Watching paint dry....

          Ground-breaking. Visionary. Visually stunning.

          Oh please.
        
           I am probably the only one not blown away by the Michelangelo Antinioni film The Passenger. It stars Jack Nicholson and Maria Schneider of Last Tango in Paris fame. To listen to the trite accolades you'd think the director invented the wheel. I do agree that many camera shots are artistic, daring and ahead of their time. The last scene, a very long panoramic shot, something like eight minutes, is masterful. There are no cut or jump shots. It's one long 180-degree camera turn from inside the window bars to looking outside the window to looking back in. But that's the work of the cameraman, Luciano Tovoli.

       Otherwise the plot is predictable and common. The pacing is akin to watching paint dry. It's not a movie where one has to make many leaps to figure out what's going on. The main character David Locke is frazzled with his life. When a fellow guest at his motel dies, he swaps identities. Within the next five minutes into the film, you also know exactly how it will end. 

      I got razzed for my failure to fawn over Antinioni for his indy- cinema verite - attitude of his own pacing (a snail's). This is not true art or departure in meaningful ways. It is a lack of knowing what else to do but show the tick-tick-tick of the character's life as it progresses to the end. Well yeah Europeans are more tolerant of self-indulgent directors and there is a lot less flash and boom than in American movies. I love foreign movies mostly because they do tend to be about people and situations, and a lot less flash and boom. Actors are much less over the top. But fresh look at storytelling? Nah.

     Someone said it was -- get this -- visually stunning. Please. Other movies released in Europe blow this away and are indeed visually stunning.
That movie was a feast for the eyes, the score was gorgeous and the actors in their beautiful prime. The story was riveting. Of course it was also based on a true story and on a book by a compelling writer, Joseph Conrad. 
      
     I understand the final shot took a heck of a lot of work. My YouTube upload is only one quarter of the shot, but trust me you do not miss much more watching the full eight minutes, other than the amazement of a very brilliant cameraman one shot. See my My YouTube channel for two great scenes from the Duellists (among others). To find both, check this out
 
      

Jack, Sondra and Richard Oh My!

           You got to get started somewhere. 
        
          It was 1958 when a boyish Jack Nicholson starred in horror movie called the Cry Baby Killer. He might want to cry if he saw it today. But the B-grade flick got him some basic experience and excellent exposure. It also created a movie now a cult hit. 


         Sondra Lock was Jesus. Richard Dreyfuss was one of her disciples. Michelle Pfeiffer was a socialite in a role so forgettable I'll bet she's forgot. Sonda Lock looked so young and fragile she's nearly androgynous. The movie is called The Second Coming of Suzanne. To call it bizarre is kind. And if you have enough money you can hire a few hippies who will do to anything in front of a camera. Ask Norman Mailer. 

         Here's a scene from Little Shop that I'm sure ever film lover has scene by now (How many movies go on to become Broadway hits and re-filmed blockbusters?):    




This is just plain weird:

       


 This Alfred Hitchcock episode with John CassavetesJohn Cassavetes is quite good, but then, Hitchcock was a master:



Pre-Death Wish franchise:




Go here for the flick  if you'd like to buy the double feature The Second Coming of Suzanne and Power, Passion and Murder (Michelle Pfeiffer).  Please see more videos on My YouTube Channel 



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YOU GOT TO see this, fans of Jack Nicholson and lovers of cinema. I wish I could take credit for this exhilarating piece of video editing which is an amazing tribute to the films of Jack Nicholson. It is the work of Billyscreeningroom2 on YouTube and is one of the best pieces of film editing I've seen. Enjoy:

Johnny Depp: push-up bra, angora sweater and swell pumps

     Okay I saw Ed Wood  finally.  A lot of them were of Johnny Depp in drag (a favorite for trailers and previews). He is one brave guy. And not bad in angora sweaters, wool skirts and kitten heels. But it was the push up bra that made the outfit. 
      I have to admire an actor willing to take such chances. Especially those who pulled it off. The only others I can recall right off-hand are Patrick Swayze (RIP, glorious dancer), Nathan Lane (Birdcage), Guy Pearce (The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert) All three of those actors looked pretty good. It's depressing.....
     This isn't about parading around on Cinemascope in drag. It's about taking on roles that are so daring and then pulling them off. I recently watched a bio on Johnny Depp, part of a two-disk set put out by Biography called Silver Screen Mavericks. It is 300 wonderful minutes of interviews and footage of four actors labeled mavericks. I don't think Steve McQueen, one of them, was a maverick. He actually was quite conventional in his role choices. The essence of cool. The segment on him was still quite good, though. The other two were James Dean and Marlon Brando (buy that great TCM Leslie Greif bio two hours of Brando). I did not see Dean's segment, but he was not around long enough to have established  himself. Brando marched to his own drummer.
    But I love that Johnny Depp, the only one still among us, got the label. It is fitting. His role choices have been off-beat, like Cry Baby (a musical, almost?) I give him points for what he turned down, like the role that went to Brad Pitt in Thelma and Louise. First it was offered to Depp.  He wants to do not just interesting and off-beat (Edward Scissorhand) but what also pleased him, what satisfied the artist him, even if it meant getting raked apart at Cannes (The Brave). The Brave, produced and written by Depp was so bad, it only got play in Europe. Better to try and fail than never to try at all.
   All in all, not bad for a kid who grew up in Miramar. I grew up in Fort Lauderdale, just a few miles north of the sleepy Miramar a few years ahead of him. It was real easy in those days to get lost among the worthless Broward County school system growing so fast it couldn't possibly cope with the multitudes.
  Depp turned out a fine actor (loved Blow, Scissorhands, From Hell and that great Pirate franchise.
  See a scene from Depp's Silver Screen segment:




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No Fair!

      Okay, we've all seen the movie  Creature From The Black Lagoon at some point or another. It was released in 1954. That's a long time ago. Even before my time!

       One of the stars was the young and beautiful ingenue Julie Adams. Twenty years later, the same woman was one of the main characters in another B-grade science fiction bomb called Psychic killer. It was so bad, it was good. That had some heavy hitters, too: Adams, Jim Hutton and Paul Burke. There were spots for Neville Brande and Della Reese and you could tell those two were just having a rip of a time with their  stupid scene. However, it never achieved much status, much less the cult status of Creature.

     First let me say I've seen sci fi flicks they are not really my cup of tea except I liked Outland. (I haven't seen Avatar and really no desire to). Science fiction movies it seems like no other genre achieve cult status with a fervent, devoted following. Look at the Star Trek franchise, going back to the original TV show (which I'm old enough to recall). Another great sci fi flick: The Blob. Did you know that Steve McQueen the dolt gave up any percentage of the gross and instead took the cash up front, which was like $1,000. That came right from the lips of Neils his ex-wife. McQueen trivia: The only time he and his wife was on screen together was in a 1961 Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode.
   
    To the point: Julie Adams looks as good in Psychic Killer as she did in Creature. Well almost. She might have had some work but if so, it sure was well done and subtle. Good genes and she probably took good care of herself. But genes call so many of the shots. Who said life was fair?    
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Farewell to the two Mr. Dunnes

       It's been nine months since the death of Dominick Dunne, author, commentator and for his 15 minutes of fame, Los Angeles jet-setter. Few people know that Mr. Dunne was part of the 1960s California scene, hob-nobbing with the rich and famous, directing Playhouse 90 and being, generally, cool.

      Until, that is, his wife decided she had outgrown him and divorced him. Mr. Dunne went from hot commodity to Dog of the Dow in his social circles. At the time his three children, including namesake Dominique, were young. It was before Mr. Dunne found his true calling, and only then so after tragedy struck, a heartbreak so profound it pierced him to the marrow. And it happened at a time when Mr. Dunne was so broke he couldn't find two nickels to rub together. That sad time when newly divorced, Mr. Dunne packed all he could fit into his car and drove to Oregon where he lived in a cabin and tried to eke out a living as a writer.  
 
       Now, most people are aware of the Mr. Dunne who is rich and famous and marvelously gossipy. The one who wrote best selling novels: A Season in Purgatory,  The Two Mrs. Grenvilles: A Novel (also based on a true story); An Inconvenient Woman; People Like Us: A Novel and Another City, Not My Own, based on the OJ Simpson murder trial. (Read it, couldn't put it down). Mr. Dunne gave voice to voiceless victims. He did it in many books and on television in Power, Privilege and Justice on TruTV.
    
       But before all that, Mr. Dunne was trying to put out a book while living in a cold one-room flat in Oregon. Daughter Dominique was finding parts as an actress on television and movies, her biggest role in the Poltergeist (25th Anniversary Edition).  During these months she also met and broke up with nut case John Thomas Sweeney.  Dominique sought and won a restraining order against the physically abusive Sweeney, but the obsessed and enraged Sweeney found out where Dominique was staying one night in November, 1982. He went to see her. She made the mistake of going out to speak to him. In a fit of rage, Sweeney beat Dominique to death.

       An editor for Vanity Fair noticed Mr. Dunne at the trial, day after sorrowful day. He took notes. He was in despair. So she asked if Dunne would write a column about how he felt, just his feelings and views. He felt the victim was getting more protection than Dominique ever got. Soon a writer of legend was born, the other Mr. Dunne. He wrote about Sweeney getting a mere 6 1/2 years after brutally taking a life, and Mr. Dunne went on to write about many other true murder cases in a fictionalized style for Vanity Fair. The other Mr. Dunne had no stomach for Los Angeles. He wrote of his feeling about LA in his sort- of autobiography, Another City: " Good times. Bad times. The bad times were badder than the good times were good...." 

      I recently finished A Season In Purgatory. Gripping and fast-paced. Mr. Dunne has a wonderful way with character development that I envy. The novel is based on the Martha Moxley murder in Connecticut. Yes, the rich and famous just seem to get away with so much. We are more enlightened for having the two Mr. Dunnes. Good night, sweet prince.


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A Voice, a vision and Vietnam

        I saw Heaven and Earth a few nights ago. I don't know how these little gems slip by me. Not my favorite movie but Oliver Stone did a pretty good job. He does have a love affair with Vietnam. The film was released in 1993 and stars Tommy Lee Jones (always so good) and then newcomer Hiep Thi Le, with Joan Chen, Haing S. Ngor and others in a big strong cast.


       Oliver Stone is one of a few exceptional directors. His resume includes Salvador, Platoon, Wall Street, Talk Radio, Born of the Fourth of July, Natural Born Killers and JFK. 

     Movies that snag me fast are those with a great voice. Not necessarily narration, but it usually is a narrated film. Voice-over story tellers and epic tales. Breathtaking cinematography. Some I love are as short as Out Of The Past to Days Of Heaven to Memoirs of a Geisha and The Joy Luck Club (something entrancing about the Asian accented.) Giovanni Riblisi narrating The Virgin Suicides and  Alec Baldwin's telling us about the Royal Tenenbaums. Stacy Keach's marvelous pipes telling of the The Duel.     Nothing can ruin a great movie faster than a bad narrator. (think Sam Shepard in The Voyager). A story, a score and a great voice. The triple crown for movies.

For some of these great epics and film noir see right here.

Snap out of it!

          Snap out of it!

            One of the best lines in one of the best movies of the 1980s. Moonstruck, with Cher, Nicolas Cage, Olympia Dukakis (who won best supporting actress Oscar) and the late wonderful Vince Gardenia. 


            As far as good romantic flicks go, this ranks right up there. Okay hey it's a chick flick some like to say. But Moonstruck has a smart story line (no sappy schlock), funny, great cast and the flavor of New York City. There are lots of romantic comedies but few are really good. 

           Nicolas Cage is one of my favorite actors. I think he is underrated. But that's probably because of some dump role choices. But he was good in Moonstruck (1987), Captain Corelli's Mandolin (2002) and Leaving Las Vegas for which he won the 1995 Oscar. Elizabeth Shue was superb, but so underrated. We never hear much about Capt. Corelli's Mandolin, with Penelope Cruz and John Hurt and takes place during one of my favorite eras for movies: World War 2. What a time to be alive.


        Back to Cage. How can someone do such excellent work (including the anxiety-riddled con man in Matchstick Men) Cage was hilarious as the anxiety-riddled grifter with a dozen ticks.  And then he does this completely stupid ghastly film called The Wicker Man.  OMG. I guess he needed the money.   I read recently Cage filed for bankruptcy earlier this year. Hey, bad stuff happens to the best of us. But come on he was married to Lisa Marie Presley, plus he made some big bucks for those movies. Nick, jeepers, what did you do with it? You got top-flight kin in the business (nephew to directorial titan Francis Ford Coppola and cousin to the gifted and wonderful director Sophia Coppola.(The Virgin Suicides, Lost In Translation). 

       Hey those back IRS taxes will do you in every time. Don't you hate it when that happens? These things work themselves out. So Nick snap out of it!   


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Here's to Toots and a haunting harmonica

          
        I am embarrassed to admit this but I saw Midnight Cowboy (1969) only last year. Of course I have seen bits and pieces of it.  I knew it put Jon Voight on the map. I knew Dustin Hoffman's character was Ratso Rizzo. The role showcased his remarkable talents, coming off of his clean-cut innocence in The Graduate. 

        But I never watched Midnight Cowboy from beginning to end. What a great flick. The ending really hit me. I don't recall a movie that gave me such a feeling of sadness at the end. Not teary hanky sad. Just sad like a void. A loss.

      Without the gifted harmonica playing it would not have had the impact. Even as true to form as it was to James Leo Herlihy's brilliant book.  The glorious playing was done by Jean Toots Theilemans. I'll tell you some instruments need gifted musicians to show you their capabilities. The harmonica is one of them.


     Music sets the tone.  The youthful exuberance the opening of Across the Universe with the Beatles song "It's you," so energized and sparkling. Or the creepy feeling the Doors music brought to Apocalypse Now.  The best is the jazz score set to a low-budget 1958 science fiction thriller called 4D Man. Great jazz music by itself, but it really made the action bounce along.


    That's why if I love a book, I hesitate to see the movie. Who wants your imagery ruined if you heard raggae and they do rock? I sometimes get the book, though, if the movie is good.Sometimes I avoid the movie after reading an exceptional book. You see some movies not even close to the book. Like LA Confidental. Both a great book and flick. The book starts out with a conversation between two LA cops, one of whom is a major player in the book. But in the movie he's just a bit character and on top it of he's killed off fast. I have read most of Elroy's books. The master of novel noir.

  Here's a my badly edited liberty with Midnight Cowboy to showcase Toots' haunting harmonica:





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Better to be smart, or lucky?

    The answer of course, is both. But most people aren't. They aren't even one or the other. But given a choice, luck is best. How many smart, talented people end up living utterly miserable lives?

     What a dour prelude to this blog. I read three books in a row by the same author, Sam Shepard. All three were his collections of short stories Day out of Days: Stories, this book being the most recent. I know he's also a noted playwright whose early work Buried Child won him a Pulitzer Prize in 1969.

    I confess I don't read plays. The stage directions get annoying. They clutter the story. So, I haven't had had a full view of  his work. Though the short stories I read seem to get repetitive. Collections of this or that, all the same just different packages covers.
  
   Love books? Almost as much as I love movies and I  got the jammed bookshelves to prove it. Read 'em all. I am partial to mysteries (love Sue Grafton starting with  A Is for Alibi and that wonderful novelist noir James Elroy) and read so many true crime stories for example, Truman Capote's In cold blood (I have stacks by the best) and then there are just plain good books like Anna Quindlin's Black and Blue: A Novel

      So I read in order of publication Shepard's three collections of short stories starting with Great Dream of Heaven: Stories published, if I recall, in 1986, then his Cruising Paradise: Tales in 1997 and his most recent Day out of Days: Stories published this year. 

    The books aren't just short stories as much as a few good tales with a bunch of essays, remembrances of personal events, poems, and a few chapters that are no more than a paragraph. You can say some pretty powerful stuff in a paragraph. But each book seems weaker than the next. Each had fewer stories and more essays, on, for example, Shepard's escapades during this latest acting job. Or his childhood. I saw a number of those movies and I recognized a lot of those locations and situations. If he disliked it that much why do it? He didn't need the money.

     Shepard made well as an actor. He was nominated for an Oscar for his role as Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff. That was more because Yeager was an amazing man than Shepard an amazing actor.  Shepard's best roles were in 1977 Days of Heaven  by Terrence Malick, co-starring Richard Gere and Brook Adams. The other was a part as Ethan Hawk's courageous publisher dad in Snow Falling on Cedars.. (The book and film  were marvelous).

    I read autobiographical material in which I shared with Shepard a  childhood with an abusive, alcoholic parent. So I checked his books out of my local library. I know what he means when, in one of his essays he talks about intrusions of prickly thoughts. Maybe that's the genesis of the series on the severed head. A treacherous childhood can leave its tattoos. I don't read or watch much on westerns. Cowboys themselves are more interesting but so much information is available on the internet. Like everything you want to know about Hank Williams Sr. Beats me why the New York Times went ga ga over Shepard's last book. Genius? I guess it is a matter of taste. Still, it's better to be lucky. Shepard sure was in his adult life.

 

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Swords, snits and sinewy soldiers

     One of the most lusciously filmed movies I ever watched was released in 1977. The Duellists starred very young and fairly new actors Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel. Both were beautiful, fit, lean. Sinewy legs and round buns in skin tight uniforms. 

    Besides the actors, the movie scenery was lavish and the score was  sensual. I think a the producers used a lot of Mozart. The movie also was Ridley Scott's debut film. What surprised me was that such an excellent movie had such limited release at the time. I saw it for the first time last year. 
 
    It was narrated artfully by Stacey Keach. The story was based on actual events. Novel-noir writer Joseph Conrad read about the duelists an old newspaper. The clipping told of a lifelong grudge between two soldiers who dueled every few years over the same insult. The transgression was long forgotten, or perhaps never really existed but in the minds of one or both.  In the movie, the duels take place during the course of the Napoleonic rule, and end when it ends.

     Period pieces have to be gripping to keep my attention. I did enjoy both  Pride And Prejudice 1995 and 2006. Also Sense and Sensibility and most recently  Marie Antoinette in 2004.  If you get a chance, Joseph Conrad's the Duellists is worth watching. Oh those men in uniform can be a handful.


   Here are a few scenes:



and this little gem:




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Wambaugh, war and other bloody messes

         Joseph Wambaugh probably had no idea what a love affair he was creating when he wrote The New Centurions, published in 1970. The LAPD cop-turned-novelist gave us some interesting crime and good and bad guy stuff in the day. But the thing Wambaugh did that generates the most devotion isn't in his resume. 

       The Police Story, first aired in 1973, still has the hearts and minds. It was a collaboration between script writers and Wambaugh and stars Vic Morrow in the lead. But it has quite an ensemble cast in Ed Asner, Chuck Connors, Harry Guardino and Ralph Meeker. Over its long run, actors of both genders took the lead and supporting actors came and went but the show stayed strong.

       I have a DVD of 1973's The Police Story pilot show in top-flight condition, and a slew of happy customers to prove it. The show provided the formula for all those cop serials to come: it was realistic and gritty. Maybe Vic Morrow's gruesome death adds to the mystique. Morrow and two youngsters, as you all know, was killed in the helicopter crash while filming a scene for Twilight Zone, The Movie. He was 52, and on the verge of a come back after he fell off the face of the Earth. It had to be tough to take after Morrow's success in the 1960s World War II show Combat!  
      
      Morrow's real talents were behind the camera. Some of Combat's best episodes were directed by Morrow: The Pillbox, and more. Innovative camera angles, smart story lines and ground-breaking approaches to war shows. Who knows what might have been. No one was held accountable for those deaths during the filming. Want an intriguing read and penetrating view into the hidden side of Hollywood? Read Outrageous Conduct: Art, Ego, and the Twilight Zone Case. 

    Here is a scene from The Police Story pilot, Slow Boy. Please check out my YouTube channel I just added a second season episode on Aug. 18, 2011 called Love, Mabel. It aired in 1974 and starred William Shatner and Dean Stockwell. In the first five seasons the main characters changed quite often, with bad guys coming back in later shows as cops.




        I read a few years ago that Combat co-star Rick Jason shot himself. He was at home with his wife. He woke up, got up, and shot himself (if what I read was accurate.) Jason never had the fame or acclaim of Morrow, but to watch him on youtube at Combat! reunions, in interviews, he never seemed disappointed or unhappy. Outward appearances are deceptive. No one knows what goes on in a person's head. Did anyone out there in cyberspace know him? Know of him? Have any insight into what might have been going on? Was he ill?  I was a fan of his.
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Ear-biting cinema

         

        Wow. I finally found and watched Norman Mailer's improvised 1970 movie Maidstone. Yup, the infamous hammer-bonking, ear biting, blood and mud wrestling flick that is among the four movies Mailer directed.

       Odd. Two days later, I read a review of Norris Church Mailer's A Ticket to the Circus: A Memoir. Church is Mailer's sixth and last wife. Her title also could sum up hubby's forays into film making: journeys into the bizarre, unreal and self-indulgence. 

       The New York Times gave Mrs. Mailer high marks for honesty in describing a life devoted to fulfilling Mailer's quirky needs and whims. Secretarial and maid service included. Example: Mrs. M labors to remodel a room taking great pains to make sure it suited all Mailer's needs and he criticizes the way she hung one of his suits. Well, yeah.

      On the Mailer movie front. Cinema verite? Gonzo Cinema? Well Hunter Thompson was talented. Mailer's entire flick is an exercise in the kind of narcissism his last missus describes.

      Maidstone was one of four films he made. His last movie, "Tough Guys Don't Dance," Mailer did not appear in. The star role went to Ryan O'Neal. The NY Times called that movie demented film noir.   The three better known ones are "Maidstone," and "Wild 90," and "Just Beyond the Law". The last one again featured Rip Torn. 

     I figured Mailer's films would be, uh, off-beat. In Maidstone, as most people know, Mailer plays famous film maker Norman T. Kinglsey. He is considering a run for president. Alter ego for Mailer, the  man who would be director, and who did run for New York mayor in 1972. 

     Yes yes the usual full frontal nudity. This is a hoot: Mailer as director is in a scene telling his prospective actresses they need to be prepared to bare all for some scenes so don't have hissy fits, yet he says bad taste in nudity makes him squeamish. Puleeeeeeeeeeeeze!  Nothing shows Mailer's sexism, racism and common-mentality better than his character's interviews-lectures to the prospective actresses. None of that for the men in the film, though.

    Worth watching? You bet. If for anything it is a worthwhile art house flick for 1) the hilarious spontaneous fight between Mailer and Torn and 2) getting a view of a person who gave us The Naked Face 1948, and The Executioner's Song in 1976, Armies of the Night in the 1960s, among other great books. Mailer was one of the literary giants of our day. What a gulf between the writer and the man who created those movies. Mailer lived quite a life. Better to have lived out loud than not at all.

   See Maidstone, uncut version, region one DVD at ebay.com look for Bohemian_bungalow. 

     

     

Circus?


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