Monday, October 27, 2008

My Last Seven Movies:

In reverse order:

Appaloosa (2008) directed by Ed Harris starring Ed Harris, Viggo Mortensen, Rene Zellweger, Jeremy Irons and lance Henricksen. Great cast foiled by a languid pace....watch for the man-love between Harris and Mortensen, who ought to make more westerns IMHO, they were born to the saddle, just forget the elegaic pacing willya?

Hangmen Also Die (1943) Directed by Fritz Lang. Trust Fritz to create a "Gestapo Police Procedural" around the assassination of SS Reichsleiter Reinhard Heydrich by Czech partisans. Alas fun though the film is, Brian Donlevy's partisan assassin drag's the film down...worth a look though.

Religulous (2008) directed by Larry Charles. Two things you need to remember about Bill Maher, he is an agnostic and he put Ann Coulter on the map. Take what he says with a grain of salt although the film's anti-religion slant is a nice counterweight to all those lugubrious xian dramas Kirk Cameron is throwing out there.

Righteous Kill (2008) Starring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino.
Al and Bob are NEVER more watchable than when they slum in idiot fodder for the money...never they can make the pulpiest cliche'd dreck look like freakin' Ibsen. i want them both to start making "Friday the 13th" sequels soonest.
Also this was the last film screened at the Tri Town Drive in rumored to be closing for good this year....if so it was a righteous send off.

The Story of Mankind (1957) Directed by Irwin Allen Heaven puts man on trial for being nasty and war-like Ronald Coleman and Vincent Price play defense and prosecution respectively and otherwise wander thru Warner Brothers' stock footage looking for the truth...TERRIBLE dreck enlivened by a cameo from Dennis Hooper as Napoleon and Bobby Watson's last Hitler impersonation.

If I had a Million (1932) Whacky millionaire gives stranger a million in cash to spend as they wish, WC Fields and wife buy a fleet of cars to terrorize the streets of Los Angeles. The Fields vignette is freakin' priceless....trust me on that.

Shelf Life (1993) D. Paul Bartel hard film to summarize, depicts a typical day in the life of three overgrown children who live in a bomb shelter in the erroneous belief the Russians nuked America in 1963. VERY weird, ought to be given wider release on DVD..."It's Mighty Car!!"

Saturday, October 18, 2008

I think the late Edie Adams must have been Nietzsche's proverbial super woman



I mean consider her record, AFTER her husband Ernie Kovacs died in 1961 she discovered he owed the IRS a quarter of a million in back taxes...any other self respecting chanteuse would have packed up and gone bankrupt in style.
Not Edie though, she put herself thru night school learned accounting and paid the whole debt off sans any help.
AFTER Ernie Kovacs died, she moved heaven and earth to make sure she retained primary custody of his children from a prior marriage...all attempts to challenge her primacy in this area ended in abject failure th' lioness wasn't gonna give up her cubs.
AFTER Ernie Kovacs died Edie found out the videotapes to his many many tv programs (he was a pioneer in the early use of videotape) were being wantonly erased by thrifty TV networks. Accordingly she booked herself onto cruise ships, stooged for the Rat Pack in Vegas made an endless string of movies all so she could generate the scratch to BUY back Ernie's work from the broadcasters. What we have of his programs today is directly the result of Edie's one woman campaign to preserve her late husband's legacy back in the 1960's.
Whotta woman....

I guess it is only AFTER bad stuff happens that we find out if we are any good at all.

Sunday, October 05, 2008

Shaved my beard off Friday morning...

it was grey, even turning white at the roots...being all of eighteen years old my beard could have gone down to town hall and registered to vote.
Time for a change...right now though I am in "beardless denial", every guy I know who shaves his whiskers goes thru a paranoid stage where they immediately wanna grow it back poste haste..."shavers remorse" as it were.
A week later though they are all like "Beard? What beard?"