF. It's a dangerous game to play with the volatile Ordell that's only further complicated by the scheming of Ordell's surfer girlfriend and his ex-con buddy who may be a little iffy on his loyalties.<br />
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That's as simple as I can think to put it. The movie is far more novel-like than your average script, a trait that QT would definitely carry over into the films that followed. True, <i>Pulp Fiction</i> certainly played around with narrative structure, but was essentially a series of overlapping shorter tales. <i>Jackie Brown,</i> on the other hand, is a lengthy single narrative that's willing to spend some time swimming in side stories before moving things along. And that's the movie's biggest problem.<br />
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I recall when I first saw the movie I described it to others as feeling like the down time in the average blaxploitation movie. It's a common trait of low-budget features: Talk is cheap. When you've got to save money for your action sequences, you can burn time and film just having your actors talk and talk and talk for much less. In most of those old movies this is a liability, as the actors were often either subpar or the extensive talk began to reveal just how thin the story was...or just how painfully stiff that exposition could be. That's not the problem with <i>Jackie Brown. </i>The story is very well layered and the performances are exceptional, but we'll get back to that.<br />
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No, the problem is that it often feels like the movie's just not getting on with it. It's taking its sweet time. On the page, with a likable enough cast of characters, that often works. On screen, while a strongly deliberate slow pace can work, a casual slow pace can start to have you checking your watch. Now, QT had this worked out by the time <i>Kill Bill</i> rolled around. The narrative was a little more inventively sliced up. The action sequences were served up regularly. And overall, even when there was down time, there was a greater sense of deliberate menace and build. <i>Jackie Brown</i> was never leading up to a big shoot out or major surprise twist, but was merely leading to a will it/won't it work and it showed.<br />
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It reminds me of an old maxim Christopher Frayling mentioned in his extensive study of spaghetti westerns: The Italian directors knew that to keep provincial audiences entertained, someone had to get punched or shot every ten minutes. You can practically time some of these films for an upcoming shootout at the ten minute mark from the last one.<br />
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I don't, however, wanna give the impression that I was let down by the cast or the characters they portrayed. In fact, revisiting it, I feel like everyone in the movie should've won something for their performances. Pam Grier as Jackie may have mellowed since her <i>Foxy Brown</i> days, but she was still a stone cold customer with a smoldering seductiveness. Robert Forster turns in a stellar performance as the bail bondsman on the verge of retirement, a sympathetic character without a hint of sap. This one was still earlier on the road for Samuel L. Jackson's become SAMUEL L. JACKSON, but he puts in one of the best three-dimensional villains I've ever seen: a deliberate and calculating character, but with a streak of insecurity that's looking for affirmation. And Robert DeNiro and Bridget Fonda are the perfect grimy crime story Cheech & Chong...veritable staples of fringe folks in Los Angeles. They're all great characters, and I enjoyed their banter (particularly scenes between Jackson and DeNiro) and was wowed by their performances.<br />
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The cinematography looks great and manages to communicate the different senses of many of the lesser known sections of Los Angeles. And naturally, QT serves up a fantastic soundtrack with frequent use of blaxploitation era favorites. I sometimes wonder if his popularity is tied to feeding the burgeoning love for nostalgia in audiences or that the nostalgia plucked him up and made him the synthesizer king of all things rare and cool. Anyone who regularly reads my posts knows that I too am a sucker for the cinematic arcane, but QT's films, <i>Jackie Brown</i> included, always rise far above the level of the pale imitation or the in-joke.<br />
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In all, I was glad I sat back down and spent some time with <i>Jackie Brown</i>. Now that Quentin is a fair few films down the road from it, it was interesting to go back and figure out how and where this film now sits in the mix. If anything, it was a solid and enjoyable adaption while also providing the diving board for both greater experimentation as well as a greater plunge into the depths of genre storytelling.<br />
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<br />Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08471050778285550824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194846203426317097.post-88189449373396626612013-01-22T10:57:00.002-08:002013-01-22T11:02:10.290-08:00More Fun Than a Pack of Rabid Squirlons<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Today's a quickie review of the second installment of IDW's collection of the original Flash Gordon Sunday strips by Alex Raymond as well as his continuing run on Jungle Jim. I covered <a href="http://friendsofjunior.blogspot.com/2012/12/savior-of-universe.html">Volume One</a> about two months back. That one came out December of 2011. Volume Two was August of last year. Volume Three comes out in April. I should get to it some time next November.<br />
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Once again, it's a large beautiful book that comes close to the size of the original new prtintings of the strips. There's a little less wear and tear on the reproductions on this one, though there's a few that have been noticeably marred. The line work looks solid. The colors are rich. Again, it's an impressive collection and the nicest I've ever seen them look. Additionally, there's a fantastic introduction by Bruce Canwell that follows Flash's adventures into magazines, books and the early serials, which includes some wonderful stills, posters, and book covers. I give IDW full marks for the work they've done in putting these volumes together, and fully look forward to Volume Three. However...<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Treat yourself to some 20 minute doses of Art Deco Sci-Fi Madness...</td></tr>
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My only objection this time has more to do with the material. I imagine that as an excited kid tearing into the lastest adventure in 1937, one would be far less likely to notice the repetitive nature of the story telling. Flash gets in a rocket, it gets shot down, they get out of the wreckage only to be attacked by an animal who they have to fend off, then run into Ming's troops who they then escape. In the three years of strips the book covers, there are two major plot lines where chaos ensues because Flash let's a betrayer off the hook only to have them return to raise holy hell. Compared to the novelty of the strange sights and sounds of the arrival on Mongo in the first book, the strip seems to have fallen into some complacency here.<br />
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Having said that, they were still immense fun to read and it's still impressive to see how Raymond's line work continued to develop and refine itself. In fact, once he seems to have hit a real hot streak with making Flash impressively flashy, Jungle Jim sees a marvelous jump in refinement and nears the elegance of its larger companion strip. I've never gone through the rigors of producing a regular comic strip, but imagining the demands, it's not hard to see where plot formula could be your friend as deadlines were closing in.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDjyeFViIooUZ5GfOp6VKzd3K7VtYceG9nRXQozf73_4QV1UYPWF7F5Veg5QQeWXcd_kDSBFQCNRBum0udV0_NFKOUAw875kqBpJDMX2Sh2WyIRO_CRCBjX2QUW04yEkUBccFM0mlYeJM/s1600/flash2-02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="187" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDjyeFViIooUZ5GfOp6VKzd3K7VtYceG9nRXQozf73_4QV1UYPWF7F5Veg5QQeWXcd_kDSBFQCNRBum0udV0_NFKOUAw875kqBpJDMX2Sh2WyIRO_CRCBjX2QUW04yEkUBccFM0mlYeJM/s320/flash2-02.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">And by formula, I mean killer flying squirrels...</td></tr>
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Reading this second volume also called to mind Bloom County cartoonist Berke Breathed's complaints about maintaining coherency on the ever shrinking comics page. These full pages are barely enough to contain all the action and adventure, I can only imagine what Breathed was up against.Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08471050778285550824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194846203426317097.post-2113634409977240182013-01-15T15:05:00.002-08:002013-01-16T20:03:16.322-08:00The Horses Always Shoot TwiceOver the holidays, I took a long ride into noir country with two depression era classics.<br />
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The first was James M. Cain's <i>The Postman Always Rings Twice</i> (1934). Despite Cain's multitude of successful conversions from print to screen, he's never enjoyed the household recognition of a Chandler or a Hammet. There's a sort of cosmic irony that Chandler, who was largely a washout working as a Hollywood screenwriter, had his greatest success adapting <i>Postman</i> for the screen when he despised Cain's writing. (The book would be adapted again for the screen in 1981 by no less than David Mamet.) Chandler described writers like Cain as, "Such people are the offal of literature, not because they write about dirty things, but because they do it in a dirty way."<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_aPlOpECFury6Ky1OSeWxnkf-o1uP4B4DwOc8G5V-5GIaCkS2Ac4cv0fWY1kCS_wvqEaflYFBHjQuQ0N7bD0GPZuScvJAqrTKprz8siLEY8OoBA3vxW66s5A0_tCvYnPX-uHWhKsSFQc/s1600/dnoir01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_aPlOpECFury6Ky1OSeWxnkf-o1uP4B4DwOc8G5V-5GIaCkS2Ac4cv0fWY1kCS_wvqEaflYFBHjQuQ0N7bD0GPZuScvJAqrTKprz8siLEY8OoBA3vxW66s5A0_tCvYnPX-uHWhKsSFQc/s320/dnoir01.jpg" width="210" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I was astounded by the total lack of Postmen in this book.</td></tr>
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The story concerns a drifter, Frank Chambers, who happens into a restaurant owned by Nick Papadakis. Frank's trying to figure out how to get out of paying the check when the friendly Greek offers him work, which begins Frank's affair with Nick's wife, Cora. The liaison leads to the pair thinking of murder to get Nick out of the way and sends them into a spiraling sinkhole of lust and mistrust. I didn't share Chandler's disdain toward Cain's writing. I found the story a compelling study of two people who can't help from digging further and further into their sins anymore than they can start up this new fantasy life they expected to live together. However, once again, <i>Postman</i> represents one of those seminal works that have been hashed and rehashed so many times over the years that much of its original punch has been dulled. The characterizations, the vintage California setting and some of the unique aspects (the puma kitten, for instance) manage to rescue it from the letdown feeling of "Here we go again."<br />
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My second book had very little about it that felt all too familiar.<br />
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Horace McCoy, a contemporary of Cain's, also ended up working as a screenwriter after failing to make it as an actor and holding a string of different jobs living in Los Angeles. One of those jobs, a bouncer at the Santa Monica Pier, led to his writing the surreal and despondent <i>They Shoot Horses, Don't They?</i> (1935).<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLILcxnbNqUU01VBR7Pki2Me0kqclnQZMORMiNAvliuK8PTzKCJrevqDkJBCnZcC2awuOCtkKcTPln55cxN_WIykV1OriUc7lZJm4Tj5BDXElWh-352qYsATjlO9jCSKFIRQ6SVWLIUXc/s1600/dnoir02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLILcxnbNqUU01VBR7Pki2Me0kqclnQZMORMiNAvliuK8PTzKCJrevqDkJBCnZcC2awuOCtkKcTPln55cxN_WIykV1OriUc7lZJm4Tj5BDXElWh-352qYsATjlO9jCSKFIRQ6SVWLIUXc/s320/dnoir02.jpg" width="190" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The "startling affair" must be in another book that I didn't read...</td></tr>
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<i>Horses</i> is the tale of Robert Syverten and Gloria Beatty, two young struggling actors in Depression-era Hollywood who enter a dance marathon in hopes of winning some cash to tide them over until they get a break. The novel opens with Robert, who narrates, telling us that Gloria is dead and that he is about to be sentenced for the murder. Then, the novel takes us back to their meeting and onto and through the strain and spectacle of the marathon with its strange cast of characters en route to Gloria's murder. While the book was largely a failure in the US, it saw popularity within existentialist circles in France, and it's easy to see why. Though certainly not as alien as a work like Camus' <i>The Stranger</i>, <i>Horses</i> still holds that similar feeling of a character entering a disjointed nightmare of his own choices. While I can't call it an enjoyable read, I tore through it at a breakneck pace and found it to be a sad study of humanity in extremity, a novel as relevant in this economically difficult time period as it was in the 1930's.Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08471050778285550824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194846203426317097.post-64266032774691964332013-01-10T09:25:00.001-08:002013-01-10T09:25:46.448-08:00"Don't Give Me That Supernatural Sh!t!"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzbzWRIz4GzlEZeQi8yqZfxvVpmjdeyOTeYotDHfaJVAOufFZdGiByZS6zqkhvHRxF6_grJ57mBT4dFIVAdDcAyyma-jm6ixZfitwmHSTQhBiahfjv3hnsHr8uQMFJPduvuW7x95RY-YY/s1600/pwhe01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzbzWRIz4GzlEZeQi8yqZfxvVpmjdeyOTeYotDHfaJVAOufFZdGiByZS6zqkhvHRxF6_grJ57mBT4dFIVAdDcAyyma-jm6ixZfitwmHSTQhBiahfjv3hnsHr8uQMFJPduvuW7x95RY-YY/s320/pwhe01.jpg" width="224" /></a></div>
Oh, Rudy Ray Moore.<br />
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Even in the age of hip hop and internet-hyped esoterica, Rudy is in many ways as underground as he ever was. A legend of rude comedy, Moore released what were known as "party records" throughout the 60's and 70's. He's perhaps best remembered now for his string of low-budget blaxploitation films, particularly <i>Dolemite </i>(1975), but by "best remembered" I mean remembered mostly by film geeks and hip hop aficionados. Rudy Ray Moore is one of those rare creatures who's still distributed following someone saying something like "You've never seen a Rudy Ray Moore Movie?!? Then you have to see...."<br />
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I took a trip down memory lane and revisited Moore's bizarre later entry <i>Petey Wheatstraw: The Devil's Son-in-Law</i> (1977), and boy, was it awful. As awful as it ever was. And awful in that special way that makes an Ed Wood movie charming. But there's something disturbing about it...<br />
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Petey is born as a six-year old during a hurricane and after receiving martial arts training as a teen, grows up to become a stand-up comedian. (Got your attention now, don't I?) Petey flies into to town for a series of dates that coincide with the opening of a new club by his comedy rivals and hoods Leroy and Skillet. Leroy and Skillet have their men "persuade" Petey not to perform in a series of mounting incidents that leads to Petey and friends being gunned down in front of a church after a funeral. In the afterlife, Lucifer convinces Petey to marry his hideous daughter, and in exchange resurrects Petey to exact his revenge on Leroy and Skillet with the help of his magical cane. But bowing to no man, Petey also seeks to outwit the devil and free himself from marrying Lucifer's daughter.<br />
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Now, if in some ways, minus the crazy suits and martial arts sequences, this sounds something like a blues song, I'm rather sure that's intentional. There was an early blues-folk singer William Bunch who performed as "Peetie Wheatstraw", a name from black folklore (Some suggest Bunch himself was the origin of said folklore.). Both Bunch and Robert Johnson, who was influenced by Bunch, have tall tales circling them that they sold their souls for musical fame. However, the movie never delves all that deep into the idea.<br />
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In fact, it's difficult to say whether the over-the-top opening sequence of Petey's birth wouldn't be more at home in a blatantly racist production. As Petey's mother struggles (and hams it up to the nth degree with the rest of the cast) to give birth, the doctor first removes a large watermelon from between her legs before Petey himself arrives. In fact, watermelon makes frequent and strange appearances throughout the film, including the exploding of a truck loaded with the fruit. In many respects, I feel like the movie was trying to develop some kind of subtext but either the message didn't come through, or I'm completely wrong and it was all meant for hackneyed laughs.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpV2je4HY-uPZzyEzo-4VyBEEH0OGSF3CJxgW2-nMO3BbjyMp3kLOM4tKT6F_hTMUMJDY6k7Ero_MMHItvQhQQY2MWBXH6epOom0ZyHMRReA4GZecx2-3w0o1A-ln8CCXBlMSAs-nK9Vo/s1600/pwhe03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="236" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpV2je4HY-uPZzyEzo-4VyBEEH0OGSF3CJxgW2-nMO3BbjyMp3kLOM4tKT6F_hTMUMJDY6k7Ero_MMHItvQhQQY2MWBXH6epOom0ZyHMRReA4GZecx2-3w0o1A-ln8CCXBlMSAs-nK9Vo/s320/pwhe03.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Only a master filmmaker could've talked anyone into these outfits...</td></tr>
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Otherwise, it's the usual hokey fun, you'd expect from a Rudy Ray Moore vehicle: the stiff kung fu sequences, the bombastic rhyming delivery, a bizarre orgy scene, and lots of hyperactivity. It also features a bizarrely catchy theme song that's difficult to shake (but luckily not as dangerous to be singing as the theme to one of my favorite Fred Williamson films...look it up.). Petey isn't the place to start with Rudy Ray Moore (that would probably be <i>Dolemite</i>) and it's not my favorite (that, for whatever weird reason, would probably be <i>Disco Godfather</i> (1979)...anyone know where Bucky is or what he has had?), but for the completist, or the person that just needs one more dose, it can't be beat.<br />
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<br />Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08471050778285550824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194846203426317097.post-90438131355149367532013-01-08T12:22:00.000-08:002013-01-08T12:23:36.051-08:00The Shadow KNOWS...Today's review's going to be a quickie.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXX1R3tVw_kJybbD2Qh1t8RTlsDLktwdrg7I_VZ70vc5Ivmqu1-6qK0cYlCpqSeGLsp4FgcOkVhYUlEOBMLCohsxcbod7xiDD6oxMSKggsug1kgD2kRUvVwSiYAD70JdlT8HOfGAnbuR8/s1600/shad01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXX1R3tVw_kJybbD2Qh1t8RTlsDLktwdrg7I_VZ70vc5Ivmqu1-6qK0cYlCpqSeGLsp4FgcOkVhYUlEOBMLCohsxcbod7xiDD6oxMSKggsug1kgD2kRUvVwSiYAD70JdlT8HOfGAnbuR8/s320/shad01.jpg" width="209" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Shadow KNOWS....the schedule of the E Train...</td></tr>
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In 1930, on a show called <i>Detective Story Hour</i>, a new pop culture phenomenon was created with a character called The Shadow. But the Shadow wasn't any ordinary gumshoe. He kept his face hidden. He could disappear in plain sight. He could cloud the mind's of men. He had a secret identity. (He had Orson Welles' voice for a while...). The Shadow was one of the original superheroes who made his way from the radio into movies, books, comics, and on into Pop Culture Valhalla.<br />
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I first became aware of The Shadow in comics, just about the time that the run-of-the-mill guys in spandex just weren't cutting it for my young teen brain. Digging through some dusty boxes of comics I came across the above image by the great Mike Kaluta: The big fedora, the red scarf, the dual automatics. It was something from the past that had come to invade my future. But like many of my pulp favorites, The Shadow was in some ways of too bygone an era in style to become a true obsession, but like many of my pulp favorites, sometimes I can't resist the allure of his siren call...guess he's clouding my mind.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF_bBh-VZWP6DeAnFS_K9V4I4sE_imV5VTfp9Xs8aAUvfv-SqvUpNd_MQwUt-WQdFpuA1HNGdpQ1Ck_G4zRdJJeZhGjBYmxznHc9EcgnUdyRoRQB6Auw_WzKk2H_g-tqetWPdcRMIJ5hc/s1600/shad02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF_bBh-VZWP6DeAnFS_K9V4I4sE_imV5VTfp9Xs8aAUvfv-SqvUpNd_MQwUt-WQdFpuA1HNGdpQ1Ck_G4zRdJJeZhGjBYmxznHc9EcgnUdyRoRQB6Auw_WzKk2H_g-tqetWPdcRMIJ5hc/s320/shad02.jpg" width="187" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Shadow KNOWS...the danger of Radon...</td></tr>
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So I picked up this Bantam paperback of <i>The Death Tower</i> I found hidden away on a bottom shelf of a used bookshop. I'd been looking for this edition if only for the fantastic cover by Sandy Kossin. It's a reprint of a Shadow story from 1932 in which the Shadow does battle with Albert Palermo, a well-respected doctor who also happens to be...dun-dun-DUNNNN...a criminal mastermind. Palermo has been staging disappearances and deaths for his ill-gotten gains, and when the Shadow crosses his path, he thinks himself more than a match for the vigilante and his network of part-time helpers.<br />
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There's always a fun pulpy charm to the old Shadow stories that I've read. They move at a breakneck pace. There's always at least a small handful of narrative inconsistencies and a few strange plot contrivances. In some ways, it's what makes them quaint and enjoyable. In others, it's what keeps them from being truly memorable. Maxwell Grant, alias for author and magician Walter B. Gibson, cranked out nearly 300 of these Shadow novellas over 20 years, supposedly writing 10,000 words a day to keep apace of demand. It's a wonder they make any sense at all.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb8KDlqfzkRB3e7nD8bnlxakvR_9JTmJWZsqKBd8JPsl4I2xkHv1_1f2mt4XkU3yFV3Mzje8lBZRpawkOCdJSl55WbtXRlF9zrITF-SygNBFak8RA0yQYzDmTM_MggHNYAMD-0PjaC2d8/s1600/shad03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb8KDlqfzkRB3e7nD8bnlxakvR_9JTmJWZsqKBd8JPsl4I2xkHv1_1f2mt4XkU3yFV3Mzje8lBZRpawkOCdJSl55WbtXRlF9zrITF-SygNBFak8RA0yQYzDmTM_MggHNYAMD-0PjaC2d8/s320/shad03.jpg" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Walter Gibson...His fingers were each an inch long when he retired from writing The Shadow</td></tr>
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And so, like many of my other pulp recommendations, I'd say you could do a lot worse for thrills and a few chills than delving into the annals of this icon of yesteryear (who still shoots his way through the pages of comics) than by picking up one of his old adventures....however, unlike Conan or Matt Helm, I would recommend familiarizing yourself with some of The Shadow's backstory and aliases and support staff, because at the pace these books go, they're not likely to help you out before their simply over.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig8X-eVKPAyrkocaJ3U16FEs60kRfj24Z3CC4YkaBJyEnGOSvtlBYkk6YhQpPwQy6Ya_DUgzoWIx2cvRQAkm9nQXGGaPJNPHXl8_gfl-v4b6DcS3805kCl1ZGIZHDVoj0YQpM1hztDqq4/s1600/shad04.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig8X-eVKPAyrkocaJ3U16FEs60kRfj24Z3CC4YkaBJyEnGOSvtlBYkk6YhQpPwQy6Ya_DUgzoWIx2cvRQAkm9nQXGGaPJNPHXl8_gfl-v4b6DcS3805kCl1ZGIZHDVoj0YQpM1hztDqq4/s320/shad04.jpg" width="189" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Shadow KNOWS...clean energy policy...</td></tr>
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<br />Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08471050778285550824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194846203426317097.post-62150464886835744312013-01-03T15:35:00.003-08:002013-01-03T15:35:42.199-08:00Beat to a Pulp<div>
While shopping for a gift for a friend in a used book shoppe, I came across a book I'd been looking for for ages. And yes, I'm perfectly aware of the existence of Amazon, but I still enjoy the sensation of getting my fingers dusty digging through crates and shelves. If I simply must have something I go on- line, otherwise, I often let fate decide the course of my literary leanings. In any event, there it was: <i>Death of a Citizen</i> by Donald Hamilton, the first Matt Helm adventure. Not a first edition, but a nice looking copy at a reasonable price. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHe_ob02Kyf1CcLt-uGgwAj_MYIkC2vjIX8OIfe_C69_Bj6HhsqHthFr_JCQGoMmgGnKkRNP3OSy-n3L41gA1rX-1-Wwirt8iX9xwvZkI0FVL3ssMIokq8P0-d6JTa1e6nrrIoMBAAaAA/s1600/dcit01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHe_ob02Kyf1CcLt-uGgwAj_MYIkC2vjIX8OIfe_C69_Bj6HhsqHthFr_JCQGoMmgGnKkRNP3OSy-n3L41gA1rX-1-Wwirt8iX9xwvZkI0FVL3ssMIokq8P0-d6JTa1e6nrrIoMBAAaAA/s320/dcit01.jpg" width="189" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">So it's not a Carter Brown cover by McGinnis...still beats most covers today...</td></tr>
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Those familiar with the blog may remember that I took a look back at all four of the Dean Martin vehicles in the Matt Helm film franchise. As I previously stated, the Helm books are not the swanky, swinging 60's romps as portrayed in the movies, but rather a darker, grittier version of a James Bond novel. Helm doesn't swagger through exotic locations and lavish hotels, he gets his hands dirty. Not that I don't love Bond's more jetsetting lifestyle, but sometimes you just want some meat and potatoes action.</div>
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The first novel sees Helm settling into soft middle age as a western fiction writer...and a retired ex-secret agent from World War II...when he spots someone from his past at a social gathering. Suddenly, there's a dead counter-agent in his office bathroom and he's back in the twisted world of the spy game. The book alternates between Matt's memories of his past in the war and his chase to thwart an assassination attempt on his friend, a nuclear scientist.<br />
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As I had read several of the Helm books before this, it was a bit of a letdown in the get up and go department of the later adventures. It reminded me of watching any of the comic book movies that spend far too long rehashing the characters origin rather than getting them in the suit and beating on baddies. That's not to say the book dragged or was too light on action, it wasn't. In fact, it probably had the most character study of the several that I've read, but did lack the <i>in medias res</i> feel that I value in action/adventure stories. Nevertheless it was solidly written with a healthy dose of suspense and a good helping of hardboiled dialogue.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ9Grda4ZUx3QV8LGJjAevmch0VkHP-L5aZEbJQrHUteYI33rAdnFyPrPtNUGGJddbZ2DBRcQxYntVj9-b2jG34fpxrK0CMg4VHvv6cy8vtqSuebnhaDLWrywLsEmDuUQaiVBGLGPGLBw/s1600/dcit02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ9Grda4ZUx3QV8LGJjAevmch0VkHP-L5aZEbJQrHUteYI33rAdnFyPrPtNUGGJddbZ2DBRcQxYntVj9-b2jG34fpxrK0CMg4VHvv6cy8vtqSuebnhaDLWrywLsEmDuUQaiVBGLGPGLBw/s320/dcit02.jpg" width="205" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I have oft considered contacting the Hamilton estate to see if I can use this for my author bio pic as well...</td></tr>
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Perhaps one of the most fun aspects of this first Matt Helm outing is how literally in matches the life of it's author in setting. Hamilton had also served during the war, lived in New Mexico with his wife and family, and had written several Western novels such as the <i>The Big Country</i>, which became the 1958 movie with Gregory Peck. And, I like to think, that every time he "ran down to the store" he was doing a blackout on some Commie plot in the American Southwest. In all, <i>Death of a Citizen</i> was just the sort of page-turning thriller that makes for the perfect material to get you quickly from one end of a holiday flight to the other. Frankly, it's also given me the yen to perhaps revisit this counter agent more often...after all, there's only 20+ more Matt Helm adventures to go through. </div>
Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08471050778285550824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194846203426317097.post-60882537449831338782012-12-20T10:33:00.000-08:002012-12-20T10:33:00.636-08:00...And that's a Wrap...on 2012.I thought about reviewing this year for the blog as the last post of the holidays...<br />
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And then I thought: The less said, the better.<br />
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Here's to seeing you and more pop culture shenanigans in 2013. Happy Holidays.Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08471050778285550824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194846203426317097.post-34048134084594082092012-12-19T14:30:00.001-08:002012-12-19T14:30:49.134-08:00"What's a Joint Like This Doing on a Girl Like You?"Another round of marital infidelity as I continue my Dino-fication while taking in Billy Wilder's 1964 effort, <i>Kiss Me, Stupid</i>.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq1wa99tP58v2eVK0S-r2EvQam_jyYw-H08NeeLr2X5_gcLgKrHBIGynuw1VKWzsjJGoDsVBWcIJF2ZKr5eAU7_P9pVJaVvsF27RZjtshZdG1rKf1bbgn7RN7AIyZhytyDq520DPltkfk/s1600/kissme01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq1wa99tP58v2eVK0S-r2EvQam_jyYw-H08NeeLr2X5_gcLgKrHBIGynuw1VKWzsjJGoDsVBWcIJF2ZKr5eAU7_P9pVJaVvsF27RZjtshZdG1rKf1bbgn7RN7AIyZhytyDq520DPltkfk/s320/kissme01.jpg" width="215" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The sequel happened in Intercourse, Pennsylvania...</td></tr>
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Generally left out of the majors of Wilder's considerable canon (<i>Double Indemnity</i>, <i>Sunset Boulevard</i>, <i>Some Like It Hot</i>, among many other greats), <i>Kiss Me Stupid</i> was condemned by the Catholic Legion of decency and was largely considered vulgar by reviewers. Time, however, has done its usual work at toning down what might have ruffled feathers in 1964. To me, it stood up well, and was an enjoyable, if farcical, concocted comedy of errors.<br />
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In the film, a small town duo of songwriters, Orville Spooner (Ray Walston) and Barney Millsap (Cliff Osmond), luck into their first contact with a big star when Vegas sensation, Dino (Dean Martin) rolls through their town on his way to Los Angeles. Barney, who runs the filling station, sabotages Dino's car to keep him around while they pitch the singer their horde of near-miss songs. Orville, an insanely jealous husband, fears having his wife anywhere near the famous lothario, so Barney cooks up a plan to get Zelda (Felicia Farr) out of the house and substitute another woman for her, the pretty barmaid, Polly the Pistol (Kim Novak). Despite his best efforts, Orville barely gets his wife out the door before Polly turns up. Of course, hijinks have already ensued from the word go, but at this point they're merely knocked up another dozen notches as Polly ends up falling for Orville rather than Dino, and Zelda ends up passed out in Polly's trailer behind the roadhouse.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYb8b99ImQhL4RrMjmcESimdo24U5VBBiLzKog2jSs0sdbNPjDtChiqjKM6gB51ZY4f8C7mY9FGIh1Lxx4JDHNm8FAAgs27NxI4AB2VuG5EqKd6uP2slNqcmIBl0qFQsXkfMn7BrrLpzg/s1600/kissme02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="258" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYb8b99ImQhL4RrMjmcESimdo24U5VBBiLzKog2jSs0sdbNPjDtChiqjKM6gB51ZY4f8C7mY9FGIh1Lxx4JDHNm8FAAgs27NxI4AB2VuG5EqKd6uP2slNqcmIBl0qFQsXkfMn7BrrLpzg/s320/kissme02.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Walston's in Nevada after leaving Roswell...but before moving in with Bill Bixby...(look it up)</td></tr>
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At this point, I don't want to give too much more away though I've already hinted at the problems the public had with it above. It's sort of hilarious to me that five years before, the public and critics had far less trouble with a pair of musicians going in drag to chase girls...and escape the mob...in <i>Some Like it Hot.</i> Naturally, fifty years and movies like <i>Indecent Proposal</i>, have made the elements of <i>Kiss Me, Stupid</i> ludicrously tame. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that this movie does a fine job of making marital infidelity quite touching considering the scenario involved.<br />
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Wilder is a master, and not just because film history books tell us so. The Austrian-born filmmaker first escaped to France as the Nazis came to power to start making pictures before continuing on to Hollywood. His films have both the meticulous feeling of a powerful hand in charge while still managing to be light and often wildly inventive (I recommend reading about some of the crazier things he wanted to do with <i>Sunset Boulevard</i>, a film that still ended up pretty damned inventive with what he did do with it). And while this one lacks some of the flair and zany fun of a <i>Some Like it Hot</i>, it's still firmly in the master's hands.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLNBWVsJI4YGQSLBRf1KlLIpQxq14cN_g4LlREjeAPT0OXVuSuT2fVFZOJpySca2hT_dv0fxs2HiUi2EoQZJg1kpuhKf69fy5CTH_Nk4evTWrSdiGeWPjjhuLoD6vya_VTquFsLAE1Udc/s1600/kissme03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLNBWVsJI4YGQSLBRf1KlLIpQxq14cN_g4LlREjeAPT0OXVuSuT2fVFZOJpySca2hT_dv0fxs2HiUi2EoQZJg1kpuhKf69fy5CTH_Nk4evTWrSdiGeWPjjhuLoD6vya_VTquFsLAE1Udc/s320/kissme03.jpg" width="256" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dino's commentary on chianti or lady's footwear?</td></tr>
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Ray Walston does a wonderful, if occasionally over-the-top job as Orville. He's a little too archetypal jealous husband, constantly chasing away anything with a Y chromosome, but is still entertaining to watch as he's able to pivot emotional direction on a dime. Felicia Farr as Zelda is very obviously desirable both in terms of looks and personality, but gets a little less of a chance to shine as character in comparison to Kim Novak as Polly. Polly, like Orville, is again a touch too archetypal in the "hooker with a heart of gold vein," but still managed to tug at a few heart strings as the story progressed. The biggest surprise is Dino, who in many respects is presented as playing himself, and it's none too flattering. The film opens with him charming a crowd with song and jokes from the stage, but once in Orville's house he's all "Roman Hands and Russian Fingers" as the saying goes. He comes off as a first class heel, but at least he does it well.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF4v_td0gcJWLtz_yPaHnsY7NkN5BB1wT1LPFLu9fvL7kTjzm53L5oQThzqxwjJzdIZiQ_Se89up_tQGW0isJB1lVzoTiu4mKBQfzd9VPUtB4dzNj4sG6ftPyx8BzSwTMcGeERx3tiemE/s1600/kissme04.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="249" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF4v_td0gcJWLtz_yPaHnsY7NkN5BB1wT1LPFLu9fvL7kTjzm53L5oQThzqxwjJzdIZiQ_Se89up_tQGW0isJB1lVzoTiu4mKBQfzd9VPUtB4dzNj4sG6ftPyx8BzSwTMcGeERx3tiemE/s320/kissme04.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sexier to Billy: being on set with Kim Novak or writing with Raymond Chandler?</td></tr>
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<i>Kiss Me, Stupid</i> may not be the one you choose to show if only allowed to present one Billy Wilder vehicle, but I admit to having a soft spot for interesting if lesser-known works. After all, I'd probably show <i>The Wild Bunch</i> if I could only show one Peckinpah, but I savor the flawed and highly personal <i>Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid</i> on a more personal level. As I mentioned in my review of <i><a href="http://friendsofjunior.blogspot.com/2012/12/you-never-really-get-to-know-person.html">Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed?</a></i>, I do love the movie world created especially well in older movies, and while <i>Kiss Me, Stupid</i> delivers on that, it's also nice that it has just the right amount of real world honesty.<br />
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Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08471050778285550824noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194846203426317097.post-7158300554869682612012-12-13T14:33:00.000-08:002012-12-13T14:33:06.793-08:00A New Moon in Nineteen Seventy Nine.My earliest foray into earning cash was in music stores. Music stores are...perhaps <i>were</i>...a great place to expand one's cultural horizons as all the employees tend to be deep into one type of music or another. Some stuff they agree on, much they do not. And eventually you find your place in the spectrum. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjedET0dQvCr4KgHaG4gXbhWIFXDCf6zfOpzVfivmLC9x48ltA9cZG-DvZBeA-GcNkz94HgU1Fk2M3rvwpx9Cc42WYfG0fWSCd1rPPbKZA8iV202luyCmA-KhV5QK1VIul7S-PcAkDwGaY/s1600/shin01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="247" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjedET0dQvCr4KgHaG4gXbhWIFXDCf6zfOpzVfivmLC9x48ltA9cZG-DvZBeA-GcNkz94HgU1Fk2M3rvwpx9Cc42WYfG0fWSCd1rPPbKZA8iV202luyCmA-KhV5QK1VIul7S-PcAkDwGaY/s320/shin01.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">More or less exactly how I looked in 1995 at my store in Pontiac, MI.</td></tr>
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It also does a fine job embittering you to how generally awful and limited the taste of the general public is. And I don't say that because they didn't like specifically what I liked. No, they didn't tend to see eye-to-eye with any of my fellow employees on much of anything, and not because we were all elitist (though some definitely were). We all had our guilty pleasures, but the public tended toward the bland chart toppers, the same greatest hits collections, and whatever was passing for bad dance music at the time.<br />
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In any event, at various times, I learned to try it all and give anything a chance if only to see where it fit in. I love not only knowing who influenced the artists I liked, but also who they influenced. Nothing's created in a vacuum, so I like to find the threads in the tapestry. But there are ends I stop short of that usually start with the non-hyperbolic modifier "deep."<br />
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Symphonic or Prog rock tends to fall on the "deep" end of the rock spectrum: large, expansive, heavily layered, experimental walls of sound that can frequently be impenetrable. The cover art usually depicts an otherworldly place that only this music could be the soundtrack to. And like the sci-fi/fantasy worlds it seems to depict, it's usually only there for those who really care to plumb the depths. It's usually not catchy. It's not hooky. It's a twenty minute odyssey that will in no way break the radio play charts. And just because it's symphonic doesn't mean it's melodic.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmcaN-RdBp07L5LVIXpOgZMlM83HO02Jjt2JphE8hSa3-I_i77FXBK0VTx3pj5L1pOXc86qzpzu_6GqPheC9zOo8axKMbe2YbWp6Z0CQ_dgiHxESvNL98P-hOBIhTSVb62ogY6HKqzQgU/s1600/shin02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="159" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmcaN-RdBp07L5LVIXpOgZMlM83HO02Jjt2JphE8hSa3-I_i77FXBK0VTx3pj5L1pOXc86qzpzu_6GqPheC9zOo8axKMbe2YbWp6Z0CQ_dgiHxESvNL98P-hOBIhTSVb62ogY6HKqzQgU/s320/shin02.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"On your left you can see Detroit, Michigan...and on your left Fresno..."</td></tr>
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There are some exceptions of course, but if you came at a prog fan with only Pink Floyd, The Moody Blues or the couple of pop hits that Yes cranked out, you'd only receive the smug derisive chuckling that the initiate reserves for the outsider. All the same, I'm not generally a fan of the stuff. Seeking to expand the sound of rock and add weight to it isn't a terrible goal, but considering rock's roots, it was perhaps a bit wrongheaded. Addition and expansion eventually become bloat and pretension, which in this case led to the stripped down distorted roar of punk.<br />
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Having said all that, I took a wild stab at a prog album from Japan: 1979's <i>Shingetsu</i> by the band of the same name. Shingetsu, which means "new moon," lasted a mere six years and only produced this one work, but what they did do has been heralded an exalted enough to continue to be dispersed in this modern age. I can't say that I disagree.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKhd0YeBdL7xjle_e13gnLYAqZ5b6ji0XzNcpNyZvz5cN2TNHQ5oguS7OFiD9DDeHEpCJzdI5Bt6-wq42CHAF4sxP1AzsYt0bIw4gi4rKG6yivPUojCM6GetV9Zp_nNTaa2BdLBHaCxOI/s1600/shin03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKhd0YeBdL7xjle_e13gnLYAqZ5b6ji0XzNcpNyZvz5cN2TNHQ5oguS7OFiD9DDeHEpCJzdI5Bt6-wq42CHAF4sxP1AzsYt0bIw4gi4rKG6yivPUojCM6GetV9Zp_nNTaa2BdLBHaCxOI/s320/shin03.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Seems like a good place to reaffirm my love for a well done "Alice" tribute</td></tr>
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Much of my exposure to Japanese music has fallen into one of three categories: the sugary overload of J-pop, the wild experimentation of the electronic, and the melodic melancholy of the more traditional or musical scores. Shingetsu doesn't fall into any of those three categories. Though it has moments that have a more pop feel than a fair amount of prog, it certainly doesn't have much of the trite Top 40 Tokyo feel. Though it is certainly experimental with the multiple layers of sound, it's doesn't have some of the rabbit punches of abrasiveness I've come to expect. And while it does have enough of the mood of some of the more traditional stuff, it would be more like the soundtrack to a late 70's animé version of <i>Heavy Metal</i>.<br />
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Ok...with just a smidge of Goblin mixed in there at varying points.<br />
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Lead vocalist Makoto Kitayama has a gentle, emotional voice with some fine acrobatics to match the highs and lows of the tunes. The band is a sharp set of musicians who are more than capable of spinning a pretty good sound web. Each song usually features a pretty steady rise and fall in arrangement and tempo making for miniature musical journeys in the framework of the whole. I can't comment as to the quality of the lyrics as I'm not as well versed in Japanese as I'd like to be. It could be all about Y<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">ōkai playing poker while eating pickles atop Mount Fuji while the Lord of the Rings is re-enacted in the various Japanese theater styles below. I don't think it is, but I have just thought of a pretty good theme for my next concept album.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEija2OuBQwK-d97pHRrucPC1cNkawyx2thYE5tE7EJ1boZJozKUo67XNRe8xXB6uKavGTKBDWbICYVbSLERfFdJl0xrDwGPqQImkDv1LV-gfNiZo9rVNn6HehtafO6dLIknf0VeC6RfvO0/s1600/shin04.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="272" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEija2OuBQwK-d97pHRrucPC1cNkawyx2thYE5tE7EJ1boZJozKUo67XNRe8xXB6uKavGTKBDWbICYVbSLERfFdJl0xrDwGPqQImkDv1LV-gfNiZo9rVNn6HehtafO6dLIknf0VeC6RfvO0/s320/shin04.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"+2 Vocal abilities...+1 Charisma points...and +4 Snappy Dresser..."</td></tr>
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I'll confess that though I'll occasionally still give prog a chance, it rarely talks me into a second listen, either because it's simply too dense for me to get into, too ethereal to make much of an impression, or simply too pretentious a bloated mess for me to care about. Shingetsu, however, has managed to keep me quite well enchanted for the half-dozen spins I've given it thus far. I shall look forward to spinning it again.<br />
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<br />Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08471050778285550824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194846203426317097.post-64393860957856627322012-12-11T13:56:00.001-08:002013-04-30T22:04:35.781-07:00"You Never Really Get to Know a Person Until They Put Their Clothes On."In the last decade or so, the obsession with "reality" has infiltrated everything, and has made me all the more conscious of why everyone in the world should now be required to take a media studies class. After all, the documentary has rarely been as popular on a mass scale, and yet, one has to realize that even a Ken Burns' ten hour series on PBS still can't show every facet of any subject. And because there's a filmmaker, there's a point of view, and an opinion on the subject. "Reality"shows have come a long way since the obviously contrived excuse to put a bunch or strangers together and see what happens. Now we watch with baited breath, not only for some person that does some dangerous job in some remote region, but we'll watch a bunch of guys buy storage lockers. I had an uncle who did that...I never found it that fascinating, though, I'll admit that the thought of a surprise inside was alluring.<br />
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Even in movies that bring the modern mythos of superheroes to the big screen is still often tethered to reality. Rather than exist in a sort of alternate world where super-powers are just the norm, we've tried to ground them in the same world we live in. It's a fool's errand. As comedian Pete Holmes so expertly put it when an audience member decried the unrealistic CGI of the Hulk as being fake, "The Hulk is fake, buddy."<br />
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It's where the whole idea of a "movie world" comes in. It's why we love Quentin Tarantino. His movies have increasingly ceased to exist in the world we occupy and have more and more showed that this would be the world QT would create were he God. And it's why I find myself running back to older films: you know it's a set, you know it's too elegant and glamourous, you know everyone's not that quippy, and coincidences just don't happen like that...and those are all the reasons you love it.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNolqtT8eBUdNzul2AKxmvKkXgZ4QFeYjZbSyXf3qAWw9vOz6Yzw2dtVnoE4dSXhsrE7jFZfo1frjI4nh-ND8_f-sUJ-CxtatM3ugnCrKUZnSeYZFammqsZ7dhMMiJ_Whope99Sz09mYg/s1600/whobed01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNolqtT8eBUdNzul2AKxmvKkXgZ4QFeYjZbSyXf3qAWw9vOz6Yzw2dtVnoE4dSXhsrE7jFZfo1frjI4nh-ND8_f-sUJ-CxtatM3ugnCrKUZnSeYZFammqsZ7dhMMiJ_Whope99Sz09mYg/s320/whobed01.jpg" width="126" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This poster fails to feature the requisite innuendo of the Matt Helm Poster Act....</td></tr>
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1963's <i>Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed?</i> allowed me to slip right into that movie world of glamorous people in an impossible situation, a heightened reality. Also, I wouldn't have thought I'd be able to segue a review of a Dean Martin vehicle with Russ Meyer, but I'll have to get back to that.<br />
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The movie tells the story of Jason Steel (Dean Martin), a TV actor who plays a doctor who is much beloved to the ladies, but in Jason's real life, he's getting tired of his job and cold feet about his impending nuptials to girlfriend Melissa (Elizabeth Montgomery) because of his poker buddies' varying shaky relationships with their own wives. Now here's where the contrived part comes in: Because Jason seems so much the perfect man, his friends' wives begin setting up rendez-vous with him to help them with their marital problems, which usually leads to their trying to get cozy with him. Only problem is they're all lovely ladies, and it's making it even harder for Jason to commit to his own relationship. Meanwhile, Melissa too is tiring of Jason's hot then cold routine, while her friend Stella (Carol Burnett) strives to keep them on their way to the altar.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_ToomJfD02BeWMIG5ktTDLTCTX1NCqgMwgF_WAj67-kh4s_2eHboCXu9uzV3xQ-0umI-wpUI5BoQ1BhN4tJbb-42h5bjJ8L-A2H0DvspiZqI3EAS5efNZUfBtPdzQ4OjKV8PZlSzV6qY/s1600/whobed02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="237" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_ToomJfD02BeWMIG5ktTDLTCTX1NCqgMwgF_WAj67-kh4s_2eHboCXu9uzV3xQ-0umI-wpUI5BoQ1BhN4tJbb-42h5bjJ8L-A2H0DvspiZqI3EAS5efNZUfBtPdzQ4OjKV8PZlSzV6qY/s320/whobed02.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Here you go, ladies: Mr. Right in his jammies.</td></tr>
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Naturally, all this leads to Dino slowly cracking up as he has to keep shuffling all these dames around to keep from getting into trouble with their husbands, his friends. Dean's perfectly cast here. His charm and easy-going attitude make it easy to understand why the ladies love him, although his purposely stiff demeanor in the opening scenes on the set of his show had me laughing from the get go. It was 60's TV acting par excellence. But the situation is, of course, patently absurd, but that's exactly what makes it fun. You never doubt why Dino would be both driven crazy by, and yet totally desire to keep playing the field in the spot he's in. It's not reality. I've never seen any extramarital affairs go like this, but that's exactly the fun of it.<br />
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Director Daniel Mann keeps the movie at a brisk, but not labored clip, while orchestrating some great comic sequences. Elizabeth Montgomery was only a year away from becoming "Samantha Stevens" of <i>Bewitched</i> fame, and she's every part the desirable girlfriend that would make the perfect wife. Dino's buddies' wives are played by a fun group of actress and his buddies by a solid crew of familiar character actors. But the show is nearly completely stolen by Carol Burnett in her debut film performance. She is an absolute joy to watch as the oversexed but gawky Stella...which oddly enough brings me back to my Russ Meyer point from earlier.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCvGExW5vsnvNajAKCWc9mVMH_64RNJUEaHC-IVY-eQMuFzTfiSzWSi1uT-XgYGgbL7miQWzqTI_1s-7FS5BxKWCQ0KvhGCQ2KyYBGhA8vqEJzK-indNTDatXbS3hNHUTryU5JsPNi4Pg/s1600/whobed03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCvGExW5vsnvNajAKCWc9mVMH_64RNJUEaHC-IVY-eQMuFzTfiSzWSi1uT-XgYGgbL7miQWzqTI_1s-7FS5BxKWCQ0KvhGCQ2KyYBGhA8vqEJzK-indNTDatXbS3hNHUTryU5JsPNi4Pg/s320/whobed03.jpg" width="304" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I'm not sure what Russ saw in her....</td></tr>
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Though the movie had several sequences that had me roaring, there's a late scene in a Mexican nightclub that made the whole movie worth while. Dino and the girls arrive for a celebration when who should they find entertaining the bars patrons but an oddly uncredited burlesque legend, Tura Satana. Tura actually played a showgirl in two of director Daniel Mann's movies (the other being <i>Our Man Flint</i>! I managed to tie in that as well!), but she's perhaps best known for playing the busty and booted, go-go dancing killer, Varla, from Russ Meyer's immortal <i>Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! </i>In any event, after her show, Jason has an argument with Melissa and storms out on her and Stella, which leads to the most uproarious segment in the movie as Stella ends up performing her own striptease to pay off the bill!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzEFFh8wrE87RxuIvBUEHKf5oUOqqzti_kAGsohq2BTBHwLkM9KjaqPolNNTSq_yZBQxTqCuJohg5bn2mzEGLDvtBRlt84wmy9lmtsxp5P710rt6-qDWhJPNRgKoNlmGyTMdyTKrkzYKw/s1600/whobed04.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="248" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzEFFh8wrE87RxuIvBUEHKf5oUOqqzti_kAGsohq2BTBHwLkM9KjaqPolNNTSq_yZBQxTqCuJohg5bn2mzEGLDvtBRlt84wmy9lmtsxp5P710rt6-qDWhJPNRgKoNlmGyTMdyTKrkzYKw/s320/whobed04.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I only wish I had been on a set that was this fun.</td></tr>
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Peeking about the internet, I've seen some reference to the film's "misogyny." Now while it's true that it seems like every woman in the film is a crazy shrew, save Melissa, in the opening minutes of the story, eventually, according to Jason's speech to his therapist friend, they're the most desirable women in the world. The point of the story seems to be that one has to appreciate their spouse and not let their relationship dwindle into the constant fight/ignore territory where the men are all selfish jerks and the women shrieking shrews. And as I mentioned before, this movie obviously represents no reality that I or anyone else has ever lived in. I don't even have to offer the "it was a different time" defense on this one (ok, maybe a little for some of the somewhat racist moments). Instead, I just wonder whether anyone who honestly thinks that this movie is misogynist enough to comment on it actually enjoys life at all when viewing it through that jaded lens.<br />
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<i>Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed?</i> is simply a delight, which left me with a smile on my face from the time I finished watching it until it was time for me to climb between my own sheets wishing I had some of Dino's problems!Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08471050778285550824noreply@blogger.com4