A Boyhood atop Collapsible D or The Revenge of the Titanic

I first encountered Walter Lord's marvelous book "A Night to Remember" when I found an abandoned paperback copy of it atop a coat rack at the Old Brackett School in (Romantic) Arlington when I was in the Fourth Grade or so.
Despite a boyhood that was rapidly spiraling downward into defeat and obscurity, I remained a precocious reader, so the Titanic's story of epic futile catastrophe really resonated with me.
Shit I was a bound over on the same trip, I could grasp that right away...
Now when it came time for some pre-cyberspace cultural synergy, I had to wait around until Channel 56 re-ran the 1958 film adaptation (in glorious black and white which registered so sharply on the old portable black and white TV set in my parent's bedroom)...For once a good movie and good book got together in holy matrimony and there I was, bearing the ring on a little red cushion.
There are certain incidents from history that we revisit time and again, because of their natural tragic drama, because of the lessons we affect to extract from them or because we like to feel humbled by "Big Events".
The whole Titanic phenom has all of that in spades, it is Man and his Machines versus Melville's Inscrutable Malevolent Nature, and of course, Nature clears the boards.
Walter Lord would have us think that the RMS Titanic was the breaking point between the old and new order, Captain John Smith taking her straight to the bottom, Herbert Lightoller going down with the ship and living to the tale, Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon and his spouse floating off to safety in what amounted to their own private lifeboat.
Aiyee, there are a lot of old and new tropes to that story...a vertiable cozy lace trimmed Steampunk Apocalypse (Think about it, a 35,000 ton luxury liner depending on two sets of eyes and no binoculars to navigate an icefield at night...Jules Verne couldn't have done better!)
So this is powerful stuff, even if all the current hype seems like....well...annoying hype.
Shee-it, The Titanic spawned the first "Instant Movie" "Saved from the Titanic" (1912) starring Dorothy Gibson a real life survivor of the disaster who happened to be an actress mercenary enough to be the first extract boffo box office from the tragedy.
The Nazis saw fit to create a big budget propaganda epic out of the story, "Titanic" (1943) which gets in the usual cracks at "British Plutocrats" and features an entirely fictional virtuous German Officer to the storyline. The film only played in markets outside Germany though, Dr, Goebbels abruptly decided that a downbeat movie about ship sinking was too stark a reminder of the Nazi regime's long term prospects.
Of course after World War II the Titanic finally rose from the depths and came into here own, Walter Lord's book was published, Fox released "Titanic" (1953) in which the great liner goes under soap suds while Barbara Stanwyck and Clifton Webb torment each other with brio & Robert Wagner sings "The Navaho Rag".
Of the lot, including James Cameron's super epic, I still like "A Night to Remember" (1958) best, it packs a great emotional punch, doesn't back off the class element and features a fine performance by Kenneth More as Fifth Office Lightoller...I liked it as a kid and I like it now.
Most people forget though that the book was first adapted as live television play in 1956 on the "Kraft Television Theater" and a veryu good adaptation it was as well featuring narration from Claude Rains no less.
Channel Zero always wanted to screen the kinescope but was hamstrung by the unavailability of a good copy and the sure knowledge that a third of the aud would show up expecting Kenneth More and Honor Blackman.

Well, that is our inbound iceberg isn't it?

The Market Report

Vampires have peaked as investment opportunities thanks to Twilight and all the multivarious vampire based TV series. Pitches are going on all over town for new YA series featuring the Last Vampire on Earth beseiged in a mansion by an army of vampire slayers, the only vampire at an exclusive girl's school or some AV HS nerds who go in for vampirism to improve their social position. Saavy Investors are looking at a plateau situations with more creatives piling in, less dividends paid out.

Zombies are approaching a plateau situation, critical market stressors include the Walking Dead TV series, a plethora of graphic novels and a continuing output of new tentpole movies featuring Romero-template zombies. Flesh eating ghouls are still a short term Blue Chip Bet with Saavy Investors running the numbers in their heads furtively darting their eyes at the lifeboats.

Everyone on the street is still talking up Frankenstein's monster on the basis of strong pre-war and post war performance, but Big Frank hasn't been heard from since the Branagh-De Niro merger back in 1994, Saavy Investors are waiting for a Steve Jobs to innovate Frankenstein back to market dominance.

The Wolf Man? The dirty secret here is the old howler is a niche market performer, a penny stock despite strong brand penetration. A long time favorite of Lady's Garden Club investment roundtables who have happy memories of Lon Chaney Jr nonetheless Saavy Investors politely give lycanthropy a pass.

The Mummy: A dependable investment with the same creative blockage as Frankenstein's monster, hamstrung unfairly as a kidvid dependable due to the association with Brendan Fraser. Saavy Investors though are enamored with the Mummy's vast install base derived from the ongoing popularity of Ancient Egypt exhbibitions.



The Field:
Imps, Leprechauns, The Master Works of Edgar Allen Poe, Japanese Product, public domain fairy tales...and of Sarah Michelle Gellar. All worthwhile ground floor opportunities, just steer clear of the Disney Channel.

Season of the One Season Wonder...

Success is great and all, it has its lessons to impart, but failure is no slouch in the race to be "educator of the year".

I make no secret that failed television series utterly fascinate me, "one season wonders" I calls em', back in Channel Zero's Outlaw Days we used to screen them with perverse impunity.
That was back in olden analog times, these days all sorts of obscure televisual catastrophes get tossed out onto DVD, in many cases it's a last attempt to cash in on a series that lacks a sufficient episode count to be profitable in syndication.

Two upcoming titles of note:

The Invisible Man (1975) This was a hugely hyped NBC series circa 1975 starring David McCallum as an invisible scientist who undertook secret agent stuff for the government. As I recall this was NBC's response to the whole "Six Million Dollar Man" phenom. To be honest, David McCallum with his huge blonde cranium, is nigh perfect at this sort of role he has a certain sly wit and never takes the outlandish set up too seriously.
Too bad the scripts were all mid seventies spy stuff, mediocre and uninspired. The Show went for the terminal dirt nap after seventeen weeks, as I recall NBC execs blamed the failure on the fact that McCallum's character was happily married and thus limiting plot possibilities!

So of course, Harv Bennett (showrunner on "The Six Million Dollar Man) was hired to create a sort of successor series called "The Gemini Man" which was an unmarried rakehell invisible secret agent played by the weirdly uncharismatic Ben Murphy. Damn thing went off a cliff in seventeen week, David McCallum no doubt laughed. If the Gemini Man ever turns up on DVD I'll discuss it in more detail to be sure.`


Logan's Run (1977) Ahhhhh 1977, a storied year when Science Fiction went from a nerdy cult to An Industry, overnight thanks to Star Wars/Close Encounters.
All the TV networks wanted in, unfortunately, CBS got the bright notion that the cheap and witless film version of "Logan's Run" was a good bet for an ongoing television series. In the patois of the time it was "a natural" with it's simpleminded futuristic hash of "The Fugitive" the sort of set up readily understandable to television executives.
The show had problems, chiefly it's lead, Gregory Harrison a preposterously handsome actor who could underplay a test pattern, he was duly buttressed by actor-writer Donald Moffat as Rem the Android a sort of acerbic Mister Spock knock off and Heather Menzies a decorous actress whose character thought a minidress and ballet slippers acceptable post apocalyptic attire.
For all that, the show had some serious science fiction chops behind the cameras, Star Trek alum DC Fontana was the story editor and she was able to hook in no less than Harlan Ellison and David Gerrold to contribute scripts before the ax fell.
Maybe it was the concept, these Fugitive knock offs fall into crippling formula pretty quickly if you don't watch out, or maybe it was the cheap cardboard sets...still Heather Menzies was easy on the eye and Donald Moffat was pretty funny all told...As for Gregory Harrison, I hear he was always good to his mother.


BTW The Four "Man from Atlantis" TV movies have been released on DVD, regardless of Patrick Duffy's lingering appeal, the main reason to pick up something like this is to see the Late Victor Buono as the evil "MIster Shubert".
MyGhod but that man was born to play villains, from his days on "Batman" and "The Wild Wild West" Buono stole every single scene he was ever in with aplomb! If you want to watch a classically trained Shakespearean effortlessly redeem mediocre material then by all means track these sonsabitches down.

Well there you have it, ghod almighty we really LIVED in the mid 1970's....

The Red Line...

Is "One Hundred Years Young" as of today.

The rat infested sumbitch makes me late for dinner on a regular basis.

It is filthy...

The PA systems literally vary in functionality from car to car.

You get me home in about the same amount of time it took my father to commute from Government Center in 1966, this you regard as a sort of triumph over adversity.

The damn thing desperately needs a maintenance upgrade, both the rolling stock and the tunnels themselves as well as the switching system.

One does not exit the parking garage at Alewife Station, one competes one's sentence and is tardily sent out into the world.

It has compelled me to walk from South Station to Central Square on one memorable occasion and lesser strolls at various times.

It keeps the cab companies very much in the black.

Ghod help the Red Line commuter on the day after a blizzard, a medieval oxcart would be a surer mode of transport.

But what the hell, without it, I'd be digging ditches on Mount Gilboa in Arlington, and all those delays have proved a heaven sent change to get caught up on my reading.

So Happy Birthday Red Line...yer a dirty swine but you are all I have to get to and fro my phony baloney job.
I may not love you, but I'll still be there for you long after everyone else has taken to hang-gliding to work or flipped over to some sort of sail powered skatboard hybrid.

From left to right...

there seems to be a nigh universal skittishness among The Parents of America about letting their elementary school offspring see "The Hunger Games" (Which opens Friday I guess).
These are the "Wife Swap" type parents, overbearing Xians, Alternastyle Hippies, Helicopter parents off all stripes...concerned that upsetting images will take root in their issue's soft little noggins.
Yet these are the same people that would be rotten glad if their kids read and appreciated the carnage and bloodshed in The Book of Judges...or Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus (highest bodycount of all Shakespeare's works BTW).
Ah, but that is the point, different emotions and parts of the brain are activated by reading as opposed to viewing.
Put it another way, no kid is ever wracked with nightmare from merely reading about the feeding habits of H.G. Welles' martians from the War of the Worlds.
But just see that sh*t on the big screen and it's Katey-Bar-The-Door.
Well I can afford to be specious, I have no children no hostages to horrific fortune so to speak.
I saw plenty of horror films whence but a youth, a few of them very scary indeed, but nothing of that pursued me to adulthood.
But lets face it, reality is plenty scary for grown ups, that is what keeps me up at night.

Pick of the Week!

"My Living Doll" infamous one-season wonder from 1964 is at last available on DVD.
Julie Newmar stars as "Rhoda the Robot", an Air Force AI project seconded to a psychiatrist played by the insufferablly smarmy Bob Cummings who is tasked to turn the shapely automaton into the "the perfect woman".
Supposedly Cummings walked off the show after twenty one episodes due to conflicts with the methody Julie Newmar, that and the fact that he wanted to ditch the blame for the inevitable cancellation...vaguely rodentish Jack Mullaney filled in until the show went for the terminal dirt nap in whatever cemetery is reserved for patriarchy driven comedy.

This is a sitcom concept designed to give even Marabel Morgan the screaming bedspins...so of course I have to have it.
For historic purposes of course!
Years ago Channel Zero once had a scheme to screen some old female driven mind sixties teevee shows, appalling obscurities like "Occasional Wife","The Governor and J.J." and the lead off was most definitely gonna be "My Living Doll".
We were gonna call "Riot Grrls of the Great Society"...

"Regrets, I've had a few..."

I just watch "The Celebrity Apprentice" for the movie trailers...

And this week they were pimping out hard for the Farrelly Brothers' "Three Stooges" revival.
To be blunt it looks awful in extremis.
You can't impersonate what was "Lightning in a Bottle" by way of post war TV re-runs you just can't.
Mind you, "Animal Crackers" the play gets revived now and again with Marx Brothers Impersonators, but that was a work specifically written for the brothers as characters.
To revive it, you have to impersonate Groucho, Chico, Harpo & Zeppo....The Farrellys are creating a ersatz original work featuring Moe Larry & Curly's likenesses. There is an important distinction between revival and joyless simulacrum.
Why not wait on the technology to digitally recreate The Stooges...Hire Andy Serkis to mime Moe Howard?
Me I'm waiting for a lavish Shemp Howard biopic starring Sean Penn as the embattled Horowitz Brother.
Hell what I really want is Shemp Howard's old solo Columbia Two Reelers to get released on DVD, it is my firm conviction that Shemp did his best work alone.

John Carter (Of Mars) (2012)

Before I swing into my usual palaver, I want to say firmly and unequivocally that I liked this film, it has perhaps the best man versus four-armed albino ape fight ever committed to whatever the hell has finally replaced celluloid.
Oh they made changes to be sure, the villainous straw that stirs the drink has been beefed up from Book to Movie, "The Holy Therns" once a decadent theocracy have now become parasitic immortal shapeshifting super villains but do not worry, much of Burroughs theme and intent seems intact.
And Taylor Kitsch (Our Leading Man) is a man to watch, if in nothing more than Steve Reeves was once a man to watch when the curtain rose on his hour in the spotlight.
For that fact, Lynn Collins is most definitely a woman to watch in the best Frank Frazetta Cover sense of the term.

True though, my expectations were controlled and low as I eased into my seat at the Reading Imax Theater, I recalled sitting thru "The Land That Time Forgot" in 1974 in Fresh Pond with expectations as high as Hindenburg.
As I've said before, we are in a third age of peplum movies, buff supernormal actors cavorting semi naked thru some mythological realm tarted up with as much CGI as common decency allows.
In that respect, Director Andrew Stanton succeeded, he spent an amount of money comparable to Mitt Romney's entire fortune and every damn penny is up there on the screen for all to see.
Alas it may well be a case of "Too Much Too Late".
Just for a moment though, I'd like to digress, as co-curator of the Channel Zero Film & Video Series (now in our sixteenth year of genteel obscurity) I can speak as an expert in the attempted revival of departed genres. From Peplum Movies (Hercules Unchained and Hercules in the Haunted World) to the Ritz Brothers ("The Gorilla"), Channel Zero has manfully attempted to spark new audiences to forgotten artists and their films.
And if it is one thing we've learned down through the years, there are some dead horses that are strangely resistant even a thorough beating.
It doesn't stop us from trying (Jungle Girl pictures anyone? Believe me we are working on it!), and Ghod Bless Andrew Stanton he was certainly in there pitching, but I fear it was all for naught.
What is Old is Not Always New, sometimes it can be The Original and yet still Derivative.
In the case of Edgar Rice Burroughs' sumptuous Mars Series, the man literally invented the entire genre of extraterrestrial geo-politics, braced it with a heavy load of exo-zoology and armored it with the Modern Myth of the Messiah From Another Planet.
And that is just the first book, written in 1912, in an eleven book series!
Tevis' The Man Who Fell to Earth, Siegel & Shuster's Kal El, Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, Cameron's Avatar and dozens of others all shamelessly derive from Burroughs' protean imagination.
But because Edgar Rice Burrough's epic science fiction has been largely off market in terms of film or television adaptations nigh these one hundred years the general audience has no idea that ERB's "Barsoom" is the robust original and not some preposterous "Dune" knock off.
And that is the shoal on which the film founders, it comes to market fifty years too late. If for example a string of low budget "John Carter Warlord of Mars" peplum movies got churned out in the 1960's, shot in Spain and starring Gordon Scott and Maria Canale (directed by Mario Bava natch) there might have been enough of cultural hook on which to hang the current incarnation.
But there isn't ERB's science fiction has languished so long it has become too strong a purely literary cult with no links out to the mass audience.
Tarzan, John Carter's almighty cousin in African has no such problem, he has never vanished off the cultural radar screen since he slaughtered his first lion and proposed to howl about it.
But still, it was a well attended show last night, in front of me sat a little blonde nine year old girl, who watched with Saucer Eyes the whole myth unfold.
She was peppering her poor befuddled father after the show with questions about "The Other Mars Books" as they departed, I am sure Wikipedia got consulted via Iphone in the car on the way home.
I suspect this film won't make enough money to warrant a sequel, but maybe just maybe it'll plant a seed for the next generation.
Meanwhile, I do love it when my favorite books become good movies or even passable ones, but there is something to treasure about Edgar Rice Burroughs and his science fiction that is so very impregnable to successful film adaptation.

Trout Fishing on Barsoom or E.R.B. Appreciated...

Over and above the "assigned classics" (Twain, Dickens or Poe), a few select authors will follow one's boyhood to an adult's estate.
For me, one of that elite few, is Edgar Rice Burroughs, Creator of Tarzan, Discoverer of Barsoom, Amtor, Pellucidar plus a host of other places and just possibily the real father of Modern Science Fiction.
I discovered Edgar Rice Burroughs about 1974, a most auspicious year at the tender age of twelve my mind was at last opening up to all the possibilities fantasy literature had to offer.
Dyslexia was behind me, Mars, Venus, Captain Kirk and the Galaxy beckoned.
That and those god-damned Frank Frazetta covers to Edgar Rice Burrough's then omnipresent reprints, a boy of twelve will never ever forget the like.
As a writer, Burroughs knew what his audience liked, two fisted gentleman heroes, adventurers who must first survive some bizarre undiscovered location, second they must scoop up a veritable dream princess for a mate and thirdly they must conquer and rule justly.
This was John Carter Warlord of Mars, Carson Napier of Venus, Tarzan of the Apes, David Innes in Pellucidar and on and on and on.
Burroughs made that formula sing arias in over eighty novels.
Gore Vidal once wrote a cheeky ode to Tarzan and Edgar Rice Burroughs back at the dawn of the Age of Camp in the 1960's. He noted Burrough's misspellings, his spotty sense of African zoology and then swung into a long praiseful discourse on the superiority of Burroughs' "fight scenes".
According to Vidal, no one wrote better fistfights which was no small achievement, apparently writing brawls is a hard business, too often they are written as boring or laughable affairs.
And in truth, Burroughs' fight scene do pop off the page pretty consistently, be it Tarzan tackling a gorilla or John Carter skewering an assassin.
Burroughs heroes are expert & upright users of violence.
If Burroughs had a flaw as a fantasy writer, it is that his heroes inevitable comquered all and ran up into a meta contextual wall, they've won, now what?
After all who wants to read about the adventures of a beloved all powerful Emperor?
Burroughs got around this by wrapping series up and moving on to other planets and realm or else putting heretofore lower ranking members of the supporting cast in the spotlight.
If need be he'd restart the whole mishaugas by throwing the original hero's Son into the mix.
With Tarzan Burroughs' staved off boredom by deploying a vast array of Lost Civilizations, almost a dozen of them in over twenty books. At one point, the need for a challenge to Lord Greystoke sent the Ape Man to the Center of the Earth and a few rounds with the dinosaurs of Pellucidar.
And that is another thing, Burroughs' invented the "continuity crossover", without it the comic book industry would languish today.
For what it is worth, irregardless of his nonsensical science, Burroughs may be the real founder of Modern Science Fiction, simply because he looked out into the universe and assumed Anything Could Happen and that made for sterling adventure.
Stuff like "Avatar" and a lot of the modern canonical SF owes so much to Burroughs it isn't funny.
The Superman? Check, John Carter was leaping the Minarets of Mars in a single bound long before Clark Kent hitch hiked to Metropolis.
The Stranger in a Strange Land? Check, David Innes of Pellucidar is Valentine Michael Smith's messianic Daddy.
The Man of two species? Check Tarzan, Both Ape and Man, in both worlds and of neither att he same time.
Hell "Tarzan and the Lion Man" features talking super intelligent apes a good twenty years before Pierre Boulle's "Planet of the Apes".
And Burroughs was an early exponent of the sturdy notion that the inclusion of dinosaurs improve all drama by an order of magnitude.
***
Alas, For all his props, other than Tarzan, Burroughs has never cast a giant shadow in the movies, (I mean have you seen "At the Earth's Core"??), his fantasies are almost too robust even for today's Hollywood.
As I write this, the word on the street is the latest attempt Disney's "John Carter" laid an egg at the Box Office.
That should upset me, it does not. It does however reinforces the sheer scope and power of ERB's imagination.
Godspeed Mister Burroughs 2012 marks the onset of your second century as American Fantasist of the First Rank....

Pick of the Week!

The Lady from Shanghai (1947), running Sunday and Monday at the Brattle Theatre on a double bill with "The Postman only Rings Twice".

Who else but Orson Welles could sell Harry Cohn at Columbia on adapting an obscure potboiler as a film starring his ex wive Rita Hayworth and still somehow churning out a Noir Masterpiece?

The Third Age of Peplum is upon Us...

thanks to Friday's premiere of "John Carter" (Warlord of Mars) starring the appropriately named Taylor Kitsch as Edgar Rice Burrough's mesomorphic interplanetary swashbuckler.
But of course, this has all happened before, and it will happen again, especially in Hollywood.
The first age of Peplum started in Italy in 1957, it was built around Steve Reeves, Champion American Bodybuilder who starred in the hugely profitable "Hercules".
Well, the movies abhor a vacuum and soon almost any US Bodybuilder with any sort of title to his name was jetting off to Rome to star as Maciste, Ursus, Goliath or Samson as well as dozens of variants on Hercules. At it's height, obscurities like Ed Fury (chiefly known for being a sort of musclebound chorus boy in Mae West's Las Vegas revue) was starring in motion pictures up and down the Mediterranean Littoral.
All these movies made money, do not forget this, muscles = money.
The whole thing lasted almost eight years before the creative winds deserted peplum's sails and everyone moved on to Spaghetti Westerns, Horror Flicks or in the case of Steve Reeves a comfortable retirement breeding horses in California.

Then in the 1980's the whole damn thing flared up again, thanks to Arnold Schwarzenegger;s short lived "Conan the Barbarian Franchise. This time in Hollywood and driven by Arnold and by "Rocky" star Sylvester Stallone whose physique became increasing cartoonish in the Jack Kirby sense of the term. Other than the two "Conan" movies, the second peplum wave eschewed the purely mythological type of script. This time around it was less Hercules and more soldiers of fortune, androids, crusading cops and the like...But believe me this was peplum sans the dubbing and the classical setting.
However, at the height of this second wave, TV's Incredible Hulk, Lou Ferrigno made a counterintuitive return to Italy where he discovered that the whole Hercules filmography was short by at least two films starring himself as the Lovechild of Zeus.
Eventually that wave receded, leaving in the tidal pools everyone from Dolph Lundgren to Mister T. (both of whom got their starts jobbing to Sylvester Stallone in the "Rocky" franchise).

I think Billy Crystal did the second wave in...that is just a theory though.

Now a third Peplum Wave is upon us, and it is driven much like the first by fantasy and or mythological narratives, commencing with "300" starring Gerard Butler and running straight thru Brad Pitt's turn as Achilles in "Troy".
Now it is the turn of "John Carter, Warlord of Mars", Edgar Rice Burrough's first action hero (circa 1912).
I dunno if this film is gonna be a hit, the blunt truth is, Edgar Rice Burrough's non-Tarzan film adaptations have run the gamut from mediocre ("At The Earth's Core" starring Doug McClure) to...mediocre ("The People that Time Forgot" starring someone). I'm giving this film despite it's Mitt Romney-esque price tag, long odds.
I'd like it to be a success, some the finest reading pleasure I had a as a boy was spent reading Edgar Rice Burrough's science fiction.
But I am not hopeful.
Remember I saw "The Land that Time Forget" in Fresh Pond back in 1974...I got time invested in this mishaugas.

Well if it doesn't work, Taylor Kitsch and his pecs can probably revitalize the Tarzan Franchise, I hear Disney still owns that option.

"Act of Valor" (2012)

I wanted to like this movie, I really did. Any film that cites all the Navy SEALS who died on active duty since 9/11/2001, can't go entirely wrong.
But the storyline is pretty under-dramatized, Navy SEALS in hot pursuit of a Russian Smuggler and his Jihadist buddy who are armed with scary detection proof suicide bomber vests...the acting is underwhelming.
And besides, at one point Our Heroes penetrate a Mexican shantytown harboring terrorists and never once is a civilian ever accidentally shot...I mean Welcome to Hollywood guys.

In short script wise, it was pure Stallone sans the glitzy pyrotechnics.
On the other hand, I liked the naturalistic settings, the judicious use of real SEAL veterans, the authentic hardware (anything the Pentagon clears for use in a movie has to be obsolete compared to what is used on deployment right now)and the relative realism of the climax.
I think though, that maybe they might have done better with a sort of neorealism experiment like the Italians tried during WWII (See "Men Under the Sea" (1940) currently out on DVD under the title "SOS Submarine" for proof. The film has NO professional actors in it!) or else some sort of "Mondo Special Forces" exploitation flick.
Hell imagine what Orson Welles in full "F For Fake" mode could have done with some serious Navy SEALs found footage?
Now some might dismiss "Act of Valor" as a naval recruitment film. That is pretty much what it is, but then again, these are all volunteer forces we have and no one compels anyone to Join the SEALs.
Now if we could only "force" someone to make a new and different movie about Navy SEALs....

The Death and Afterlife of Joseph Stalin

Let the record show that one of the last things that Joe Stalin did when he retained the ability to talk, walk & slay is screen at late night movie with select members of his politbureau.
Then came the sumptuous buffet and the vodka wine and then more vodka. Stalin was a terrific insomniac and stroke/heart attack survivor but according to Nikita Khrushchev he could party like a fratboy well into his seventies...hell he routinely courted cardiovascular disaster by taking steambathes, no one could tell the Boss what to do, not if they wanted to live any longer.
That last party was a success by the standards of the politbureau circa 1953, Stalin was in a good mood, no one got arrested.
When the guests dispersed, The Leader retired to his private house in the Kuntsevo suburb of Moscow at 4:30am 2-28-1953 leaving strict orders he was not to be disturbed, til he called in the morning.
Normally Stalin rang for his morning tea at 11:30am or so, but come the next day he did not call, the security detail at the Dach were frantic, calls when back and forth to the Minister of State Security (Sergei Ignatiev, a protege of Nikita Khrushchev...the guards were told to leave the Leader alone.
Finally at 6:30pm eighteen hours after Stalin retired, a light went on in the Leader's dining room (where he normally slept on a coach)...the detail breathed a sigh of relief...but the phone never rang.
Such was the sheer terror Stalin's underlings had for him that literally did not dare enter his Imperial Presence unless biden to do so, like a Chinese Emperor quite literally.
By now the guards are in a state of panic, complicating things was the arrival of the daily sealed mail poach from the CPSU Central Committee, which had to be handed over to Stalin without delay.
Finally these poor mooks drew lots and the loser went into the house with the pouch.
There at 10:30pm that night he found The Leader sprawled on the floor in a semi conscious incoherent state, having urinated himself.
All attempts to rouse the Dear Comrad Leader failed thus doctors were summoned, at 7am the next morning.
By now, the politbureau is in attendance, so there are plenty of witnesses when the diagnosis came down that Stalin had suffered a massive stroke and would shortly die.
The great irony of Stalin's death is, that due to the "Doctor's Plot", a blantantly anti semitic campaign to purge the medical profession in the USSR of "rootless cosmopolitans" and "British Agents", the best cardio-vascular MDs in Russia were all in KGB's Lubyanka Prison in Moscow.
All these poor unfortunates were summarily rousted and interrogated by hulking secret police types who painfully described the Leader's condition to their prisoners using no names, the verdict from the Lubyanka, the case was terminal.
Beria, Stalin's brutal child molesting chief of the Secret Police alternately kissed the leader's hand and cursed him in loud tones, Khrushchev wept, almost all the men who stood the deathwatch had been themselves threat of arrest & execution at one time or another.
But they saw their opportunity and took it.
I mean is it any wonder then why medical attention never reached Stalin until twelve to eighteen hours after the onset of symptoms?
Still and all that, it took Stalin almost four days to die, just long enough for his "colleagues" to fix up the succession, abort the coming purge and start plotting the arrest and death of Beria.
Stalin's millions of victims living and dead, could wait.
Stalin himself, ended up a preserved mummy, a sort of high end Elmer McCurdy placed on eternal venerated display in Lenin's tomb until 1961 when Khrushcheve decided to bury Stalinism by burying the late leader's corpse once and for all.
And all of this is merely where Channel Zero's next screening begins....
That would be "History's Greatest Loss" (1953) the official Soviet Propaganda Documentary detailing the funeral rites for Comrade Stalin.
Communist societies know how to bury their leader's with true necor-worship, look at the rites accorded Conrade Kim Jong Il in North Korea, buried in a blizzard thousands forced to weep at the mere sight of his hearse.
Anyhow..."History's Greatest Loss, the Great Farewell to Joseph Stalin" screens Friday March 2nd at 8pm in the Microcinema of the Somerville Theater 55 Davis Square Somerville Ma, Admission $7 (cheap!), in Russian, Subtitled in English.
This would be the last great spasm of Stalinist Propaganda...unseen in Boston in fifty nine years!

But all that aside, I'd love to know the title of the last movie Stalin ever saw...Y'know over and above the Soviet Propaganda Product, Nikita Khrushchev claimed to te end of his life Joe Stalin loved John Wayne movies.

Coriolanus (2012)

One thing is for sure, Shakespeare knew his soliders, both as heroes but also as fatally flawed men several steps short of glory.
From Othello with his superstition and credulity to Julius Caesar with his fatal ambition...the Bard told the truth on them all.
Now at long last, Ralph Fiennes has dig waaa-ay down in the canon to come up with "Coriolanus" Shakespeare's arrogant childish mother dominated Roman General who is banished by jealous rivals only to return at the head of an army composed of Rome's hated enemies.
Simply put, I loved this movie Fiennes put across just enough Wellesian touches (modern dress, iambic pentameter news broadcasts) without taking focus off the weird triangle between Coriolanus, his Norman Batesish Mother (played with razor sharp nastiness by Vanessa Redgrave) and Aufidius (Gerard Butler), Coriolanus's former foe, sudden ally and maybe sorta BF.
Like I said, Shakespeare knew his soldiers.
Well all sexual politics aside, Coriolanus is likely Shakespeare's most reactionary protagonist, he loses out on the consulship of Rome simply because he can't bring himself to cajole the restive masses for five lousy minutes. He bungles his opportunity, blames everyone but himself and then betrays his country literally in a childish temper tantrum.
Very instructive in an Election Year to be sure.
I sometimes am given to think that Shakespeare had it in for the Romans, they keep reaching for Glory in all his Histories and all fall short with tragic consequences...by contrast his English Kings occasionally land on a Happy Ending...even if it's by accident.
Anyhow this one won't last long in the theaters, its an relatively obscure Shakespeare adaptation by US standards well worth tracking down to the Waltham Embassy.

The CW is set to revive "Beauty and the Beast"...

the old Linda Hamilton teleseries, I never watched it, but the core fairy tale admits all sorts of possibilities.
So far as I can tell, this time, it's a superheroic beast teamed up with a dollsome female cop.
So far so good, except the CW has cast Kristen Kreuk as their beauty.
I mean lets face it, Kristen Kreuk hasn't got the acting talent Ghod gave a sock puppet, she actually dragged Tom Welling down to a very crude level of acting on Smallville, and that mah frenz is sayin' something.
I give it six weeks tops assuming the pilot isn't a complete botch.

Six Inches of Snow Predicted over a

twelve hour period for tomorrow, although there doesn't seem to be a snowfall prediction for Greater Boston as yet.

So d' ye suppose "NewsPanic Seven" and Channel 25 News are gonna spin this into a Life Extinction Weather Event?

Oh well, I was beginning to think I'd never have recourse to this year's "Snow Storm Liquor".

Which is:

1.) One Unopened Fifth of Jack Daniels
2.) One Unopened Fifth of Cabin Fever Brand Maple Flavored Whiskey
3.) One Unopened Pint of Brandy (Brand Unknown)

I guess this'll get me through....

Dave Maynard is dead

The long time host of "Community Auditions" a local prehistoric ancestor of "American Idol".

Here he gives Sarah Silverman her first big break...as a singer no less.

RIP Dave....

Channel Zero Returns, Friday March 2nd at 8pm (sharp!)

Channel Zero Presents:

“History's Greatest Loss!"
(1953)
The Official Soviet Film Documentary detailing the Funeral Rites attending on Joseph Stalin!

From the Lavish State Funeral for Lenin in 1924 to the Macabre Burial Rites Accorded to Kim Jong Il in North Korea, Communist Society's have always know how to bury their leaders with obsequious devotion.
But none of those funeral rights ever matched the veneration heaped upon Joseph Stalin at the time of his death in 1953.
It was quite literally the Funeral Rites for the Soviet God of Vengeance!
No less than a feature length documentary was called for to depict all the rites, the groveling praise and the state sponsored grief.

This is a unique historic document, unseen in Boston for Fifty Nine Years!

Friday March 2nd 2012
8pm (Sharp!)
Admission $7 (Cheap!)
The Somerville Theatre
(Micro Cinema)
55 Davis Square
Somerville Ma
617 – 625 – 5700
(In Russian, Subtitled in English)

Channel Zero,Boston’s Cheapest Entertainment Franchise now in it’s sixteenth year of genteel obscurity.
And just try and find us on Facebook, we dare yuh!

A Raquel Welch Film Retrospective???

At the Lincoln Center in New York City????

Oh Sweet Jesus YES they are actually showing "Myra Breckinridge"!


I mean, top that Harvard Film Archive!

221 B Baker Street Rag...

Rejoice serious film fans, Stephen Fry's big fat pasty limey ass is on full display in "Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows"

Who sez, Arthur Conan Doyle cannot be improved upon?!?

My Top Eleven Movies for 2011

I Should thank ghod in heaven above I got out at all this year to see anything.

1.) "The Fighter", I mean who knew Jude Law could do the accent?Mark Wahlberg can barely do the accent and he got his start shoplifting in Dorchester!

2.) "Super": Rainn Wilson and Ellen Page as a pair of "Real life super heroes", I mean what is not to love about that???

3.) "Hobo with a Shotgun" starring Rutger Hauer, the title alone sells it.

4.)"13 Assassins", okay yes a "Seven Samurai"rip off, but then a lot of great cinema has been distilled from the Kurosawa classic down to "Battle Beyond the Stars" starring John Saxon. And besides, "13 Assassins"is the first film I"ve ever seen to use flaming cattle as a battlefield weapon.

5.) City of Life and Death: The "Rape of Nanking" is one of those horrific war stories that gets little play in the west, this is a film that gets a good start on filling in that void.

6.) "Bridesmaids", This one made me laugh, and I"m a "Tough Room" to say the least. And anyway, getting marriage is always a trauma and a burden to the wedding party.

7.) "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" Who knew there was any snap left in those old "Planet of the Apes" garters? Andy Serkis is so good as a revolutionary ape leader in this film, that the whole mishaugas nicely eclipses the turgid Tim Burton remake. A good film that over-writes a bad remake is always aces high in my books.

8.)Contagion: Best science fiction movie I saw this year that contained virtually no real science fiction in it at all. Gwenyth Paltrow's autopsy scene alone deserves an Oscar.

9.) Detective Dee and Mystery of the Phantom Flame: I will take Tsui Hark almost any way I can get him, and if it is his contention that ALL medieval Chinese court functionaries and soldiers can gracefully leap a quarter mile at a time, who the hell am I to contradict him???

10.) "The Guard" Finally Tarantinoir makes it to the Old Sod, trust the Irish in the person of genially corrupt policemen Brendan Gleeson to bring a new cynical angle to the genre.

11.) "Hugo" Martin Scorcese may well "Get Heaven" when he reconfigured parts of Georges Melies "A Trip to the Moon" for 3-D.

Christmas...

That time of year where stern, manly and puritanical measures must be implemented to limit one's exposure to the musical stylings of Kathy Lee Gifford.

Holiday Homonculae?

So a magic black silk topper is all that is necessary to bring Frosty the Snowman to life as the ultimate yuletide children's entertainer?
But does Frosty the SnowMan have a soul???
I mean its a magic hat that grants locomotion and a personality of sorts, but that doesn't imply that Frosty has a metaphysical relationship with the infinite?
Keep in mind the Mighty Golem of Prague, defender of the Jewish Ghetto from the predations of the Holy Roman Emperor, had no soul to speak of. He was a superhuman mass of clay brought to life by the wisest Rabbi in Europe.
Frosty is pretty much a kid friendly Golem....Thus You see how Goyisher Xmas culture samples the sacred tropes of the Jewish People??

Why Robot(s) ?

Lets face it, vampires have been done to death, ditto werewolves. When they descend to the level of "young adult literature" then it is strictly "Katey Bar the Door" as far as I am concerned.
Zombies?
Zombies are all over basic cable, using the exact same template established in "Night of the Living Dead" (1968), George Romero ought to sue!
Frankenstein...lets face it it, Karloff brought him to life, DeNiro buried his artificial ass.
The Mummy? Two words, Brendan Fraser, nuff said true believer!
***
Nope, only robots retain their allure, after all Christmas-Hanukkah-Kwanzaa-Owl Mocking Day is coming, who doesn't wanna get robots as for holiday gifts?!!
And so it is with great pride & Pleasure that Channel Zero (Boston's cheapest entertainment franchise now in it's 16th year of genteel decadent obscurity) returns to the Somerville Theater this Friday December 2nd to screen two "robot rarities" from mid 1960's TV!

1) "The Machine Stops" based on a short story by E.M. Forster, what happens when the all powerful technology on which a lazy decadent future society depends, starts to fail?!

2.) “Little Lost Robot” based on story by Isaac Asimov, robots are very literal minded, never get vexed & tell one to "Get Lost" it puts your space station in a uproar. Introduced by Boris Karloff.


Friday, December 2nd, 8pm sharp!
The Somerville Theatre, Screening Room
Admission Five Bucks Cheap!
55 Davis Square. Somerville Ma 617 625 5700

Oh we've got a fan page on Facebook (Good Luck Finding It)...

"Pan Am"....

has been cancelled. Not even the American Broadcasting Company could prop up Christina Ricci as "The Thinking Man's Sex Symbol".

Okay on to Satellite Radio I guess, surely they can put her over.

The Harvard Film Archive

is actually screening an uber-obscure peplum actioner this Sunday at 4:30pm "The Colossus of Rhodes" starring reformed jailbird Rory Calhoun.
Color me chagrined, up until now, the most obscure sword and sandal classic revived in Boston was Mario Bava's "Hercules in the Haunted World", I should know because Channel Zero damn well revived it!
Well, "The Colossus of Rhodes" IS part of the HFA's Sergio Leone retrospective, this being his first directorial effort...Still between this and all the Italian Fascist propaganda films they ran earlier in the fall one gets the uncomfortable impression that Big Red is lifting ideas from "Boston's Cheapest Entertainment Franchise".
If the HFA starts trafficking in Bad Poetry THEN we will know something is up!
Anyhow, that Leone retrospective is pretty spiffy, they are even screening "Duck You Sucker" (AKA "A Fistful of Dynamite") uncut for those of you who can't get enough suffocating close ups of Rod Steiger's beady little eyes.

If there is a more desolate place on Earth

in October, than Hampton Beach New Hampshire, then I'd like to know about it.

A cement colored sky, a fog with the very cold touch of death on it, an enervating breeze and stinging drizzle...If Edgar Allen Poe's House of Usher existed it'd be a ramshackle seasonal rental on 2nd Street.
The whole landscape is devoid of any life, zombies and seagulls studiously avoid it, the only soundtrack is the insatiable waves.
The day after the End of the World looks like Hampton Beach New Hampshire on or about October 27th of any year in living memory.
The very wind off the ocean can be heard muttering "Ah but it all gets soooo much worse!"

Channel Zero Returns on Friday December 2nd 2011!

YES!
The Rumors are TRUE!

Join us when...

CHANNEL ZERO PROUDLY PRESENTS:

XMAS ROBOTS!!
Nothing says Holiday Cheer quite like automatons run amok!!


Channel Zero rings in the season with everyone’s favorite Christmas Gifts, ROBOTS!! Specifically rare TV adaptations of classic robot themed short stories!

.1) "The Machine Stops" based on a short story by E.M. Forster, what happens when the all powerful technology on which a lazy decadent future society depends, starts to fail?!

2.) “Little Lost Robot” based on story by Isaac Asimov, robots are very literal minded, never get vexed & tell one to "Get Lost" it puts your space station in a uproar. Introduced by Boris Karloff.






Friday, December 2nd, 8pm sharp!
The Somerville Theatre, Screening Room
Admission Five Bucks Cheap!
55 Davis Square. Somerville Ma 617 625 5700
Channel Zero, Boston’s Cheapest Entertainment Franchise now in our Sixteenth Year of Genteel Cinematic Transcendence!
www.channel0.blogspot.com
Check out the Channel Zero the Fan Page on Facebook!

The Barrington State Company heavily

advertised a stage adaptation of Goldman's "Lord of the Flies" this fall.
And very quietly, they subsequently announced that the production was being delayed til 2012.
I wonder what happened?
I'll bet they had casting and logistics issues, minimally you'd need about twenty boys between Middle and Elementary School ages which likely requires tight backstage discipline and a long rehearsal process. To say nothing of navigating the appropriate child labor statutes.
I wonder if this will ever be produced at all...
Of course, stranger things have been adapted for the stage (expl. Moby Dick starring Orson Welles as Captain Ahab)...but they relied on adults as principles.
Well at anyrate, this cuts my visit to the Berkshires down to Shakespeare & Co's "War of the Worlds" which is being billed as a comedy on the "Noises Off" mode.
In other words, no tripod machines.

2011 marks the 70th Anniversary of

the premiere of "Citizen Kane".
And there isn't much I can add to the reams of cyber copy that cluster around this film other than to note that it's main legacy to me, is the enduring power of fiction.
It is not that Orson Welles recounted a thinly veiled life of William Randoph Hearst, it is more to the point that his many fictional additions and revisions somehow told the truth on all of it so admirably.
When Welles' Charles Foster Kane, bloated with power and yet a pathetic failure in love and politics throws a wretched tantrum after his second wife absconds, we feel it to be something someone so great and yet so petty would do under the circumstances.
"Citizen Kane" is full of those moments, so much more vital and true than any smutty palaver about the true original of "Rosebud".
The proof of Welles' particular vision in the rarity of any imitators, when Hollywood wants to do Douglas MacArthur, they don't do a character, based on the four star general, they do the Man as a straight biopic. The same with George S. Patton, Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X and so on down the line.
In each case something is missed I think, fiction can magnify as well as distort.
The prism of sheer invention is very powerful, stop and think Marion Davies is a nice lady who stuck by her man straight into the footnotes of Hollywood, Susan Alexander (AKA Dorothy Comingore) is a character for the Ages.
Alas I guess Hollywood fears loss of a easy marquee' name and can't find anyone with Orson Welles' visionary skillset.

Although, I would pay good money to see Terry Gilliam take a look at an Andy Warhol type character...just for starters.

What is it with DC Comics?

Whenever they manage to navigate the torturous process of adapting one of the characters to the Big Screen, they make breakthrough casting every time....


Josh Brolin as Jonah Hex? No question brilliant casting.

Shee-it, Ryan Reynolds as Green Lantern was a home run, at least til the director shouted "Roll em!"

But be it this or The Green Lantern the films just auto destruct in the third act every time.

Which leads me to the conclusion that you can cast these sonsabitches, but executing a good tight comic book adaptation is an art as much as a science. And more and more, I"m thinking sometimes it's a process of serendipity.
You have to hook in the base and attact casual film goers, you'd think this would be easy, but Hollywood can screw up a two car funeral.
I mean Captain America (Chris Evans) was no better a casting choice than Ryan "Green Lantern" Reynolds, but the Marvel adaptation just clicked with audiences in a way that DC's tentpole summer picture did not.
And that was despite Captain America's lackluster third act which felt cribbed from the Indiana Jones Franchise. The Marvel films though, are building towards something, "The Avengers" their ultimate team up tie in, so even a mediocre Captain America movie moves the ball forward so to speak.
DC Has nothing like this, they spend years negotiating with their corporate parent Warner Brothers, the project passes thru multiple hands, gets made, doesn't ever meet expectation and within six months everyone acts like the film (That EVERYONE Was counting on) never happened.
I mean look what happened to poor Brandon Routh, he is practically an Unperson at this point...ANd don't get me started on that Wonder Woman tv pilot that came and went in a puff of maladroit intentions.
AND DC/Warner Brothers keeps blundering on, hoping that if they throw enough pasta, some of it will stick to the wall.

Look at Henry Cavill, the New Superman, no red briefs (too old fashioned I guess) ...which is a shame since the old trunks hid certain things admirably.

Will any of it work? I Don't know, DC/Warner Brothers seems committed to doing the same thing over and over in their live action feature film comic book adaptations with the expectation of a different result.

Congrats to the Harvard Film Archive,

they have successfully "out obscured" Channel Zero in a genre we thought we had to ourselves, namely propaganda films produced under the auspices of the Italian Fascists.
In their current series build around Italian cinema depictions of "the Risorgimento", they've scored for THREE Mussolini era films, Blasetti's "1860"(1934), De Sica's "A Garibaldean in a Convent" (1942) and "Little Ancient World" once billed as Fascism's answer to "Gone with the Wind".
To think we originally cultivated an interest in Italian Fascist Cinema because the HFA already had access to a wide variety of Nazi era and classic Soviet propaganda titles!
Sheesh there is no keeping up with the Crimson.
Still Channel Zero bares them no malice, the Harvard Film Archive is well positioned with "strong brand identification" to extract the widest possible audience for the most obscure title.
Still, pride if nothing else compels us to remind our audience (all ten of you) that Channel Zero got there first! We screened Carmine Gallone's "Scipio Africanus" (1937) at the Coolidge Corner AND Rossellini's anti communist war movie "The Man with a Cross" (1942).
Now what?
Does North Korea have any good propaganda movies?
Are they willing to dicker?
Stay tuned folks...

To date I roughly calculate that Hollywood has spent

about five million dollars trying to convince the movie going public that Christina Ricci is some sort of thinking man's sex symbol.
Despite cankles, a face like a spoon and being upstaged by Lisa Kudrow in "The Opposite of Sex", now broadcast television is trying to seal the deal for Christina R.
I wish them and the cast of "Pan Am" the best of luck...

Pick of the Week...

Blasetti's Italian Fascist propaganda epic "1860" screening at the Harvard Film ARchive tonight at 9:30pm.
Nazi, Soviet even Chinese Communist film propaganda all get revived locally, but Mussolini and his blackshirts get bupkiss. This is in part due to creative shortcomings in the Italian film industry at the time (they had no Reifenstahl no Eisenstein)and the lateness by which the Fascist regime came to the making of "positive propaganda".
So tonight's show is unique, however let the record show that Channel Zero has already screened such Italian propaganda films as "Scipio Africanus" (once billed as Mussolini's answer to "Triumph of the Will") and Rossellini's "The Man from the Cross" (1942).
But then, we are never envious when some larger institution picks up one of our ideas, the Harvard Film Archive and the like are in a position to exploit more fully what are in the end worthwhile but extremely obscure films.

The Summer in Shakespeare...

Alas I wasn't able to get out to see much this summer, I had to restrict myself once again to Shakespeare & Co's offerings in Lenox.
As usual Tina Packer's artistic progeny did not let me down.
Their Romeo and Juliet was a thorough production with two superlative leads, Suzanne Millonzi & David Gelles.
I have it in my head that R &J is actually one of Shakespeare's problem plays, at least as far as US productions are concerned. By this I mean there is a pronounced tendency to cast the two main leads as close to the textual age of the characters as they can get (which is I believe, 13 and 14).
Thus what they gain in credibility, they often lose in technique relying on players that might not have the necessary acting components to rise to the occasion of what amounts to a Renaissance teen suicide drama.
The other practical result is that inevitably with younger players you end up with a stellar Juliet and a Romeo that at best rises to the level of well meaning mediocrity...And if you aren't careful you leave the aud thinking "what did SHE see in HIM?" as the curtain falls.
happily, S&C "doubled up" a bit on the leads and reaped a good artistic harvest as a result. And just let me take a moment to praise Tod Randolph's scene stealing turn as Juliet's nurse/enabler and what she left untaken was scooped up by Kevin O'Donnell's Mercutio.
Oh and lets not forget Johnny Lee Davenport as Lord Montague..."Mister Thunder and Lightning" never lets us down be it tragedy, history or comedy.
The other notable performance was a small cast version of "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" one of the Bard's lesser comedies but put on with real brio in the Bernstein theater. These players are the apprentices and the trainees, but nonetheless, they were very very good and I am rotten glad I dodged a hurricane to see them.
But then this is Shakespeare & Company they get so very little wrong.

9/11/2001

Today marks the tenth anniversary of that terrible day.

And I suppose for history's sake I should set down my end of the whole catastrophe.

Hell, everyone else is....

As I recall, it was a beautiful mild day in East Cambridge where I was working running a mailroom for a big name software company that was truth be told, very much on the skids even before the coming recession.
I had a raving antisemite for an assistant and was working for a frankly piratical crew of office services contractors, but in those days, I had debts to pay.
I went down to the loading dock to pick up the day's mail, and everyone was gathered around the communal TV, the first tower was already burning.
I think until the second plane hit I was naive enough to believe that it was all a terrible aviation accident of some type. Well soon enough I and the rest of the Western World were disabused of that notion. Having no other thoughts at the moment, I actually brought the mail back upstairs where we sorted it all out and prepped it for distribution.
All the while we watched as clusters of the client company's employees kept slinking out the door.
So it goes without saying that when the Towers both disintegrated, we saw it on Yahoo.com.
By noon the building was deserted except for the aforementioned piratical crew who'd received no instructions to adjourn in the face of national catastrophe.
So as fatuous as it may sound, with death and terrorism and war threatening the Republic, rest assured the mail went out that day.
Eventually our Account Manager crept in and told us both to "haul ass".
I went home, East Cambridge was empty already rumors were rife of new terrorist attacks, weaponized viruses, bombs and hijackings.
And for the rest of the day, I watched the towers disintegrated over and over and over again.
***
If I retain one vivid impression from that clear mild morning a decade ago, is the sheer horror I felt derived from the thought "That all over the country, people are watching their loved ones die live on national television!"
Something about that aspect of it all would appall me, but then that is the core goal of all terrorism when it's practiced on this scale.
***
My other great impression of that time is the essential decency of the American People. When leader's fail and a vacuum is created, the nation itself steps into the gap, burying the dead, clearing the rubble, comforting the bereaved, compensating the surviving victims.
There would be an almost endless series of mistakes made by the country's leaders in the weeks and months and years after 9-11, but the citizenry's "will to democracy" remained unbroken. That is the wellspring of that aforementioned decency, a dictatorship could never survive such a public disaster.
A functioning democracy can survive famine, national catastrophe and humiliation, but even the best and most ruthless dictatorships typically fly to pieces given a hard enough shove.
Recall please, Chernobyl, which more than anything else was a huge rebuke to the myth of Soviet totalitarian super statism.
The best thing I can say about 9-11, is that the USA survived it, democracy survived it, the citizenry and their "will to democracy" survived it.
But then we are supposed to survive these things, to remember, take counsel and pass along that will to democracy to our progeny.
***
And just as a final personal note, I"ll just recall that the infamous Bad Poets Society went off on 9-14 2001 at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education, we never had a bigger more appreciative crowd, the will to democracy indeed.

Steve Soderbergh's "Contagion" (2011)

Is a film for all those old fashioned movie fans out there who long to see Gwyneth Paltrow undergo a cranial autopsy.

And of that isn't enough, Kate WInslet gets zipped into a body bag and neatly dumped into a quicklime pit, truly this is a new Golden Age in Hollywood!

***

Otherwise "Contagion" is a well paced, believable, pathogen thriller with very good acting and the sappiest ending I"ve seen in years.

And no, Ms. Paltrow doesn't git all country on us neither.

Wonder Woman's Obit...

NO it isn't Lynda Carter, I mean Betty Skelton, the daredevil distaff pilot.

I'm impressed with the fact she set a world altitude record in a Piper Cub in her bare feet...
But what really amazes me is that she somehow earned the respect of the original Mercury Seven astronauts who were notably famous for their oinkerish tendencies.
Ah well, in a well run republic she'd a definitely been the First Woman in Orbit, alas that honor had to go to Valentina Tereshkova, a skydiver and a bit of daredevil herself.

G'bye Betty, say howdy to Gus Grissom for us.

Pick of the Week...

Powerful double feature of "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" and "Conan the Barbarian" at the Milford New Hampshire Drive In.
haven't been up there in a while, too bad a hurricane in stalking us....

Strangers in the West or Fear and Roving in Las Vegas...

It is counterintuitive to visit Las Vegas on vacation in high summer, but it is off season there and the room rate is markedly below what I'd be charged for the same stay in the Berkshires.

Everyone is trying desperately to have fun in Las Vegas, happiness amidst such baroque temptation seems impossible so the broad mass of tourists aim for mere fun, and in many cases they fall short even of that.

Its an ancient cliche' but men like to dress down on vacation, women like to dress up, in Vegas therefore one sees elegantly dressed women sipping diet coke thru a straw at a Sbarro's seated across from some unshaved mook in bermuda shorts both busted out like forty niners.

Otherwise, Las Vegas is what happens when career criminals control the zoning board of appeal, the whole city revolves around a five mile stretch of roadway encrusted with casinos.

Aldous Huxley's worst nightmare?
Las Vegas...he anticipated the whole metropolis in "Brave New World".

The Atomic Energy Commission blew so many craters in Nevada with it's above ground nuclear testing that NASA could dual use them to train the moon bound astronauts.

The slot machines in Vegas are unfathomable.

NEVER buy bottled water in the hotels, the mark up is atrocious and suggestive of armed robbery, but your Aquafina from the enterprising homeless on the streets who retail it out of ice filled coolers for $1 a bottle.

Las Vegas, where double entendres go to die.

Only in Las Vegas could the construction of the world's largest Walgreen's be considered a source of community pride.

10 years of this "Classic Las Vegas" horshit and they will be erecting statues to the saint memories of Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano. They already have a memorial to Bugsy Siegel in the courtyard of the Flamingo that artfully avoids any mention of his gangsterism. So there is hope yet for Whitey Bulger. Hell in fifty years they'll be putting up statues to Suge Knight.

In sum you can have a good time in Las Vegas without gambling, but it is also a place you'll never have any pressing need to revisit, unless of course you develop a serious gaming addiction. And of course, here in Massachusetts everyone is burning the midnight oil to harness that impulse and keep it here at home.

"The Devil with Bobby Watson"

Why screen "The Devil with Hitler" (1942)?

Well, there are a number of reasons, it is a comedy very much in the wartime vein of "The Three Stooges" and it stars Bobby Watson an actor whose resemblance to the late Reichs Chancellor is nothing short of uncanny. The photo herein does him no justice, and is posted mostly for comedic effect. When mocking the Fuhrer, Watson gets his essential parvenue essence, the cheap theatrics the cowardice and most of all, a bizarre uncalled for, undeniably funny, and slightly fey Brooklyn accent.
Let the record show that Moe Howard was the first Hitler impersonator to effect a Brooklyn patois, Watson knew a good thing when he heard it.
And let us not forget our supporting cast Joe Devlin as Mussolini a sadly forgotten character player from Hollywood's golden age with more than a touch of Oliver Hardy to him and Alan Mowbray a perpetually exasperated Brit considered good enough to do a few comedy relief turns for John Ford in his day.
Channel Zero screens films like "The Devil with Hitler" in part because they are loaded with a now forgotten Golden Age Tinseltown aristocracy of funny looking character players who one and all had acting chops. Joe Devlin, Bobby Watson, Skelton Knaggs, Rondo Hatton, Shemp Howard, Franklin Pangborn the list could go on for days. All actors heavily typecast but where nonetheless good at their typecasting, we have no comparable modern day phenomenon save SyFy's weekend movie schedule which largely the province of Dean Cain, Tiffany, Debbie Gibson and C. Thomas Howell.
There is a line thru modern history and it's called "The Holocaust", we are on the wrong side of it (although no one can claim to be on the right side of it). Prior to that great barbarous slaughter, it was still possible to see Hitler as "a cheap ham", a blusterly parvenue who had some luck at the outset of the war. Until 1945 or so, you could place Hitler in the same category as say, Louis Napoleon, an arrogant faker whose stupidity was destroying all Europe.
This is the comedic approach that everyone from Charlie Chaplin to Moe Howard and Bobby Watson would take to Hitler.
Then of course, the Final Solution's true nature was exposed to the world, and making Hitler out to be silly seemed naive at best and woefully crass in the worst degree.
In time some other comic versions of Der Fuhrer have come forward, John Cleese or Helge Schneider's neurotic bed wetter from 2007's "My Fuehrer...but its always done with a nervous laugh and a backward glance to 1945.
So it's useful to see how we saw the great enemy of civilization circa 1942, how we mocked him and his cause, what we got right, what we got wrong and what still makes us laugh.
So tell your friends, we are screening "The Devil with Hitler" this Friday, July 22nd at 8pm in the Somerville Theater's video screening room, 55 Davis Square Somerville Ma. 617) 625-5700 Admission $5

I think I owe the Harvard Film Archive an apology

I've been kidding them about "holes" in their schedule this month, to be filled up with notional Charlton Heston or Ray Harryhausen retrospectives (BOTH very goodish ideas still).
But nonetheless the HFA is clearing the boards old school come August and September with a comprehensive Joseph L. Mankiewicz retrospective including a rare big screen revival of "Cleopatra" (1963) (the film that all but annihilated 20th Century Fox), "Suddenly Last Summer" and the original "Quiet American" with Audie Murphy...Among many many others this is the HFA after all they miss but little.
But wait, there is MORE!
A Monte Hellman retrospective which for everyone who wants to see "Two Lane Blacktop" on the big screen along with more eccentric fare like "CockfIghter" and "Iguana" (which is NOT a giant lizard flick trust me!).
Great stuff but it gets even better, when the HFA actually revives "1860" (1934) Alessandro Blasetti's ode to Italian Unification produced under the auspices of Benito Mussolini to get the masses riled up with nationalist fervor. Channel Zero would Kill to screen this movie or any other propaganda films produced during the Italian Fascist era...HFA beat us to it, can't be envious of them either since they know the real worth of the work.
Our only reservation is the notion in the current HFA calendar to the effect that "Blasetti was the most significant Italian film maker to emerge during the 1930's", Channel Zero thinks pride of place belongs to Roberto Rossellini who got his start as the directorial protege of Vittorio Mussolini, Il Duce's mook of a son. But tis' a minor quibble congrats to the HFA for another superlative summer schedule.

Sherwood Schwartz, R.I.P.

The producer behind Gilligan's Island and The Brady Bunch sure loved his cliches and his stereotypes didn't ?
In fact that pretty forms the crux of his humor through out the arc of his career, pound home the orthodoxies like ten penny nails.
Still I admire his work ethic, Bob Denver claimed in his memoirs that he went up to Schwartz's office to discuss some trivial matter on the last day of production during the first season of Gilligan's Island. There he found thirty odd scripts to the second season of Gilligan's Island already written bound and ready to shoot.
And then there is the famous story of the two casts to the Brady Bunch, distaff brunettes and male blondes versus female blondes and brunette men. The latter cast won out, but my ghod it's a prussian file clerk's approach to comedy casting isn't it?
No thought of "Geez I like the brunette Marcia better, lets move her over.."
No, Schwartz survives because of the ubiquity of his re-runs on afternoon television here he is in a very exclusive club along with Gene Roddenberry, Irwin Allen, Barbara Eden, Lucille Ball and Elizabeth Montgomery. Sheer exposure made his programs a paradise for ironyists and retrosexuals, certainly the comedy content was no guarantor of longevity.
So it's unintentionally hilarious to think that local commentator Jon Keller devoted congressionally regulated airtime last night to the argument that Sherwood Schwartz, that Stakhanovite of cliches, was someone a champion of women's rights.
Ironyism indeed.
Still and all that, who knew that puny whiny Bobby Brady had "family annihilator ideations", my money was always on Cindy gotta watch those girls in curls.

Ironclad (2011)

Whoever got the idea to cast skinchy dorky bug-eyed Yank Paul Giamatti as King John of the "Magna Carta" fame, deserves a medal. If you've ever wondered how Paul Giamatti a reliable method actor would play "Ming the Merciless" look no further than "Ironclad" the man rants, raves and chews the scenery like he has gone mad on crystal meth.

I haven't had so much fun watching a berserk historical impersonation since the Glory Days of Rod Steiger playing Napoleon in "Waterloo".
The film itself is lugubrious dreck wallowing in the infamous "First Baron's War" in Englandback in the 1200's. All the battle scenes are ruined by shakey-cam histrionics, Ty Burr got that much right in his review in Friday's Globe, but in Giamatti's performance an over the top gem can be found. "Ironclad" is up at the Danvers Mall, likely it'll be gone by next Friday see it if you can...

The Green Lantern (2011), an autopsy.

If your idea of a superhero extravaganza is two hours of close ups of Ryan Reynold's chin shot in the 3-d with a reverence previously reserved only for Adolf Hitler in "Triumph of the Will", then the Green Lantern is the movie for you.

If your idea of a slam bang summer tentpole franchise is built on a good first act, a middling second act and a third act that depends on a cosmic shitstorm that grunts and groans like Charlie Callas, then the Green Lantern is the movie for you.

If your idea of a great thrill ride night at the movies is watching DC comics botch another no-brainer, where all they had to do was COMPETENTLY rip off Iron Man...then the Green Lantern is the flick for you.

Honest to Rao, I give up, DC Comics seems to be on the Biblical high road to annihilation, they can assemble a good cast around a sure fire property (as was the case here, outwardly Ryan Reynolds was born to play Green Lantern) but then the script and the direction just auto destruct...Every god damned time!
Now I hear the geniuses behind this film are tasked to "Re-Launch" DC's line of comic books in September, all starting with new #1's, even Action Comics (til now in continuous publication since 1938!), with brains like this at work, they'll be on relief by Christmas.
DC probably makes a million dollars a month off of comic book sales in total, maybe one and a half, if I'm to be generous. So it just makes me laugh that a misfire like "Green Lantern" made more money in one day (and will be marked down a failure still) than the whole of the DC comic line makes in a year.
Comics aren't dying but they are becoming a niche market, and in the case of super hero comics, it is a niche market with an aging fan base. Now those characters all have universal appeal (put up a billboard to Green Lantern or Batgirl in Moscow or Buenos Aires or Johannesburg and everyone will recognize those characters immediately)...but the primary means to consume said universally known characters is limited to floppy comics with sales in the range of 20 to 50,000 books per month. So I'm thinking this is not a sustainable situation, not when you are producing misfires like "Green Lantern" and depending on them to pull along your staggering line of floppies a few more years.
What comes next I do not know I doubt I will like it whatever it is.

Punchlinez Part II

"I keep tryin' ta think, but nuthin' happens!"

"Remember you are fighting for this woman's honor which is more than she ever did!"

"Mice!"

"Watch out for that Tree!"

"If I could walk that way I wouldn't need talcum powder!"

"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb!"

"It Ain't Wendell Willkie!"

"It was a woman that drove me to drink and I never had the common decency to thank her!"

"You knew this job was dangerous when you took it".

"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work... I want to achieve it through not dying."