One Saturday evening early last July The Wife & I were heading out to dinner with some family members when we found a white-winged dove chick near our house, & managed to get the little bird--to whom I awarded the gender-ambiguous name Stevie--to a bird rescue outfit. I recounted that adventure here:
http://mv-moorhead.livejournal.com/2008/0
Wednesday evening, almost exactly one year later, we found another baby dove, unable to fly, outside our condo, in very nearly the same place. Once again, we caught the poor thing in a cardboard box, & drove to Arizona Covey Quail Rescue, where once again we marveled at Jeani's facility, teeming with hundreds of birds of many different species, at every stage of development, from quail chicks smaller than marshmallow peeps to full-grown geese in her back yard. She also had a silver pheasant, similar to this one...
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
...an Asian bird which, Jeani suspected, had probably escaped from an aviary before being brought to her. This stunning creature's name was "Ronin."
Anyway, Jeani assured us that though this year's foundling was being fed by its mother, it would not have been able to survive much longer on the ground.
Monster-of-the-Week: How about an avian more formidable than this evening's, say, the giant prehistoric bird animated by Ray Harryhausen in the splendid 1961 Mysterious Island? Here the Thing With Feathers is:
& there's a further glimpse in the trailer, here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rC-VgDPME
A while back The Wife started reading Richard Russo's 2007 novel Bridge of Sighs out loud to me...
...& last night we finished up, having allowed an Audiobook version from Phoenix Public Library to handle a few hundred pages on the drive to & from Palm Springs.
Good God, what a writer Russo is! Bridge is another of his multigenerational tales of life, love, loss, family, friendship & community in small-town upstate New York, counterpointed here by (less successful) scenes set in Venice.
It's a remarkable, funny, often stingingly painful work, but perhaps also a bit overambitious; it's the second Russo novel--Straight Man, his hilarious 1997 comedy about regional academia was the other--that seemed to stumble around in its last quarter or so, while the author tried to figure out how to end it satisfyingly. That said, even that last quarter contains so many passages of magnificent writing, & such a deeply decent, humane sensibility, that I must still wholeheartedly recommend it.
One other thing: The guy on the Audiobook doesn't read out loud nearly as well as The Wife.
Friday afternoon The Wife, Lily & I piled into the car & headed west to Palm Springs again, where we spent a couple of fun days eating, loafing & watching the fireworks after the Palm Springs Power baseball game Saturday night. We had a fine vantage on this spectacle from the second-floor patio at Matchbox Pizza--Lily, relaxing in her carrier & enjoying the odd tidbit passed in through an airhole, yapped spiritedly at the distant explosions.
I also got to haunt a couple of the town's good used bookstores, including Latino Books y Mas...
http://www.latinobooksymas.com/index.htm
I chatted a bit with the genial proprietor, then later, when I went back in, with his even chattier wife, who told me proudly that her hubby has an alter-ego: "Nacho Libro," a classic-style masked luchador who visits schools, etc., to promote reading to children:
His wife also gets into the act, as "Sor Presa" (roughly, "Sister Surprise"), the loyal nun sidekick who introduces Nacho Libro.
I was given a bookmark with "Nacho's Reading Pledge" on it:
1. I pledge to read each day!
2. I pledge to read no matter if silent or loud!
3. I pledge to read 30 minutes each day!
4. I pledge to read because reading is fun!
5. I pledge to learn a new word each day!
6. And finally, I pledge to read because Nacho said so!
Marvelous. I think Nacho Libro ought to have his own show on PBS...
The title of Michael Mann’s new film is Public Enemies, which suggests plurality. While the characters do indeed include Baby Face Nelson (Stephen Graham), Pretty Boy Floyd (Channing Tatum), & Alvin Karpis (Giovanni Ribisi)—not to mention J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup!) & Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale), both of whom, in historical retrospect, probably also qualify for the title’s category—this movie is no ensemble piece. It’s a star vehicle, for Johnny Depp as John Dillinger.
Depp is an amazingly charismatic performer, no less so here, in what is for him a relatively straightforward role, than in his more eccentric character leads. He speaks in a low, confident drawl, wearing a sly half-grin of unobtrusive sexual confidence. He makes Dillinger a likable, magnetic person—which seems pretty probable—but somehow not an exciting person. There’s no wildness to his persona, & I got no subversive vicarious thrill from his daring crimes—& this, of course, is the true appeal of the gangster picture.
Still, Depp is hardly the problem with Public Enemies; most of the acting is quite fine, come to that. The ubiquitous Bale is perfectly effective as the charmless, intelligent but dull-souled Purvis, & Billy Crudup has a juicy turn as Hoover. Marion Cotillard is a lovely presence as Dillinger’s love Billie Frechette, but she seems too delicate to appeal to this guy, & the sense of urgent fugitive heat that Mann tries to suggest between them didn’t come across for me.
Heat, in general, is what’s missing from the picture—odd, since heat is usually what Mann, in films like his classic The Insider, does best. The real reason Public Enemies falls flat may simply be how it looks onscreen. Mann shot the film in high-definition video, & I wish I could say that this is a medium that’s come of age for big-budget moviemaking, but I can’t, on the basis of this picture—it looks cold, clammy, even a little cheap, & it banishes any sense of the epic, or of period. The film’s a good half-hour too long, & Mann’s staging of the robbery & chase scenes lacks suspense &, at times, simple clarity.
Despite its visual & dramatic dreariness, Public Enemies has some very good moments scattered throughout its length, & it ends with an admirable romantic coda. Just before that, though, we see Dillinger in a Chicago movie theatre, watching W.S. Van Dyke’s 1934 Manhattan Melodrama just before he gets ambushed by the G-Men outside. Mann gives us good long looks at Clark Gable, William Powell & Myrna Loy, all beautifully rendered in James Wong Howe’s stunning black & white cinematography. Alas, if you were to get shot as you walked out of Public Enemies, your final earthly thought might just be that John Dillinger got to see a better last movie than you did.
Last week I described South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford as the "latest judgmental social-conservative Republican douchebag to prove a freak-ass closet horndog." A fair description, I still think, but I feel a little bad about it, having read his emails to his mistress, because it sounds like the poor bastard actually loves her, or thinks he does at least, & now the relationship is reportedly over, & he & his family have been publically embarrassed, & he claims he wants to work things out with his wife, even though he still describes the mistress as his "soulmate."
Lucky wife, eh?
So even though he pretty clearly is a major douchebag, he doesn't need one more jerk blogger saying so. Most of us have been this particular kind of douchebag at one point or another, & nobody--not even a lousy "Values" Republican--deserves to go through it in the media.
Having written the above graphs, I then did a search to make sure I was right about the "soulmate" quote, which I'd heard second-hand (I was), & found this item from the L.A. Times, informing me that I'm far from the only dude who's had this reaction to Sanford's humiliation...
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-o
The Midnite Movie Mamcita takes the Herschell Gordon Lewis gross-fest The Wizard of Gore to Farrelli's Cinema and Supper Club this weekend. For details, check out Your Humble Narrator's brief article in Phoenix New Times, here:
http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/events/th
As a friend of mine pointed out, the Necrology on next year's Oscar show is going to add quite a bit of time to the broadcast all by itself. RIP to the ever-reliable Karl Malden, who has passed on at 97:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090701/ap_o
This story from the Mail about Michael Jackson's last days somehow rings plausible, & is a fascinating read in any case:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1
Monster-of-the-Week: Let's give the nod to the lycanthropic terror into which Jacko turned in the opening sequence of the 1984 Thriller "video" (a short film, actually, directed by John Landis), either a very feline werewolf or a very lupine werecat...
Here's Thriller:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtyJbIOZj
With kids, as a rule, you can’t go too far wrong offering dinosaurs. The 2002 computer-animated kids’ film Ice Age, and its 2006 sequel Ice Age: The Meltdown, were set in the frigid title period of prehistory, a mere 20,000 years ago, long after the dinosaurs were extinct (about 60 million years ago). Accordingly, its major characters were wooly mammoths, saber-toothed cats, ground sloths and other such titanic and iconic ancient mammals: still very cool, of course, but for most kids (including this former kid) not on quite the same level of off-the-hook coolness as dinosaurs.
So for the third Ice Age movie, called Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, the filmmakers have done what filmmakers have always done when they wanted to include dinos in a story set eons too late: They cheated, and just fancifully let the great beasties in.
Once again, the heroes are Manny the Mammoth (voiced by Ray Romano), whose mate Ellie (Queen Latifah) is soon to give birth, Diego the Saber-Tooth (Denis Leary), and the lisping, waddling, bottomlessly sweet Sid the Sloth (John Leguizamo). The latter, in a fit of frustrated parental instinct, impulsively “adopts” three unhatched eggs he finds in an ice cave. The eggs turn out to be from a hidden, subterranean lost valley teeming with the giant reptiles, and the hatchlings turn out to be young carnivorous dinosaurs. They adore Sid, but he’s clearly not an appropriate parent, being, for one thing, a vegetarian.
Sid ends up carried off by the hatchlings’ very angry real mother, and his friends must enter the lost land to rescue him. Along the way they meet an intrepid and slightly crazy weasel voiced by Simon Pegg, who serves as their guide.
Ice Age: DOTD seemed to me a lesser, cornier, cheesier affair than either of its predecessors, but there was still much that I enjoyed about it, and the kids at the screening I saw seemed to as well. Leguizamo is very funny once again, and there’s real panache to the crosscutting in the finale. Some of the dinosaurs and other primordial creatures, however anachronistic, also add fun and spectacle to the proceedings.
But, as in the first two films, the highlights are the wordless efforts of Scrat, the hapless squirrel-thingy, to protect his precious acorn. This time around Scrat, a scrawny critter with a raccoon-like tail and a long canine muzzle with snaggly fangs, who moves in wary spurts and vocalizes only in irritable clucks and anguished wails, is given a love interest/rival for his acorn, and his divided loyalties add a new dimension to him. Though Leguizamo comes close, nothing else in Ice Age: DOTD is as funny as Scrat’s riotous interludes. There’s probably no compliment in all of animation than to say that a character or scene is worthy of the late great Chuck Jones, and Scrat earns it.
Saturday night The Wife & I went to see My Life in Ruins...
...a romantic comedy starring Nia Vardalos & aimed at the same audience that made her earlier, self-penned vehicle My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) a smash. Greek Wedding was an ugly-duckling tale about a drudgey young Greek-American woman who finds love with a WASPy hunk (John Corbett) despite all the best efforts of her loving, rowdy, eccentric Greek family to embarrass her.
In the new film, based on a script by Simpsons writer Mike Reiss, a trimmed-down & glammed-up Vardalos plays Georgia, an American expat who, out of work as a history teacher, takes a job as a tour guide in Athens. She’s obtusely committed to boring her wacky group of American, Australian, British & Spanish tourists with historical minutiae (I’d love her), while her rival guide Nico (Alistair McGowan) keeps his group eating & souvenir shopping.
This is twice now—last year’s Mamma Mia! was the other time—that I thought, hey, attractive actors, a little amour, beautiful Greek scenery, how bad can it be? It’s also the second time this line of reasoning has failed me.
My Big Fat Greek Wedding was sweet & convincing; My Life in Ruins is wince-inducing, corny & save for a few scattered chuckles, painfully unfunny. For instance: Georgia finds romance with a hunk, too—the tour bus driver (the likable Alexis Georgoulis), who’s called “Poupi.” His last name? “Kaka.” That should give you an idea of the Oscar Wilde/Noel Coward-style wit that you’re in for.
The Greek backdrops truly are beautiful, but oddly that doesn’t help so much. It seems almost an insult to the majestic leavings of the culture that produced Aristophanes to play this puny, unimaginative comedy in front of them.
Except…there’s Richard Dreyfuss as Irv, the little old kvetcher who likes to crack wise, & who has a poignant backstory. His lines aren’t really any better than anyone else’s, but he’s effortlessly believable & charming, & he & Vardalos have a nice rapport together. When the two of them, after a blowup, have a relaxed, conciliatory conversation on a bench overlooking a breathtaking vista, or when he takes the part of the Oracle at Delphi & answers his fellow tourists’ questions, it gives you a sense of the movie this could have been, if a bit more care had been taken with the script.
It appears the familiar rule the celebrities die in threes is being ignored lately. RIP to old-school impressionist Fred Travelina…
http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/l
…as well as to actress Gale Storm…
http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/l
Here’s Travelina on the Letterman show in 2006…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kI0do_XBd
Here’s Storm as the heroine of the 1943 scary movie Revenge of the Zombies (though she doesn’t show up until close to the end of this nearly six-minute clip)…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOHKpiXGN
RIP to the hugely talented & even more hugely pathetic Michael Jackson...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituari
It was somehow almost less shocking to learn of Jackson's death than to learn that he was fifty. Fifty fucking years old. I well remember the day in 1977 when I heard of Elvis Presley's death, & it's deeply weird now to reflect that Jackson was eight years older than Elvis was when he died. I doubt I'm the first--or the thousandth--person to observe this, but apparently he really wouldn't grow up.
RIP also to Farrah Fawcett, who got past '70s cheesecake stardom to become a respectable actress in the '80s, & whose death yesterday at 62 will be overshadowed by Jackson's...
http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/TV/06/25/o
Opening today in the Valley is Cheri, a film of Colette's novels from the gang who brought us Dangerous Liaisons back in 1988--star Michelle Pfeiffer, screenwriter Christopher Hampton & director Stephan Frears...
I missed the screening, so I don't know if the movie's any good or not, but it gives me an excuse to post this luscious photo of Colette in a rather unladylike pose...
My pal Dave pointed me to this amazing compilation of iconic movie scenes with balloons in them, assembled by somebody named Jerry Rees who has too much time on his hands (says the guy who’s spent the last two years writing this blog). Seriously, check it out; it’s cool, albeit puzzling:
The Oscars have announced that rather than 5 nominees there will now be 10 nominees for Best Picture:
A friend of mine says that this is pandering, & will make the Oscars even less relevant than they’ve become already. Although I often bemoan how many terrific movies don’t get nominated, I agree with him.
Monster-of-the-Week: In honor of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, the latest judgmental social-conservative Republican douchebag to prove a freak-ass closet horndog…
…this week let’s give the nod to the Boo Hag, a vampire-like horror from the folklore of South Carolina’s Gullah culture. She’s a hottie by day who by night sheds her skin (eeewww!) & feasts not on the blood but on the breath of her sleeping victims. It’s a parasitical relationship—normally she lets you live, you just feel a little more fatigued & breathless. Apparently “Don’t let de Boo Hag ride ya” is a familiar well-wish in SC.
Here are a couple of renderings, the first by an artist named Shona, the second & third by an uncredited artist:
R.I.P. to the one-&-only Ed McMahon, who has passed on at 86...
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/arts/t
McMahon achieved immortality, of course, as the devoted sidekick of the great Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show. But I would also note his work as an actor, in such unexpected films as The Incident (1967), Slaughter's Big Rip-Off (1973) & Butterfly (1982). Long before his "Heeeeere's Johnny!" days, McMahon's deep tones were used to macabre effect as the narrator of the nightmarish 1955 noir-creeper Daughter of Horror. You can watch that disturbing one-hour wonder here:
http://retrovision.tv/freevideo/daughter-o
On another matter: Over two consecutive days, I've seen two young men--one in front of me at the gas station, the other walking down the street near my home--wearing Michael Vick jerseys, like this one:
So I'm asking--really? Michael Vick? The convicted, admitted dog-slaughterer? That's actually who young men think it's bad-ass to emulate? If so, allow me to officially shake my head, tut-tut & ask what the hell the world's coming to.
Hope everybody had a great weekend. Belated Happy Father's Day to all the Dads.
Late Friday night The Wife decided to turn in, & as soon as she & Lily were abed, I gleefully commandeered the living room for a bit of 'round-midnight M.V.-time. I put an old Hammer horror film on the DVD player, thinking that I would watch it while balancing my laptop on my knees on the couch & writing a few emails.
But, of course, I also wanted a little something to munch on.
A quick search of the kitchen proved disappointing--the best I could do was a single random fortune cookie on the counter, left over from some carry-out Chinese dinner. So I took it back to the couch, settled in, picked up my laptop & put it on my lap, & picked up the DVD remote control. Then I broke open the cookie, pulled out the fortune, & this is what I read (& by the way this is verbatim from the fortune, which I saved):
"Turn off the TV and the computer and excercise your mind with a good book."
Look, I admit it, I'm obsessively superstitious, & I regard it as a real failing & limitation on my success in life. But give me a break--how many people could ignore that salvo, even if they weren't superstitious?
I turned off the TV & the computer, pulled down a volume of Ambrose Bierce, & spent some time exercising my very out-of-shape mind. It was good stuff, but the whole episode made me cranky.
It was a middle-aged boys’ night out last night—Your Humble Narrator went with pals Dave & Dewey to the Glendale 9 Drive-In, where the Midnite Movie Mamacita was hosting a screening of a cool double feature: Alligator (1980) & A Boy and his Dog (1975). The Mamacita sent me this image she captured of last night’s gallery of hot male talent (left to right, that’s Dave, Dewey, Moi, & “No Festival Required” organizer Steve Weiss):
(photo credit: The Midnite Movie Mamacita)
The improbably lovely June weather continued, & as we went in Dewey’s Sebring convertible, we were able to enjoy it to the fullest. In obedience to tradition, we smuggled in a variety of refreshments in the trunk. Dewey brought a lawn chair & sat alongside the car, while Dave commandeered the back seat & I the front, & in between good-naturedly razzing Alligator—a pleasing low-key saga of a reptile the size of an El Dorado (not counting the tail), with clever dialogue by John Sayles, a good turn by Robert Forster as the hero, & the yummy sight of Robin Riker as the redhead heroine—we ate Crunch n’ Munch & pretzels, drank, & communed with our fellow schlock-lovers.
(I actually own the DVD of this film, but watching it on TV doesn’t compare with seeing it under last night’s circumstances.)
The Glendale 9 is pretty much devoid of charm. There are no gravel risers to give your car that upward angle on the screen; it’s just a big flat parking lot surrounded by nine billboard-sized screens that keep distracting your peripheral vision with other movies, & the build-up of condos & apartments in the area has added too much ambient light. Even so, I had a blast. I had forgotten what a really first-rate way to spend to spend a summer evening going to the drive-in can be.
Well I might have forgotten, too. It was, if memory serves, 1984 the last time I went to a drive-in—a double feature of The Last Starfighter & Streets of Fire at the Peninsula, across from Waldameer on Peninsula Drive in Erie, long since razed to make room for the Tom Ridge Environmental Center.
But something or other was persistently reminding me of drive-ins yesterday. When I got home from the Glendale 9, I turned on the TV, & there was Grease on VH1, just in time for the scene where John Travolta sings “Sandy” at the drive-in, while behind him we see the filthy animated clip of the weenie jumping into the anthropomorphic hot dog bun. Then I checked out Eriepressible, only to find Emma wistfully reminiscing about going to Erie drive-ins, including a meteorological coitus interruptus of the Marilyn Chambers opus Insatiable…
http://blogs.brocknet.net/eriepressible/
Some of my great moviegoing experiences have been at drive-in theatres, including one of my earliest—my Mom took my sister Priscilla to see Franco Zefferelli’s 1968 Romeo and Juliet at the Lakeview, & I, then about six, went along in the back seat. I remember being impressed with the big brawl between the Capulets & the Montagues at the beginning, & then falling quickly asleep as soon as the mushy stuff started.
But the following year I was taken to The Valley of Gwangi at the Lawrence Park Drive-in on Iroquois Avenue...
That’s still one of my favorite movies, & from the ensuing years I have vivid memories of going to the Lawrence Park or the Lakeview or any of several others for The Andromeda Strain, When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, The Poseidon Adventure, Food of the Gods, Rocky, The Giant Spider Invasion, Tentacles, Hollywood Hillside Strangler, Horror Hospital, Stripes, Alien, The Omen, Silent Scream, Bachelor Party, Blame It On Rio & the priceless women’s-prison picture The Concrete Jungle, with Jill St. John & BarBara Luna. In other words, some of the most fun I’ve ever had at the movies.
Drive-ins have been disappearing since the ‘70s, probably through some combination of the rise of home video, a shifting family dynamic, a shifting dating dynamic & above all the urban sprawl that absorbed & made valuable the real estate on which the drive-ins stood. They have seemed on the verge of extinction since the ‘80s. There were maybe 30 or so cars for the Mamacita’s event, but it honestly didn’t look like Drag Me to Hell or Up or The Taking of Pelham 123 at the neighboring screens were all that much better-attended, even granting that it was a Thursday.
Somehow, though, the drive-in still hasn’t quite gone the way of the dodo—indeed, according to a link on Emma’s entry, a “Guerrilla Drive-In” movement is on the rise. But I wouldn’t dawdle in pursuit of the experience—if you’ve never been, or not in many years, then carpe diem.
Or rather, carpe noctem.
So I understand from CNN that Bill Maher is getting squawks for his “New Rules” commentary last week that Barack Obama is (CNN’s words) “spending too much time on TV.” But the President’s TV ubiquity wasn’t the point of Maher’s commentary; his point was that Obama shows strong early signs of wimping out on his agenda. As one who (like Maher) earnestly wishes the President success, I’m sorry to say that I think the comment is dead-on. Read it here (skip to “And finally, New Rule...”)…
http://www.hbo.com/billmaher/new_rules/i
Brilliance from The Onion, but too depressingly true to be all that funny…
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/rep
Nonetheless, here’s a plug for another chance to stare at a glowing rectangle: The Midnite Movie Mamacita is hosting a good old-fashioned drive-in double feature this evening at Glendale 9 Drive-In, with two fine selections—Alligator (1980), & the bleak Harlan Ellison-scripted, L.Q. Jones-directed futuristic sci-fi satire A Boy and His Dog (1975), starring the young Don Johnson. It starts at 8:30. Details...
http://www.midnitemoviemamacita.net/
Monster-of-the-Week: The title character of Alligator would make a splendid MOTW, except that it's already been one, back on October 20:
http://mv-moorhead.livejournal.com/89100.h
So let's give the honors this week to any of The Alligator People, Roy Del Ruth's scaly screamer from 1959, starring the late, lamented, eternally luscious Beverly Garland as the heroine...
...& Lon Chaney, Jr. at his hammy best as a lecherous Cajun with a grudge against gators which, considering the hook he has for a hand, probably has the same source as Captain Hook’s dislike for crocodiles. The story concerns a scientist who, through a combination of gator hormones & radiation, creates hybrid human-reptilian wretches. It’s not a particularly good picture, but I’ve always liked it, because it’s short & atmospheric & seems almost like a prototype for this sort of tale. Also, the delicious Beverly Garland is in it. Did I mention that?
The movie is readily available on video. Here’s the trailer:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2enht_
Ever thoughtful, Lily's pal Kayla gave her a present recently--a bridal gown, complete with veil, from the "Casual Canine" line. (I wasn't aware that bridal gowns were considered casual wear, but then again I keep hearing that "Marriage is the new dating," so what do I know?) Even though the gown was sized "extra small," it was clear after she tried it on that it would have to be taken in considerably, in the very unlikely event that we ever found a partner we deemed remotely worthy of Lily's paw in marriage. Still, there's no denying she looked beautiful:
(Photo credit: Moi)
My pal Dave tells me that he was catching up on his reading of this blog, & was startled to see that, in my June 4 entry, I had recounted an experience more or less identical to one of his. Dave's proficient with chopsticks, as am I, he takes inordinate satisfaction from it, as do I, & he was once observed at lunch & complimented by an Asian waitress for his skill, as was I.
The similarity of these episodes made me wonder if, among portions of the immigrant community in this country, it's a matter of wonder & marvel simply to see a white guy doing anything at all competently...
My pal Dewey's trivia question from Friday...
"Although it may be hard to believe, Cher will not be the first Oscar-winning performer to be parent to a transgendered child. Who else?"
...elicited only one response--Warren Beatty's teenage kid Kathlyn Beatty, rumored to be a female-to-male transgendered. Intriguing, but an earlier Oscar winner, the great Margaret Rutherford...
(Best Supporting Actress for The V.I.P.s, 1963) was the adoptive mom of Gordon Langley Hall, who later was surgically reassigned as Dawn Pepita Langley Hall, & then, in 1969, became Dawn Langley Simmons as the bride in South Carolina's first legal interracial marriage...
Details...
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/24/nyregi
So reportedly Sonny & Cher's kid Chastity is hereafter to be called "Chaz":
http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/06/11/en
My pal Dewey sent me another of his cunning trivia questions:
"Although it may be hard to believe, Cher will not be the first Oscar-winning performer to be parent to a transgendered child. Who else?"
Anybody? Anybody?
I'll post the answer sometime over the weekend.
My pal Stan & I were recently grumbling about the dearth of younger actors with a strong presence in movies, compared to earlier generations. Later, Stan sent me this appreciation of Lee Marvin in The Killers (1964):
"...The film was a good attempt, but lousy (Christ, Ronald Reagan was in it) except for the ending death scene by Lee Marvin.
He stumbles, mortally wounded, out of a house with a briefcase of money, which opens as he falls all over the scene. A big man trying to run who can't understand why his legs won't take him where he wants to go. His face soaked in sweat, eyes unfocused yet staring at some goal but not reaching it. He finally collapses in a flurry of dollar bills.
I rewound this scene a dozen times 'cause it was fucking great. (Writing this, I just realized that Marvin stumbled around just like my boxer dog did just before we were forced to put him down.) To me, suffering through the film was worth seeing Marvin die so well. (What a horrible way to put that.)
I've always confused Lee Marvin with James Coburn for some reason. Even now, I was going to say that I'd seen a film from the fifties that was terrible shlock but for Marvin playing a minor role as a shaky, thieving short-order cook at a sleezy roadhouse, but I can't remember now if it was him or Coburn. Both these guys always, and still do, reminded me of my Uncle Ed.
We were talking about what is missing from today's actors, and perhaps it's the lack of sweat. In the fifties and sixties, sweat and grime was as much a part of a character as the costume. The hero was always the cleaner guy, with the hired help and sidekicks being grimier as their lack of importance or morals increased. Real men sweat, and real actors weren't afraid to show it.
I'll never forget hearing Anthony Quinn say the following in an interview in the seventies: 'There are no real men anymore; just boys with no hair on their chests.'"
Monster-of-the-Week: In memory of the late David Carradine, this week’s Beast of Honor is the title character of Q (1982). Here’s the kickass Boris Vallejo poster…
This horror-fantasy from the talented nutjob Larry Cohen is one of my favorite pieces of cinematic weirdness: Aztec priests in New York have conjured up their deity, the flying serpent Queztalcoatl, who is swooping down on Manhattanites and relieving them of their heads!
What makes the movie feel so wonderfully crazy is that alongside the silly horror story is a transcendent performance, Michael Moriarty’s classic turn as Jimmy Quinn, a jittery, reluctant stick-up man who learns that the creature is roosting (and *gulp* nesting) in the spire of the Chrysler Building. Playing perfectly off Moriarty is Carradine, who gives a funny, relaxed performance as the good-natured police detective with whom Quinn tries to cut a deal in return for the information.
Here’s the big showdown between the monster—stop-motion-animated by David Allen—& Carradine & his boys. This is the climactic sequence, though, so fair “spoiler” warning…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLOyp_7X7
I’ve read that Cohen caused some consternation when he shot the scene without warning the people in the street below.
"It's a simple little melodrama, directed by Clint himself with a lean, unadorned, almost cinema verite touch, & drawing most of its force & likability from Clint's own performance--a pointed self-parody of his growling tough-guy persona from his younger days.
He plays Walt Kowalski, a newly widowed retired autoworker in a rundown Detroit neighborhood. Walt's a bitter old man, haunted by memories of his own brutality in the Korean War. He's not close to either of his prosperous sons, who long since fled to the 'burbs with their families. He's an unapologetic bigot--spewing racial & ethnic epithets seems, almost, to be the only relish he takes in life. Yet the plot is about how Walt is gradually drawn into the lives of the Hmong (a southeast-Asian ethnicity) immigrants who have gradually taken over the neighborhood, especially that of Thao (Bee Vang), a teenage neighbor kid who tried to steal Walt's beloved Gran Torino as part of a gang initiation.
The story has a mythic, almost allegorical shape, but this is nicely offset by the lived-in details of the movie's look. The supporting cast, with their flat, non-actorish performances, serve as a sort of collective straight-man to Eastwood's iconic turn. On the whole, it's one of Clint's most interesting & enjoyable star vehicles in many years. Apparently he has suggested that this may be his last film as an actor--though he also reportedly said the same thing about his first-rate performance in Million Dollar Baby--& though I'd miss him, all in all Gran Torino wouldn't be a bad valediction."
Since then, I've talked with a number of cranky old white guys who absolutely loved the movie, & I suspect that these guys got off on seeing an old white guy spew racial invective & act tough with non-white punks. But despite this unintenional reactionary appeal, it's a terrific picture.
Stephanie, one of my supercool nieces, was in Phoenix once again today on sensitive government business. The weather here has been unseasonably sublime lately, so The Wife, Lily & I had a splendid dinner with her on the patio at Chevy's on Camelback. Afterwards, Steph & Lily posed together:
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mv_moorhead- mv_moorhead
I'm an award-winning movie critic, playwright, actor and director.
My work has appeared in publications ranging from the New Times weeklies (where I was a staff writer for several years) to USA Today, from Phoenix Magazine and Wrangler News and the East Valley Tribune to the Erie Times-News, Seattle Times and Detroit Metro Times to Rewind Magazine.
I'm that rare example of a living poet who has had a sonnet published in Weird Tales.
Born in Erie, PA, I've lived in Phoenix, AZ, for more than a decade, and have written for much of the city's print media.
I've acted in theatre productions in six states and the District of Columbia, and appear for about six seconds as an extra (a prison guard) in the John Waters film Cry-Baby.
I directed Shakespeare's Measure for Measure at Southwest Shakespeare Festival, and a short film called Holding Back the Dawn, based on a short story by my friend Barry Graham.
I was host of Another Saturday Night, a pop culture and film review show on KTAR radio.
I have produced, directed and acted in radio plays that have been heard on KTAR and the Sun Sounds Radio service, and my original radio play Scorpion City was staged live in 2005 at the Arizona Biltmore as part of the Phoenix area NPR affiliates' "Summer To-Do" series.