"Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked" by Chris Matthews A Mercifully Brief Review

I think, you can literally whisper the word "bipartisanship" into Chris Matthews' ear and he will immediately smile with pavlovian expedition and make an emission in his pants. Seriously, I am not joking, the Man is Love with that very word, it evokes a Lost World full of hearty political dinosaurs of all political persuasions who somehow "stopped fighting" after six pm and became best buddies, drinking & laughing together. That, to Chris Matthews is somehow the very essence of Good Governance...It is utter nonsense but he believes it the way the Oracle of Delphi believed in the Benign Reign of Zeus the Thunderer. Which brings us to his latest book a pompous work detailing the manly bipartisan dealings between President Ronald Reagan and then US House Speaker Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill in the 1980 thru 1986 period. Today's columnists tend to reflexively believe that "bipartisan solutions" are the best for The Nation as a whole and as a consequence, the Nation is Merely One Concession Away From the Eschaton. Thats an easy formulation when governance is divided between the two parties, but it also conceals the fact that from the git go one party almost always has the political edge and may agree to bipartisan solutions whilst the other usually has no choice but to negotiate. That was very much the case in 1981 thru 1986, Reagan had a few extra aces politically, a policy of engagement was the only option open to O'Neill. He'd a been much more truculent if the democrats controlled the US Senate, likewise if the Speaker's numbers were even a hair closer in the House Reagan could've have rolled him sans niceties. So this "bipartisanship" that Matthews' worships so avidly, has always been a tactical option, tied to the temporary political calculus and routinely abandoned when the winds are again favorable. It also gets trotted out in wartime and in moments of National Emergency...other than that, it is much praised and little used and for good reason, parties should only cooperate under compulsion, anything else is quite really in keeping with the true essence of democracy which is to paraphrase Rumsfeld, "messy". And it was meant to be messy by the founding fathers. Bipartisanship is NOT and never has been the natural default position of US Politics per se...and "regression to the mean" is a pretty bloody political spectacle indeed. But you can't tell that to Chris Matthews he thinks all the joshing around Reagan did with O'Neill meant something... And that is Chris Matthews' core problem he has always been a vain pompous vaguely ignorant man, very full of himself. He likes to pretend he is a liberal, if he is then he a liberal with no discernible theory of power and that makes him little more than a jobber for movement conservatism. Matthews' loved O'Neill and O'Neill's Brand of Politics back in 1982 just as he Loved George Bush Jr's Manliness in 2002 when Iraq fell...If you have No Theory of Power than almost anyone's exercise of power looks right and just and necessary.

Escape Notes (1970 Version)

Dr. Timothy Leary's Initial Escape Plan from the California Men's Colony at San Luis Obispo in 1970 apparently called for Ten Spiritually Ascendent Men to gather in a circle around the late Harvard Psychiatrist and under propitious astrological circumstances "center on cosmic consciousness". Leary would then dematerialize and appear as a plaintiff before "The Blessed One", who being moved by Leary's martyrdom, would then intervene in the physical universe to bust all and sundry out of The Slams. I offer this merely as a cautionary tale of the perils inherent on living in a universe that does not reward much in the way of purely magical thinking.

E is for Ersatz or Rebecca Cathcart Monet Strikes a Blow for Verisimilitude!

"Authenticity..." breathed the aerial aesthete Rebecca Cathcart-Monet into the phone. "Beg pardon..." I rejoined. "It is what THEY ALL crave...artists, art galleries, dealers, auctioneers, collectors....auth-en-ticity" she whispered. "Duly noted...." I began. "Art Forgers!" continued The Aviatrix with the Mostest "They take advantage of the cult of the authentic...ironic no?" "I guess...." I offered uncertain as to Rebecca's meaning. "Meet me at the Springfield Art Museum tomorrow, there is a special exhibit of famous art forgers, including the Matisse fakes of Elmyr de Hory!" "Oh Elmyr..." I muttered recalling with the simplest nostalgia his star turn in Orson Welles' "F for Fake". Rebecca continued, "It is called "Intent to Deceive" its the sort of a program that doesn't come around on the institutional circuit all that often!" "True dat" muttered I recalling Rebecca's stint as an art appraiser and onetime auctioneer. "Oh look up a nice decommissioned landing strip for me and my Antonov An-2 willya!" *** *** Sure enough, I found Ms Cathcart-Monet a nice war surplus landing strip by the waters of the Connecticut River and played the careful chauffeur and conveyed our heroine to the Michele & Donald D'Amour Museum of Fine Arts, wherein a unique exhibit is currently being offered of master art forgeries from the aforementioned Elmyr de Hory, as well as Mark Landis, Han van Meegeren, Eric Hebborn & John Myatt. For the most part these are men with serious artistic chops allied with a strong technical bent, sufficient skills in fact to outwit the experts that stand guard over the world's artistic legacy. That is what makes this lot so interesting, it was never enough to paint a picture even a sublime forgery of one of Picasso's masterworks, it had to pass an exacting technical muster of "authentication"...and that required MacGyverish levels of enterprise. Hans van Meeregen,for example mixed bakelite into his paints and completely foxed the the standard regime for verifying the age of an alleged masterwork. Elmyr de Hory was a self taught expert in sources of old canvasses and aged paper, perfect components for world class fakes (one of which made it all the way into the collection of the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard though never actually displayed). And it is this very fetish for authenticity that drives the whole art market, it is also the very thing the enterprising forger exploits for his or her own gain. Rebecca remarked that most of the featured felons had a grievance of one type or another, they painted in outdated styles or perhaps did not love the classics enough to refrain from cashing in. Certainly almost all of them wallowed in a peculiar type of false consciousness, wherein they took pride in theirir art forgeries making fools of the so called experts and their alleged elitism. In fact, Eric Hebborn was himself an expert, who often authenticated other works of art and clearly used his own elite knowledge to corrupt institutional art collections the world over. Rebecca remarked that Elmyr in particular was a Homosexual and Jewish, he was perfectly prepared to suffer to ensure his own survival in Hitler's Europe but it was for damn sure he wasn't going to suffer for his art...and so he painted fake Matisse's and ersatz Picasso's...and kept it up thru the late 1960's virtually flooding Europe with spurious artworks while he lived the good life on the island of Ibiza. His neighbor penniless writer Clifford Irving wrote his biography once Elmyr's cover was blown, which likely led to Irving's entirely spurious phony Howard Hughes autobiography which in turn brought all and sundry to the throne of Orson Welles and his last film the incomparable "F For Fake". "But they all must have been doing something right" muttered Rebecca, "they all got a gallery show at the D'Amour Museum of Fine Arts!" "Art is a lie that tells the truth" I said "This lot though, needs needs that truth-telling special! This is what you get when you puff up authenticity (a much battered word) into a virtue as opposed to mere honesty". And with that and flip of her trademark orange scarf, Rebecca grinned waved & took to the skies in her antique Antonov An-2...I bowed solemnly and beat a slow retreat up Route 91 North when would we meet again?

Apropos of Nothing....

but the Golden Autumn of Bull Moose Republican Progressivism was likely in the summer of 1920. Amiable Blatherskite Warren Gameliel Harding had been given the GOP nomination for President by the infamous "Smoked Filled Room"(composed mostly of ward healers, thugs and senatorial hacks of octogenarian vintage). Known mostly for his backslapping bonhomie, Harding needed a VP, and he offered the job quite spontaneously to Hiram Johnson the wild man Progressive Senator from California. Johnson in his day had been Teddy Roosevelt's nominee for Vice President on the breakaway Bull Moose ticket in 1912. In the interim, he'd been elected as GOP Senator from California, he was in every sense of the word a maverick, back when it was a cause not a brand. And Johnson he was the King of Causes, he favored old age pensions, unemployment insurance, bank regulation, a minimum wage, the eight hour day and government regulation of banks, railroad and anything else Big and Malevolent. Johnson though, was a xenophobe and a bit of a humorless prig, he intensely disliked the easygoing conservative Harding and his his backers in the "smoked filled room", he turned Harding down and thus missed out on the one remaining chance for Bull Moosery to achieve ascendence in the GOP...for if he had said yes, he'd a become President in September 1923 when Harding's heart gave out in San Francisco. Instead the GOP "Base" rose in reactionary revolt all its own and installed the cheap-ass Governor Calvin Coolidge of Massachusetts as it's Vice Presidential Nominee...the rest is history. This would be quite literally the national debut of the fabled "GOP Base" like Dr. Fu Manchu though, they would be heard from again. Hiram Johnson though, went on as the Senator's Maverick Maximus, a progressive power house, isolationist and xenophobe par excellence unto the last. Symbolically he died on the same day that Hiroshima was bombed in 1945...and by then the GOP was fully embedded with the whole notion of "Pointing with Pride, 100% Americanism, Low Taxes, High Yields, The Gallows,The Lash, Dry Sundays & No Public Improvements". And they've stuck to that to this very day...

2014 Academy Award Palaver...

Oscar Forecast: (since for once I saw most of the Best Picture Nominees)... If I had to guess, I think its a horse race between "The Dallas Buyers Club" & "12 Years a Slave"....though my personal preference is "Nebraska". I think "American Hustle" & "The Wolf of Wall Street" are too much fun and too pulpy to win out over the heavy dramas. "Captain Phillips" is naught but a competent Biopic buttressed by two strong performances(Barkad Abdi was amazing, Hanks has to squeak by with being merely superlative). I doubt "Nebraska" will win, which is a shame because when is Bruce Dern ever gonna be in that room again? At the very least the fallback position dictates Dern win Best Actor and if there is a Ghod of Mercy and Justice in Heaven Above then June Squibb should win for Best Supporting Actress as well. My gut is is the likely best actor winner tonight...Cate Blanchett for Best Actress (Sandra Bullock as a possible dark horse). As for Best supporting actors, its a toss up in my mind between Barkad Abdi and Jonah Hill...both were strong performances, both deserve it in terms of leveraging interesting projects going forward. Okay thems my predictions likely all wrong...

Stalingrad (2013)

Sell The House, Sell the Car, Sell the Children and Defy the very Storm King Himself, but for the love of Ghod PLEASE see "Stalingrad" (2013) a new Russian film whose devotion to bombast brought tears to my eyes! Truly only a member of the Bondarchuk Family, one Fedor Bondarchuk, could direct a film this unsubtle! For surely, didn't Sergei Bondarchuk, Fedor's father once make my favorite war film of all time? "Waterloo" (1970) starring Rod Steiger as Napoleon Bonaparte in a performance that eschewed scenery chewing in favor of swallowing the sets whole. But Stalingrad ahh Stalingrad, not a single original line, character or set up in one hundred and thirty one minutes as predictable as a stopped clock, for surely there is virtue in connecting the dots The Right Way. And that is Stalingrad's saving grace, it is confidently asserts all the old shibboleths and dresses them up with all the CGI, gore and carnage as the market can bear. And what the hell, the performances are all first rate, the women in particular Mariya Smolnikova & Yanina Studilina stand out. As the last of the combatants of that war are summoned to The Final Muster, there is a emotional need to revisit the ancient truths and cherished cliches...and there is some strange attraction to the Second World War, has any other war within or without living memory spawned so many movies? Virtually every single major or minor battle therein has been memorialized via film adaptation. I mean top that, Spanish American War....

Many thanks to

Ed Symkus who, after nineteen years, finally gave Channel Zero some positive press. Hell the last time our sainted film series even got a mention it was from a nasty NYT reporter who was inexplicably slumming it in Brookline Mass. It was his central thesis as I recall that our onetime screening of a Ritz Brothers Comedy constitutes unsubtle racism. So anway...kudos and thanks to Ed S. who managed to make me soundalmost coherent. And we are back at the Somerville Theatre 2nite at 8pm with an epic screening of "Lemonade Joe", 2014 is gonna be a fund year for us, drop on by an' see da doings...

"Lemonade Joe" (1963)

Ah yes, Cold War Czechoslovakia's Greatest Singing Cowboy Anti Coca-Cola Movie! In fact, "Lemonade Joe" started out as a series of short stories goofing on the ubiquitous soft drink Coca Cola from local humorist Jiří Brdečka (himself a frequent collaborator with pre-Steampunk film director, Karel Zeman) which defaulted out to a animated film, stage play and finally a motion picture in 1964. Impossibly straitlaced Teetotaler cowboy hero "Lemonade Joe" rides into the drunken western town of Stetson City to break the grip of Demon Rum. But is he a comical abstinence hero on horseback...or the agent of a certain pushy soft drink corporation? We tend to forget these days that the stolid Bolsheviki of the Warsaw Pact could indeed get as campy and zany as they liked, as long as they made fun of the "Imperialists". And who else to direct a film like this but Oldrich Lipsky, as dependable a director of comedies as could be tolerated by a totalitarian system? He was certainly adept at parodying officially proscribed western genres...westerns later on Lipsky would take a swipe at horror films and the detective genre. Ah but the rules were looser in Czechoslovakia,mostly because then Partei Secretary Dubchek was trying to give "socialism a human face"...his efforts didn't stand up for long though. Moreover like East Germany, Czechoslovakia was a "front line states" and under some ideological pressure from NATO...they had to come up with product that pushed back against the western zeitgeist. Thus..."Lemonade Joe" a film that used the western genre (itself an American Creation) as a means to satirize the Marxist Bugaboo of Corporate Imperialism. And again, it's just fascinating to me, to see millions of hours of particular entertainment genres beamed out into the world from the USA, genres that bounced off various nationalities and came back to us "homaged" and or "revised"....this time as Marxist Propaganda. Anyway this is Channel Zero's next screening...check it out tell your friends...A Communist Cowboy Movie! "Lemonade Joe" (1964) Friday February 28th 8pm (Sharp!) The Somerville Theatre, Micro Cinema 55 Davis Square Somerville Ma Admission $8 (Cheap!) Check out our fanpage on Facebook! By The Way, We've been told this particular film hasn't played in Boston since it's original run at the Brattle Theatre in the 1960's!

Boltie is GAY??!!!!

Impossible!!! Otherwise... Ellen Page decloseted herself on Valentine's Day, which is what it took for this to rate as news doncha know... Hell, who am I to talk? I'm still shocked to hear that Bruce Willis is straight...

Heard a rumor that...

The WWE was locked into negotiations to bring back Bruiser Maximus Bill Goldberg into the Squared Circle. Normally I never traffic in hearsay...but my source was overheard in a very reputable Comic Book Shop...I mean the veracity is unimpeachable right?

The Revenge of Aristotle....

My Good Friend and Longtime Collaborator Jon Haber has completed a bachelor's degree in philosophy in just one year entirely thru the agency of MOOCs, Massive On Line Courses...literally a college education you can download. Herein he details some of his adventures for Slate.Com. MOOCs are very controversial to be sure, there is a high drop out rate, and the nature of the final degree, the proverbial sheepskin is ambiguous to say the least. But that is what intrigues me to say the least. Much of education today, is merely training to enact a series of economic relationships, much of the palaver about education at the level of legislation is intimately linked a malign notion that a "good education" ends with "a good job". In effect education policy has been corrupted by the entirely dubious notion that "a good education" is a nice painless way to redistribute income that all the political factions can back sans demure. But MOOCs, maybe maybe might be a way around that whole edifice...restore scholarship to it's throne, or at least give the scholar in training some new options...in some ways the ala carte aspect of MOOCs reminds me of medieval universities where squads of students simply rented professors to deliver lectures. The formless nature of the ultimate degree is also intriguing...at what point do you stop? At what point are you certified, indeed what is the point to a terminal degree save to provide a vital datapoint on one's resume? THAT to me is the subversive part of MOOCs, the degree datapoint could well end up completely decoupled from any purely vocational context. Well, that would be my hope anyway...likely Veblen's "Regression to the Mean" will take hold and the whole thing will become one more overhyped "vocational training opportunity". Seems a shame...because all this is a marvelous opportunity for everyone out there who wants to study astronomy, gothic architecture and or German Expressionism divorced once and for all from market considerations in a "safe space" so to speak. At the very least the extremly competitive cost factor (Haber collected his "degree" for almost nothing), rebalances the cost of education scales very nicely in a era that may well be facing a "tuition bubble". I am FOR almost anything that adds to the arsenal of today's budding scholar, anything that gives him or her better faster or cheaper access to Real Learning, is aces high in my books. Anyhow, Jon Haber has struck a blow, a philosophy degree in one short year....think about that, choosing your classes with complete freedom and pursuing pure academic excellence from a pure love of knowledge, truly Aristotle would be proud.

Listening to Aaron Eckhart on Satellite Radio...

blathering on and on and on with respect to the Intense Method Style Preparation he brought to the table in order to create the character of Frankenstein's Monster in the upcoming epic "I, Frankenstein". I mean not for nothing, but never has the Stanislavsky Method been deployed with more exactitude on behalf of a movie everyone knows is a perfect 100 megaton bomb! If the studio thought this bad baby was gonna do business they'd a released it six weeks ago and reaped the Holiday Season Harvest...but no, it's January debut, a sure sign of a wreck in the making. I suppose the moral is, even bad movies deserve the application of a rigorous acting process....

Channel Zero Returns, Friday, February 28th, 8pm!!

With an Epic Screening of "Lemonade Joe" (1964) that impossibly virtuous cowboy rides into the drunken brawling western town of Stetson City intent on saving the locals from the ravages of Demon Liquor! But is he a comical Abstinence Hero on Horseback or the subtle agent of a certain soft drink company? This film may well be Czechoslovakia's Greatest Anti-Capitalist, Pro-Temperance, Two Fisted Singing Cowboy Movie!! (Subtitled in English) Friday, February 28th @ 8pm (Sharp!) The Somerville Theatre (Micro-Cinema) 55 Davis Square Somerville Ma 617-625-5700 Admission $8.00 (Cheap!) Channel Zero, Now in Our Nineteenth Year of Genteel Video Obscurity!

Rest In Peace, Mike Vraney

Sad news comes to us of the untimely death of Mike Vraney, film scholar, television impresario, fearless young showman and maximum leader of Something Weird Video. Mike was a friend of the cinema in every sense of the word, he recalled everyone from Dave Friedman to Frank Henenlotter from an undeserved obscurity. He dug thru dumpsters, he distributed long lost ephemeral films, if there is an overlooked sexploitation film out there, "Something Weird: has it in their catalogue. Any genres Mike Vraney didn't revive he created. I had some dealings with Mike on a casual basis down thru the years, I'd see him at conventions he was unfailingly patient and courteous to one and all, stumping him was a challenge of biblical dimensions, he may not have access to the titles I threw out there, but he knew all about them all the same. Talent and zeal like that we need for it is always in short supply....

My Top Movies for 2013

I initially thought this was gonna be a short list, as bad a year as it was though, a solid phalanx of quality managed to break on thru the current appalling zeitgeist. So in no order of preference, my top movies for 2013.... The Great Gatsby: Leonardo DiCaprio is the great striver of modern cinema, in every single one of his movies he plays someone who desperately wants to exceed his own modest circumstances...so all glitz and decadence aside who else you gonna get to play Fitzgerald's quintessential jazz age nouveau riche social climber? This is The End: Its a tedious axiom with me that Hollywood hovers on the brink of annihilation...the canary in the coal mine will always be when the comedies start becoming bloated self indulgent junk. Thank Ghod Seth Rogen and crew haven't yet gone over the hump, if and when they do, then we will know for sure it's time to lock the bunker doors behind us. Much Ado About Nothing: Joss Whedon is ace's high with me, anyone willing to whomp together a Shakespeare adaptation out of bits and pieces shot in his own home is a Man of Destiny. Besides when is anyone gonna cast Amy Acker and Alex Denisof in serious classical parts any time soon?? Plimpton! Starring George Plimpton as Himself! Granted the documentary glossed over Plimpton's acceptance of CIA money at the Paris Review...On the other hand anyone will to go a round with Archie Moore in all his martial glory whilst weeping all the while well deserves a lavish biographical documentary. The Heat One thing I like about Sandra Bullock, she knows that comedy requires pacing & inspiration and as such she has never been reticent to let someone else(say Melissa McCarthy)share the limelight when laughs are on the line. Its a lesson a lot of serious All Up Male Comedians have yet to learn.... Pacific Rim: If I had to pick one monster movie this summer, I'll go with Del Toro's every time. My only regret is, it didn't make anywhere near the money that The Man of Steel or Iron Man III or even The Lone Ranger made.... We're the Millers: Even as the rest of Tinseltown crumbled, forty year old comedienne's staged a comeback, Bullock and now Jen Aniston whose aging stripper turn in the above drug comedy could have been lame but instead sparkled...female experience seemed to have mattered last summer for once. The World's End: Repeat After Me, SIMON PEGG IS OUR LAST HOPE...and if he can't do it, NICK FROST IS REALLY REALLY OUR LAST HOPE!! Kick Ass 2: This was literally the only sequel I could get behind all year long, in a perfect world Chloe Grace Moretz would graduate to a "Hit Girl" franchise all her own, something guaranteed to give movie critics the Screaming Bedspins. But truly Ms Moretz et al have a gift for serious movie mayhem that puts them way past the self indulgent pikers cluttering up all these goddamned Big Ticket Superhero Movies.... The Way Way Back: This was no "Moonrise Kingdom", but it is a bravura performance by Sam Rockwell and a sort of drunken love letter to the vanishing world of South Shore down market tourism. At long last Marshfield Ma gets it's close up. Gravity: Microgravity gets its close up too...who knew a straight version of modern space travel could be this exciting? Who knew George Clooney could really play it straight? I mean how long has it been since he wasn't wallowing in self parody?? And Sandra Bullock? Amazing, how did she wax those stems in zero gee??? All is Lost The Last Great Silent Film Performance and it is courtesy Robert Redford....I mean Chaplin was noisier in "Modern Times" for Ghod's Sake! Bad Grandpa Johnny Knoxville makes me laugh, I can pay him no higher praise. Normally I don't care for Jackass when they do setpiece sketches, but this was thoroughly inspired from start to finish....kudos to Knoxville's faux grandson, Jackson Nicoll the kid has a poker face worthy of Keaton. Kill Your Darlings: Second best straight drama I saw all year. Lucien Carr's story, he First Beatnik, the Great Introducer, hooked Kerouac up with Burroughs and Ginsberg and then, his task done, he murders his tutor and ends up a suburbanite...A quintessential American Story...and the only reason it got made is because a High Profile British Actor named Daniel Radcliffe yearned to play a young Allen Ginsberg Nebraska: BEST drama I saw all year...and sadly it was my life for the past four years one way or another, it's also Bruce Dern's Legacy and his last best bid for legitimacy. Saving Mister Banks: Only the Disney Organization has the chutzpah to cannibalize one of their classic musicals (one I myself never cared for) to create a much darker musical that I did like...I even bought into the tacked on Happy Ending! The Wolf of Wall Street: I think this is Scorcese's idea of a Tarantino Movie, loud self indulgent, loaded with amazing performances...it doesn't break much new territory but it's a helluva ride and Leonardo DiCaprio's second manic striver in less than a year...Oh and Jonah Hill, he is has all of John Belushi's raw acting talent without the catastrophic personal choices...he will go far I assure you all.

You know what I like about "Saving Mr. Banks" (2013) ?

the Disney Organization managed to fashion a compelling musical out of a classic musical ("Mary Poppins" circa 1964) that I myself never really cared about... The gimmick is simple, Poppins' author P.L. Travers (played my Emma Thompson in another one of her Bitchy Brit turns) travels to LA to co-write the screenplay to the Disney adaptation and must endure the sentimental palmyness of Tom Hanks's Walt Disney and his creatives all the while remaining desperate even paranoid to protect her characters who are of course heartbreakingly real to her. Its a pair of tight performances from Thompson and Hanks, and the supporting cast (Bradley Whitford, BJ Novak, Jason Schwartzman and Paul Giamatti) all shine throughout. My only complaint is that this being a Disney "Behind the Scenes" drama/comedy/musical it must have a happy ending...Thompson's P.L. Travers seems to be reconciled to the resulting film, the real P.L. Travers HATED "Mary Poppins" and handed down a firm fatwah against any further film adaptations of her famous flying nanny by anyone at all. Oh and just a quick shout out to a younger player Annie Rose Buckley who plays P.L. Travers as a kid growing up in Australia she has almost all her scenes with Colin Farrell (as Travers' dissolute father) and she holds her own with aplomb.

They are officially remaking "Gilligan's Island" for the big screen...

Details can be duly sussed here. It's late and I'm tired and outrage and disdain is a cheap commodity indeed...so I'm gonna confine my remarks to two points. It was always my theory that Gilligan was deliberately screwing up the castaways many many escape attempts in order to evade the draft and skip out on combat service in Viet Nam. Look at the re-runs if'n you don't believe me, Gilligan is easily of draft age, no college deferment, no dependents, he sure as shit wasn't no clergyman, prime cannon fodder back in the Imperial High Noon of the Great Society. No wonder he was always wrecking the rafts and messing up the various signaling devices built by The Professor... Now if I was writing the notional script for the upcoming film, I'd reconfigure the island so that all the other castaways have various sins on their consciences...crimes sufficient to sent to that Tropical Purgatory with no less a warden that that deceptive ineptoid, Gilligan. Its an idea that draws a bit from Patrick McGoohan's "The Prisoner", cuz drawing from the original sitcom would be an exercise in well worn futility at this point.

Sooooo...Warner Brothers has cast

an Israeli Actress as Wonder Woman in their upcoming Big Budget catastrophe "Batman versus Superman" (or whatever the hell it is called this week). Regardless of the sheer status upgrade awarded to the Descendants of Abraham for finally grabbing off a solid piece of the DC Comics Big Screen Universe, I have to wonder just what effect this will have on the Arab Boycott? Does this mean mass burnings of Justice League Comics? DVDs run over by hijacked steamrollers, sales plummeting of star spangled spankies in Beirut? I dunno...Certain Parties have a historic choice, wallow mindless anti-semitic obstructionism or just possibly sit back and watch a Girl Next Door from Haifa bench press an SUV...Sadly my money is on the former, it's a just a question of what embarrassing form it will take.

Pick of the Month

The Redoubtable Harvard Film Archive is screening "Alexander the Great" (1956) starring Richard Burton on Sunday December 22nd at 7pm. People forget Richard Burton got his start in sword and sandal costume epics and this film in particular, represents an overblown high point to a genre too often dismissed. This is also one of those titles that Channel Zero would love to revive, but of course we do not have access to the HFA's Big Indoor Screen or their reliable fan base for that fact. But then we never ever indulge spite towards the Big Players, they at least have the resource to maximize a rare title's audience potential.

"Nebraska" (2013) or "Bruce Dern's Last Stand"...

I'm gonna keep it simple, RUN don't walk to the nearest cinema to see this film on the Big Screen before it is unjustly and prematurely consigned to DVD/Download oblivion. Because in the final analysis, this movie represent's actor Bruce Dern's Last Stand, an epic characterization of a sad Alzheimer's addled retiree Will Grant's meandering trek across Montana and Nebraska in search of a spurious million dollar sweepstake's winning. Sad witholding and broken by life, this part may well be Dern's Legacy, a dessicated American King Lear eloquent with every haunted thousand yard stare, with everything he doesn't say. Guided in turn, to his inevitable destination by his son Will Forte who is in every way Lear's Fool desperate to both keep his father rooted in reality while trying to keep the old man's fragile illusions alive. "Nebraska" is a sort of homage to every son with depleted aging broken father, I lived this story for three long years until last January brought the whole journey to it's end...I can pay this movie no higher praise. In fact I'm not sure there is a single off performance anywhere in the film especially among it's heavy allotment of older actors, in particular June Squibb as Dern's deceptively bitchy overwrought wife and Stacy Keach as Will Grant's gamey former partner. Hell they even found a spot for Ron Howard's dad Rance Howard.... In a Well Run Republic, Bruce Dern would be a cinch for the Best Actor Nomination at the upcoming Academy Awards...for that fact June Squibb could easily grace the Best Supporting Actress category...but if the IMDB is to be believed the film cost $13m to make and has garnered about a half million in ticket receipts to date. I have a feeling that Bruce Dern's legacy will not garner the recognition it deserves...this is a shame because the man has paid his dues ten times over starting out with Roger Corman and then soldiering thru a long list of movie psychos and epic hippies. You'd think he'd a earned the consideration at the very least. Well I am afraid this time mere transcendent excellence will have to do....

Up until today...

The Boston Globe was being thoughtful and tactful in reporting the 50th Anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination. And then today, via the medium of a disparate collection of remarks made by the Late Robert F. Kennedy, Neil Swidey and Bryan Bender managed to read all the major assassination conspiracy tropes into the narrative with the single mindedness of an Oliver Stone. The whole grim conspiracy cast list is trotted out, Jimmy Hoffa, Santos Trafficante, Castro, Khrushchev etc etc. Bender & Swidey even manage to drag out that old dismal canard to the effect that Lee Harvey Oswald did not have the marksmanship skills to successfully shoot anyone from the Texas Book Depository... Good Ghod doesn't anyone read the Warren Report Anymore? Did Messrs Swidey & Bender?? Here...These are some relevant pages to the discussion, but on the simplest level of Occam's Razor, if there was a conspiracy, wouldn't they have bought Oswald a better rifle and given him more shooting range time? No. Why? Because there was No Conspiracy to Kill JFK, Oswald had method motive, opportunity, the advantage of lax ill thought out presidential protection and the incalculable advantage of sheer surprise. Maybe Oswald's USMC marksmanship scores weren't exceptiona, but there he was shooting over 500 yards under unrecorded conditions, in Dealey Plaza it was half that range with pristine weather and a good scope on his firearm. Lastly, I just wanna make one general point as a student of history, no conspiracy iterates complete concealment over time, sooner or later somebody climbs their perch, shakes out their feathers and sings like a canary. The fact that this hasn't happened is no tribute to the cloak around the alleged conspiracy, but rather an indicator that there never was a conspiracy to begin with, no shoe left to drop guys. And reading all this into the Sunday Globe via Bobby Kennedy's doubts, fears and grief, himself a man who cannot answer for any of it...is plainly sneaky and a little grotesque. Bad Show...Bad Show.

Oh and...

Garen Daly, that Axiom of Local Independent Cinema, is staging a live reading of The Mercury Theatre on the Air's famous 1938 "War of the Worlds" adaptation tomorrow night at the Regent Theater in Arlington Ma,. This is one that scared three million radio listeners into believing superintelligent octopi from Mars were invading New Jersey...and incidentally put Orson Welles on the map. Tickets are a mere $25 and I am told the cast is stellar in every way...I only wish I could go, alas I have a commitment to assist my ninetyish mother distributing free chocolate to the local costumed incubi.

My Boss brought her newborn to work today...

For all and sundry to admire. I got up to make the necessary praiseful noises, the tyke took one look at me, narrowed his eyes and promptly and loudly defecated himself with a look of solemn contemplation. Which I interpret as a sign direct from Divine Providence that "dying alone" was the right call all along. :D

Less than Forty Eight Hours Before...

I assist my ninety year old Mother distributing processed sugar treats to the local incubi, I am given to think that the current vogue for Zombies seems to be coyly sublimated "family annihilator" fantasization. I mean its okaaaa-ay to shoot your spouse and children if they've become undead flesh eating ghouls...that and all the profligate anarchic gun worship, for some members of the aud it is a win-win situation.

I stood by the shore in Rye NH Yesterday....

And watched as a nigh perfect Golden Indian Summer departed New England like a rat fleeing barnyard arson.

"Gravity" (2013) Directed by Alphone Cuaron

A veritable love letter joyously celebrating the subtle pleasures of the Soyuz TM space capsule And Sandra Bullock's legs. Seriously though, how did she wax those stems in zero gee? Y'know she is only three years older than the Soyuz Spacecraft itself? Sorta makes you think don't it? *** All snarkage aside, this is an amazing motion picture, told with as much realism as the restrictions of storytelling would allow...Clooney is his usual suave able self, and who knew Bullock could ever play a sort of straight version of the proverbial "Reluctant Astronaut"? See it in 3-D, I know that gets overhyped and overused these days, but for once the gimmick is worth the money.

A final reminder....

Channel Zero (Boston's Cheapest Entertainment Franchise) will return tomorrow night with an epic screening of "Ferry Cross the Mersey" (1965) starring Liverpool's own Gerry and the Pacemakers in their own homage to "A Hard Day's Night". Why this film? Here at Channel Zero we are great believers in giving forgotten franchises and film genre's "Their Day in Court". "Ferry Cross the Mersey" was one among of a number of "Hard Days Night" homages that provided I think the evolutionary impetus to day's musical mockumentary style...What does "Magical Mystery Tour" and "A Mighty Wind" both have in common? They were both improvised...Although to be fair, The Beatles could have used an assist from Messr's Harry Shearer, Michael McKean and Christopher Guest. But I digress.... There are fourteen songs in this film some of whom are from unjustly forgotten British Invasion acts like "The Fourmost" and distaff vocalist, Cilla Black. All of whom cut their teeth on the Dance Hall Circuit with John Paul George and Ringo. And last there is an engaging performance from the Pacemakers own frontman Gerry Marsden who scours mid sixties Liverpool looking for the main chance that will elevate his band to stardom... Friday October 18th 8pm (sharp) The Somerville Theatre (Micro Cinema) 55 Davis Square Somerville Ma 617 625 5700 Admission $5 (Cheap!)

"Machete Kills" (2013)

Boy when Director Robert "Spy Kids" Rodriguez goes crazy, it is not a pretty sight by any means. He has of course no-one to blame but himself, because it has been Rodriguez particular conjuring power to bring together offbeat casting decisions (Cuba Gooding Jr, Lady GaGa, Charlie Sheen?? I'm all in!!)and use them in new and interesting ways. Hell he took a ferocious looking ex-Jailbird named Danny Trejo and turned him into an action movie star at the tender age of sixty eight years old!!! Now how do you wreck all the good will sown in the first Machete picture? Simple.... You rip off your plot from "Moonraker" the 1979 007 movie and then festoon the resulting script with as many leaden Star Wars references as is humanly possible...oh and spoiler, the damn thing is a cliffhanger as well!!! Bad movies that waste superlative casts cannot afford indulgences like that, George Lucas can get away with it, but only once and even then just barely. Trejo's "Machete" is a sort of Mexican Mike Hammer, incorruptible, violent and utterly righteous, he cleans up this foul world from the streets up. You DON'T lob that character into orbit and set him against a Dr. Evil" style supervillain even if that antagonist is played by Mel Gibson. It ought to be an Axiom of American Cinema that you cannot ripoff the single worst James Bond movie ever made and expect a good result. But there you have it, Rodriguez goes and wrecks a potentially lucrative franchise, sad to say, I'm thinking he has gone over the hump ne'er to return. Danny Trejo though seems to have plenty of snap left in his garters lets hope he can find a project worth of his brutal charisma. Oh and one last thing, doesn't ANYONE make a ninety minute motion picture anymore?? Everybody has their hearts set on these goddamn two-hour-plus-trailers super epics! If your premise is thin to begin with, it defies the known laws of physics to think it won't simply implode at one hundred and twenty interminable minutes! And one last point, the very 1970's exploitation films Rodriguez is so very ineptly homaging & or parodying were ALL produced by schlockmeisters who at least had the common sense not to belabor their subject matter with excessive running times. Trust me, the best drive in movies of that era, none of them were longer than ninety minutes....pay heed Robert, turn back, oh man.

God Speed Scott Carpenter....1925 2013...

One Final Word...

He'd never admit it, but you know who had a good summer this year? Jim Carrey. I know it sounds crazy, he has been off the radar screen for over five years after a bad bout with Academy Award Fever, but nonetheless he racked up two solid performances in the Hot Weather Months. He stole the show right out from under Steve Carell in "The Incredible Burt Wonderstone" as a celebrity magician-sociopath....and he dominated as "Captain Stars-n-Stripes" in "KickAss II" (something I'm sure appalls him to no end even now). I think Jim is akin to Robin Williams in that he has a natural talent for sonsabitches and the self destructive, both those aforementioned parts played to his key deliverables. At this point I'd pay good money to see him play Iago in an all up Othello...Time to stop displacing all that anger (which really where almost all commercially viable comedy comes from) and focus it in a dramatic context.

James Caan is returning to Broadcast Television....

On some goddamned sitcom of all things. Not for nothing there was a time the man was the Fifth Horseman of the Method Apocalypse along with Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro and Supreme Diabolicus, Marlon Brando...

Channel Zero Returns....

Friday October 18th 2013 at the Micro Cinema of the Somerville Theatre with an epic screening of Gerry and the Pacemakers in "Ferry Cross the Mersey" (1965). Why Gerry and the Pacemakers? Well why the hell not? When their Liverpool pals The Beatles went over the top all the other bands that played The Cavern got their shot at The Big Time. And the Big Time meant a feature film, preferably a sort of mockumentary but with plenty of British Invasion Music. So "Ferry Cross the Mersey" is Gerry and the Pacemakers own version "Hard Days Night", detailing frontman Gerry Marsden's attempts to book the band onto a Liverpool talent show that'll rocket their asses to Stardom. Built around various Liverpool locations and including footage shot at the famous "Cavern Club" and loaded up with a treasure trove of rock-n-roll performances from Cilla Black & The Fourmost among many others..."Ferry Cross the Mersey" is an authentic film rarity. And Channel Zero is screening this lost genre classic... Friday October 18th 8pm (Sharp!) The Somerville Theatre (Micro Cinema) 55 Davis Square Somerville Ma 617 625 5700 Admission $5 (Cheap!) Check out our Facebook Fan Page, it is like Wicked Obscure....

The Summer of 2013, An Autopsy...

Took me a while to gather my thoughts, but I suspect, just suspect that the Summer of 2013 will go down in the Annals as the very moment when Hollywood went over the hump, never to return. The litany of catastrophe and humiliation is a long and appalling one, an Iron Man sequel that pit a worthy like Robert Downey Jr against genetically engineered lava-men, a Lone Ranger movie that Will Live In Infamy and "The Man of Steel", a film that compares unfavorably with self induced blunt force impact trauma with a ball peen hammer. The list goes on seemingly endless and indistinguishable Pixar animated epics, a collection of horror films seemingly shot on a smartphone in the same clothes closet and of course, a Brad Pitt zombie movie...as if that is brand enhancement. The collapse has been in truth, a long time a-comin', the rise of committee rule extending it's top down iron clad rule to even the most trivial film projects, a foolish bid to ingratiate with overseas audiences and a editing zeitgeist that favors running the film stock thru a lawn mower. To say nothing of the millions being wasted time after time...more and more spent to achieve less and less. Tinseltown's answer to this season's debacle, Ben Affleck as Batman in the upcoming "Batman versus Superman" epic. Unlike everyone else on the internet, I'm fine with Affleck at Batman, he might even be good at it, he certainly won't do the role any disservice. No my issue is with Zack Snyder et all, they'll make a the same gruesome ruin of "The World's Finest Heroes" that they made of "Man of Steel". I'm convinced Affleck did it to secure financing for some directorial project to be named later... No the best action film I saw this summer was the much reviled "KickAss 2"...mostly because the filmmakers managed to match up the semi inept KickAss (Aaron Taylor Johnson) with weedy Wall Cox-esque Christopher Mintz-Plasse whilst Hit Girl (Chloe Grace Moretz)finally gets a fight worthy of her homicidal skill set, a one eyed female Russian bodybuilder. Subtle just won't do in the KickAssverse. Sheee-it I got myself invested in a line up like that... Critics hate the KickAss "franchise" mostly because they prefer their foulmouthed killer vigilantes be Hugh Jackman and not a teenaged Chloe Grace Moretz...me I love the girl, she is pure screen violence done right. Nope the last bastion of creativity in Hollywood is among the comedies, "The Heat", "The World's End" and "The Way Way Back" all had a strong auteur feel to them, the writing was universally tight in each case...but lets face facts, It's the Twilight of the Gods Out There in Beverly Hills...and hearty laughter always attends on the End Times.

The Battle of Armageddon....(Part One)

This has been God Help Us, an Awful summer for movies, when Hollywood can't even get The frickin' Lone Ranger right something seriously has gone wrong with the American Entertainment Zeitgeist. Hell the only superhero movie that did anything at all for me in 2013 was Chloe Grace Moretz in "Kick Ass 2".... But even as the shades of summer depart, The Mendon Twin Drive In has hurled it's defiance at the Whole World by scheduling A Full Month of Repertory Screenings All thru September...Starting this Friday and Saturday, its a Double Feature of "Jaws" (1975) and "Back to the Future" (1985)!!! To my knowledge this is a First in Local Drive In History, normally these venues tend towards family friendly first run double features, these revival screenings are literally breaking new ground! Anyhow click on the link to the right for all the details, this is quite literally a once in a lifetime opportunity, to see any of these films in the outdoor setting is naught but a miracle!! All I can say is, tell your friends, In Mendon, At the Drive In, It Is ON!!!

The Canine Moment in Arlington Ma....

My next door neighbors, own a "cotton poodle", that barks at me whenever I walk past their house in a tone that seems to say "Okaaaa-ay I'm gonna bark at you now....don't get scared, I'm the dog here, I'm obligated to bark thats all". Inevitably, I bark back at the cotton poodle...with as friendly a "woof" as a man can muster. Eventually my neighbors children asked me why I barked at their dog...and so I told them that I had conspicuously failed to teach the dog to speak english, I was forced to try to learn the secret language of suburban canines. And my next door neighbor's kids are good sports, they haven't turned me in to Bridgewater State Hospital...

"The World's End" (2013)

Simon Pegg claims that "Nostalgia is the Enemy" in his new comedy "The World's End". And indeed he is onto something as aging lad Gary King a man child layabout leads the remnants of his now middle aged high school posse on a last tour of twelve pubs in the grotty suburb of their misspent youth only to find benevolent but bossy aliens underfoot. The evils of nostalgia and "past worship" might've come off a little stronger if writer & star Simon Pegg along with director Edgar Wright didn't serve up a comical homage to Jack Finney's "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" right down to the nominal climax Ah but I quibble this film is the closest thing to a gem this summer, ant film that can take portly pasty and very middle aged Nick Frost and turn him into a veritable Sammo Hung, is aces high in my books. I think Simon Pegg is sort of weedy English Genius with just enough geek cred to prosper in Hollywood, I think it helps that he has come along as Tinseltown has lurched into self parody and gigantism...his ideas all seem to properly scaled and sane by comparison to the outlandish expectations of his alleged competition. Unlike Seth Rogen or Jonah Hill (both of whom I do like), I don't expect Pegg to fly off a cliff anytime soon pursuing a billion dollar box office pay off. The Greats didn't worry about their next project or their projected returns, they stayed focused on Being Funny Now...That seems to be Pegg's Agenda pure and simple. More power to him sez I.

Did I mention....

We are on Facebook with a Fan Page? Feel free to join....

On the Other Hand or "The Day the Clown Decried" (Part II)

On the Other Hand ("The Day The Clown Decried" Part II) I honestly wonder if Jerry Lewis isn't trying to use reverse psychology on us? He knows "The Day the Clown Cried" is appallingly controversial, he allegedly lacks the rights to release it and supposedly doesn't wanna release it...but suddenly we are getting rivulets of info about the long uncompleted project. He himself asserts here (in so many words) that it is at once unwatchable and yet still an unreleased masterpiece. If I didn't know better I'd think he was trying to create a groundswell out in the aud to complete and release the film. Then again, given the fact that Jerry Lewis' ego long ago outstripped that dried husk once known as his dignity, it probably simply gratifies Le Roi d' Crazy to enroll himself into that elite Hollywood Fraternity of Auteurs with Great Unfinished Film Masterpieces. Its a very heavy duty room there, Orson Welles, Joseph von Sternberg, Sergei Eisenstein, Bruce Lee, Jean-Luc Godard and even Alfred Hitchcock...shit now that I mention it, who wouldn't want in on that action?? Labels: Jerry Lewis - J

Garen Daly is Doing The Lord's Own Work...

the local film impresario is trying to Crowdsource to life, a feature documentary on the sadly departed Orson Welles Cinema in Harvard Square. This is a project well worth the money and long past due as well, I can recall with the simplest nostalgia literally dozens of motion pictures that I saw in that invaluable theater, "Altered States", "Dark Star", "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls", "1984", "Ran", "Liquid Sky", "Hail Mary", "ReAnimator" and on and on. This is on top of DOZENS of good and awful science fiction movies screened at the Annual 24 "It Came from the Orson Welles" marathon every February. My own obsession with the late Sifu, Orson Welles was kindled therein, I met Welles' biographer Barbara Leaming there after a screening of "The Chimes at Midnight", the whole cinema was a film schooling unto itself. On the the day the Orson Welles Cinema burned, the local film scene took a body blow from which it has yet to recover even today nigh a quarter century later. But let us not live in the past, let us learn from it, and if Garen Daly's documentary comes off, then just maybe we'll have a starting point for a real film renaissance here in Boston. Maybe I'm naive' but I think that would be a great thing to strive for...

"The Day the Clown Decried"

A seven minute "making of" clip of Jerry Lewis infamous unfinished & unreleased Magnum Opus, "The Day the Clown Cried" has turned up on Youtube. From what I can see, "The Day the Clown Cried" is what you get when you devote a full decade of your life to dancing in attendance upon Dame Demerol. I've always had a very ambivalent attitude to Jerry Lewis, he can be staggeringly funny, I freely admit it, but then he blows it by trying too hard for too long to top himself. The man's ambition is nigh perfectly balanced by his thin skin and egomania...All of which is sadly encapsulated by the above clip. Rumor was that back in the day, Jerry used to intimate to his nearest and dearest that "The Day the Clown Cried" was his secret incomplete masterpiece nowadays "Le Roi D'Crazy" confesses the whole thing was a disaster that'll never be released. So I guess...even Jerry Lewis can learn...Now if he'd only apologize to Betsy Sherman I could alibi for him with a light and tripping heart.

Late Word Comes to Us

of the sudden death at the age of seventy of the former publisher of Editorial Humor/The Boston Comic News, R. Dean Wallace. Dean gave me and my co-writer Jon Haber our first steady columnist gig and largely stood aside and allowed us to jabber on and on about anything under the sun...sans renumeration of course. What HE got was a column with a pronounced affinity for the Masterworks of Steve Reeves, the scientific mischances of Percival Lowell, The Fall and Rise of Elmer McCurdy or the subtle genius of Earl K. Long. What WE got was a priceless opportunity to perfect our craft, all the writing I have to date was the consequence of lessons I learned for better or worse under Dean Wallace's aegis. Dean was a visionary, only a visionary could have stubbornly hung on in the face of a market less and less friendly to small periodicals for nine long years. He was also supremely eccentric, difficult to negotiate with and prone to flights of fancy as the Victorians would say. But quite literally, he presided over the last Great Newspaper Adventure in the Boston Metropolitan Area, he was never a breaker of proverbs and he will give the Devil His Due. Peace to his Ashes...He will be missed.

Back to the Batcave....

Putting "Batman" dead center in the proposed "Man of Steel" sequel is pretty much confession of failure on the part of the Powers That Be @ Warner Brothers. These dingbats are completely obsessed with making a "billion dollar movie" just like The Avengers, alas the Warner Brothers/DC gang are "Too Dumb to Pour Piss Out a Boot" to quote the late Lyndon Johnson. By their works shall you know them.... But in a larger sense other than Batman which one of DC's many properties is properly launched as a live action franchise? Answer NONE of them! Every time DC has infallibly chosen the wrong script, the wrong actors the wrong director Every Gawd Damned Time. Does anyone here really think if Warner Brothers were truly satisfied with "The Man of Steel" they'd be retreating to the Batcave for the second movie? I hope Brandon Routh is laughing his ass off right now...they don't dare recast the role a third time THAT would be an admission of failure...and DC never ever fails does it?? It signals a lack of faith in the Superman mythos though doesn't it? One final thought, the dominant DC motif is these days is, whenever Kal El and Bruce "team up" it's means Superman is about to be jobbed out to Batman...That is pretty much a sad acknowledgement of Batman's almighty cross platform strength and Superman's continuing creative paralysis since Chris Reeve gave up the role.

The Lone Ranger (2013) Directed by Gore Verbinski

Last sunday night I sat thru the latest and likely last adaptation of the legendary Lone Ranger character for the big screen. It took two hundred and fifty million dollars and a two and a half hour running time to drive home the tragic point that film-wise we have reached the prophesied end times. A worse film cannot be imagined. Stilted, arch, full of strange alleged jokes from Johnny Depp's "Tonto" (who STILL lapses into pidgin english at odd moments), a vapid performance from nominal star Armie Hammer and a berserker climax that looks like it was edited by running the celluloid thru a lawn mower. And all of this to penetrate the overseas market, a final burnt offering of an American Pop Culture Icon...rock bottom, end times, doomsday baby doomsday. I'm calling it folks, the Hollywood is finished, it has hit the auto-destruct button, they aren't dumbing down the product with endless sequels to satiate the allegedly teachable US Aud, no they are producing this dreck to entice overseas ticket buyers. Johnny Depp did well in "Pirates of the Caribbean" therefore he is literally the only actor who can credibly play Tonto in Hunan Province, Bangalore and Brasilia. And in turn this malign ethos is what destroyed The Green Hornet, John Carter of Mars, Superman The Man of Steel and now The Lone Ranger. Hollywood is no longer able to execute competent films with respect to classic adventure properties because the automatic expectation that they must be Global Tentpole Properties. Its worth remembering that back when The Lone Ranger was a low budget TV show back in the racist, sexist 1950's the Producers still somehow found a full blooded Mohawk Indian to play Tonto. Hell that "Legend of the Lone Ranger" bomb back in 1981 had a Amerind Actor playing Tonto....Now today forget about it, its either Johnny Depp or Jack Black. I hear tell, that a New Doc Savage movie is in the offing, this is quite literally a thought to chill the blood, please Ghod Hollywood don't wreck my happy nostalgic memories Ron Ely in the cheap ass misbegotten 1975 film. So keep this in mind: The tendency among high name recognition superhero movie franchises is a failure rate of about 50% (for every "Avengers" there is a "Green Lantern"). Therefore half the time the various franchises must be rebooted in any given situation and the origin "retold & reinterpreted"...at a fifty percent failure rate though this means whole iterations of specific characters in the movies over a generation can be nothing but a succession of origin stories. If I ran Warner Brothers etc, my first dictum would be "Nobody gives a rat's @ss about The Flash's origin"....but I don't run Warner Brothers and that organization is bound and determined NOT to learn from any of it's mistakes. Its worth recalling that Mark Hamill turned "The Trickster" into a game changer on ye olde Flash teevee show and no one thought to load the character up with a lot of origin nonsense. Ditto any number of the villains fro ye olde Batman TV show (his own origin was disposed of in exactly two sentences as I recall)... I could not begin to tell you "The Black Canary's Origin", I am sure I couldn't care less. I do care that the character gets respectful treatment...that is my investment. Well what of it, these people are hell bent for annihilation. Maybe we can still save broadcast television, too bad I watch so very little of that.

Looking forward to all the

Trayvon Martin pistol range targets at the next NRA convention... Look for em'...If they are willing to do Obama, why would mere good taste and deference to the grief of parents stand in anyone's way?

Whatever Happened to George Arliss?

Well what didn't happen to George Arliss? I mean in 1929 at the dawn of the talking picture era, he was the very first British actor to win an Academy Award and for a historic impersonation as well, Benjamin Disraeli. And what the hell he gave Bette Davis her first serious screen role in that oldest and most dependable of Forgotten Hollywood Chestnuts, The Man Who Played God in 1932. Word is, Arliss had to fight the studio to cast Davis, she was ever after grateful to the British Actor. The man had his own Hollywood repertory company,specialized in historical biopics and shaped and controlled his own films years before Orson Welles...and he is largely and unforgivably forgotten today. It might have been his age, he was past sixty when sound came it and his opportunity hit, and then again I am convinced that the DemiGods of the Early Sound Era did not always have staying power as the Golden Age Unfolded. In the 1929-1934 period the box office was dominated by names like Will Rogers, Marion Davies, Buster Keaton & Harold Lloyd were still bankable if not necessarily profitable. None of whole would still be at the top of their game by the end of the decade least of all Arliss who for a while there was playing a behind the scenes auteur's game. Still and all that, Arliss managed to produce and star in a number of high end A-List biographical films as the aforementioned Disraeli, Alexander Hamilton, Cardinal Richelieu, the Duke of Wellington and a founder of a Certain International Banking House....the man virtually invented the modern BioPic all by himself! So of course, this guy was just Made for a Channel Zero Screening! And what better film that "The House of Rothschild" (1934)...in which Arliss stars as Nathan Rothschild stalwart Son of Abraham, international banker and sworn foe of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington's prized paymaster. Back during the depression one suspects the only way you could make a Banker the Hero in a movie was make him the underdog, in a word, a Jew...that and make Boris Karloff his Jew-Baiting Nemesis...I mean Rothschild is up against religious prejudice and Frankenstein's Monster in one go, talk about long odds! But then as now, the Jewish Actors all play Gentiles and the Gentile Actors all play Jews...so you see it's a tradition going back decades. So by all means come see the show! "The House of Rothschild" (1934) Starring George Arliss, Boris Karloff, Robert Young and Loretta Young Friday July 12th @ 8pm (sharp!) The Somerville Theatre (Micro Cinema) 55 Davis Square Somerville Ma, 617 625 5700 Admission $ 5 (cheap!) And just try and find us on Facebook, we dare yuh! Channel Zero: Now in our 18th year of genteel cinematic transcendence! Oh we are on Facebook...somewhere....

Tippling on Independence Day Part Two...

Y'know I like "Knockabout Gin" (distilled by Ryan & Wood in Gloucester Ma), it has some bite to it. Sometimes gin per se can be a little too damn subtle it's an American Spin on a classic London Dry Gin. It mixes very well with diet tonic water and the necessary increment of ice. On the other hand, Bully Boy Vodka (certified organic distillers in Boston Ma) get along well with almost all conceivable mixers, from Pineapple Juice to Glaceau Sparking Fruitwater (zero calories)...I suspect Bully Boy Vodka might just be able to insinuate itself with Milk with an aplomb once reserved for the cadres of the Viet Cong.

Tippling on Independence Day...(Part One)

I sampled some of the Nashoba Valley Winery's "Vidal Grappa" last night, it appears to be the only brandy as yet distilled entirely within the confines of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, As such it is a surprisingly light potation with a slight fruitish taste...It mixes well with tonic water and ice to form a proper hot weather libation. "Grappa" is an Italian folk-brandy made from grape leavings of the winemaking process and can be somewhat overpowering, Nashoba Valley Spirits seems to have found a happy medium in their version of the famed potation. It is expensive stuff but well worth the drive to Bolton Mass to invest in locally produce spirits.

Jim Kelly R.I.P.

Let the record show, when Channel Zero screened "Black Belt Jones" (1974) back in 2002 at the Coolidge Corner Theater we sold some seventeen tickets for this seminal martial-arts-blaxsploitation fusion. Ah but our rule of thumb has always been that the "moral imperative to screen certain films is in no way conditioned by said film's potential box office". Suffice to say, we live up to this dictum every time we do a screening. Ah but Jim Kelly was Zen, he had Muhammad Ali's insolent bravado and the martial arts skills to back it all up. Of all the Bruce-Lee Successor-Wannabees (a eclectic assortment that starts with George Lazenby and ends next to Bruce Li) Kelly was probably the most credible. But after a mere five films he gave up on Hollywood took up professional tennis and wrapped himself in such comforting obscurity that rumors of homelessness dogged him for years. Its like he found out that "being Bruce Lee" was a fruitless ambition, my Ghod Robert Clouse must have wept. Bruce Lee though, (who was Zen like yuh read about) would have understood. In fact I myself I had to buttonhole Kelly's former costar Gloria Hendry at a con in East Rutherford New Jersey who assured me Jim was alive and well, reading scripts and turning everything down with a merry smile. Maybe word got back in him, a few years later, there was Jim Kelly at Chiller Theatre in New Jersey cheerily signing autographs. After all being Zen doesn't me you have tolerate rumors of mendicancy. Alas now too young (a mere sixty seven) Jim Kelly is dead....if there is an afterlife organized on principles of Justice then Jim Kelly and Bruce Lee are bowing to one another in the Squared Circle.

My only take away from the Whitey Bulger Trial

is that you cannot become an A-List gangster without mastering the subtle art of snitchwork. Even if you are good at it, sooner or later you run up against a situation wherein access to savage violence and huge stacks of US currency aren't gonna cut it...and at the moment of truth, you'd better know how to sing. So far the Bulger trial is like an audition call back for the Boston Straight Men's Chorus....everyone on key and singing a heartfelt ballad of former friends and business partners. These guys not only have no sense of honor they aren't even good to go with their own much hyped Code of Silence.

It comes as a final irony....

That Richard Matheson up and died the very week that his old "world of the living dead"(as posited in his novel "I Am Legend" 1954) motif reached it's logical conclusion in "World War Z", what started out as a project for the likes of Vincent Price ends up a Tentpole concept fit for Brad Pitt. Ah but that is Matheson unto the last, endlessly "homaged" in other words, the man broke ground early and often. His short stories are masterpieces of economy they ought to be in the core curriculum of any "writing speculative fiction" course on or off line. Moreover, he was one of the few all up A-List postwar fantasists with the capacity to adapt his own work with success, he proved this over and over again on "The Twilight Zone" and then all over the TV schedule during the 1960's. It is a great shame that his taut adaptation of his own book "I Am Legend" was not used by AIP in 1959 in favor of some hackwork written and shot in Rome in the weary wicked end. That original script deserves publication I'd love to get a look at it. Y'know, I have a theory, will never be a faithful adaptation of "I Am Legend" until some decides on a Fan Film version. I mean think on it, there are maybe five speaking parts, all you need is a secluded house as the prime setting, some zombie extras and plenty of brio. And at the age of eighty seven, he lived to have dozens of his ideas homaged and or just plain stolen...as galling as it sounds, that can be a life well lead...

Channel Zero Returns to the Somerville Theatre, Friday July 12th at 8pm!

In a summer abjectly surrendered to Zombies, Superheroes and Seth Rogen, Channel Zero attempts counterintuitive programming with an epic screening of: “The House of Rothschild” (1934) Starring George Arliss, Boris Karloff Robert Young, Alan Mowbray & Loretta Young EUROPE: 1815 – Is it just possible that the only person who stands between Napoleon Bonaparte and World Domination is a Little Jewish Financier from London named Nathan Rothschild? Golden Age Hollywood’s first great character actor George Arliss stars in this rare Historic Biopic as the real life banker who battled both Tyranny and Anti-Semitism! Friday July 12th @ 8pm (sharp!) The Somerville Theatre (Micro Cinema) 55 Davis Square Somerville Ma, 617 625 5700 Admission $ 5 (cheap!) And just try and find us on Facebook, we dare yuh! Channel Zero: Now in our 18th year of genteel cinematic transcendence!

Mensch and Ubermensch...

When Will Smith's superhuman "Hancock" tore up the town in a quest for Justice...indictments were handed down, mandatory sentencing was imposed! In contrast Henry Cavill's Superman wrecked two US municipalities trying to bring down "General Zod"....and with all that damage and casualties, no one thought to call the Justice Department. It's GOOD to be the White Superhero! OKAY! I'm kidding!! Kidding! I love...to kid!

The Man of Steel (2013) Directed by Zack Snyder

Somewhere in the Warner Brothers entertainment complex, perfect superhero scripts are written with the right blend of action, adventure, wonderment and escapism. These scripts are then sent down deep underground to a secure bunker where a trained chimp armed with a 12 gauge shotgun blasts away indiscriminately at the text until it is literally in tatters and riddled with plot holes. That script is then reverently handed over to the captioned director with the admonition he may not deviate one jot from what is therein written. How else to account for "The Man of Steel" a film whose half baked conceit is to turn Siegel and Shuster's creation into a sort of second rate "Wolverine" Wannabee...Warner Brothers is apparently desperate to take Kal El into a new direction In the Very Worst Way and by Ghod they have done it! This is a terrible film, long at times tedious, two thirds of it is utterly incoherent, the last quarter is a bewildering "square up reel" in which Superman's arch nemesis "General Zod" the superhuman Kryptonian General reduce both Smallville and Metropolis in an epic brawl. It looks great but after a while the mind wanders and you start mentally tallying up the hypothetical casualties until some very sobering thoughts are entertained indeed. I'm not even gonna justify it on grounds that it's a good cast undone by a uneven ill conceived script, I'll cut to the chase and simply note that Henry Cavill is fine as Superman but he brings nothing to the role that Brandon Routh didn't offer back in 2006, Michael Shannon's Zod although armed with a better motivation than is usually the case is not gonna make anyone forget Terrence Stamp. This seems to be the summer for second rate early eighties supervillainy tedium and unorginality all in one short season...marvelous. Amy Adams was a bit of fresh air as Lois Lane but she is only that, given the sheer carnage indulged and Superman and Zod really have to wonder what the hell she sees in the guy after seventy five years. This is the sort of mishaugas you get when you are desperate to break with past practice but have no real ideas about where you wanna go coupled with highly unrealistic expectations...And still this Sumbitch made two hundred million this weekend, given the sheer morose shellacking Superman's character took in this one, it'll be interesting to see if those numbers go up. Frankly thoughthe rumors are Chris Nolan and Director Zack Snyder are being groomed as the creatives to bring DC's Justice League of America to the big screen at long last...and if this is so and "The Man of Steel" is any indication, THIS is a thought to chill the blood!

Across Cambridge: A Brief Unused Itinerary for an Out of Towner on the Fly....

1.) The Maritime Museum at M.I.T. A small but well organized collection of professionally ship models. It is otherwise a good showcase of an art form that if it hasn't been abolished by digital imaging it soon will be. The scale model of the "USS President" alone is worth the trip. 2.) Either Central Square or Inman Square...a decision that would have to be made on the fly. In Central there is "Rodney's Bookstore" one of the last independent publisher overstock/used bookstores left on Mass Ave (an empire that once stretched from the Back Bay out to Route 128). For shits and grins we can stop in at the Pandemonium Bookstore, which shells fantasy and SF exclusively, these days it is a front for marathon RPGs. Not sure just how they make their money quite frankly. My parents grew up in and around Central Square, it has been trying to "class up" since 1936 with little luck, it'll fruitlessly continue this process right up until perdition. 3.) If Not Central, Then Inman: Home of the "Lorum Ipsum Bookstore" a gathering place for the last of the amateur "zine writers" of Metro Boston. Small but good collection of vintage pulp paperbacks. Also home of the "S&S Deli", lunch here is still considered a corporal work of mercy in the Dioceses of Boston. Targets of opportunity "The Zeitgeist Station" and "The Lily Pad", they might be open and they might have interesting art therein displayed who knows? 4.) Harvard Square: Across Cambridge Common on Foot perhaps a look see into the remnants of the Coop, definitely a stop in at the "Million Year Picnic" (if only to paw thru their collection of pulp fiction). A stroll thru Harvard Yard, the Steps of the Widener Library by which to briefly gawk at the progeny of the overclass, Memorial Hall and the cheesy-ass student center under it. There is no point in seeing The Harvard Film Archive unless somehow something worthwhile is being screened, the building is unremarkable and given over to modern art exhibitions for the most part. Oh and of course "The Harvard Bookstore" best used book outlet left in Cambridge, I buy a lot of stuff here, it's ability to beguile should not be underestimated. Oh and the Grolier Poetry Bookshop round the corner, if only because they still believe. Targets of opportunity, The Porcellian, well hidden Harvard Frat composed well heeled layabouts. In Your Ear Records, an actual for real used record store! The Harvard Lampoon which is off limits to helotry but nice to look all the same. And then there is the Mount Auburn Cemetery, last resting place of the Brahmin Elite of Boston, a class of cold unyielding people given over to austere theology and self denial...when they died after a lifetime of eschewing all immodesty they'd be buried under a two ton replica of the Sphinx or perhaps if of a retiring disposition the Temple of Athena. See it all soon, a lot of it is bound to vanish over the short term.

Good Frickin' Riddance...

To the CBS national telecast of the 4th of July Pops Concert. They always pushed the fireworks off til after ten O'Clock and turned the evening into an endurance test for television viewers and attendees alike. And worse the CBS contract brought in just enough money to warrant scheduling a marquee headliner, INEVITABLY it was some unctuous country western shitkicker singer whose sole reason for doing the Esplanade Concert was to reassure viewers in Houston Texas and Marion Ohio that a gol-durned Patriot was a singin' ta the heathenish liberals in Boston. Condescending and transparent to say the least. Boston, You Are Stronger Without em!

Grace Note on a Sunday Afternoon

"I don't think God wants to be worshipped. I think the only pure worship of God is by loving one another, and I think all other forms of worship become a substitute for the love we should show one another." Charles M. Schulz

Dr. Who News...

Per this link Matt Smith is calling it quits as the BBC's long running Time Lord. If they can't get Chow Yun Fat (think of it, Chow Yun Fat IS "Dr. Wu") then I say go whole hog with Alexei Sayle.

Pick of the Week

Hands Down it belongs to Sean Connery as James Bond 007 in "From Russia with Love" screening at the Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square tonight at 7pm. Somewhere on my bucket list (next to a driving trip to Marion OH to see Warren Harding's federalist style tomb) is a heartfelt desire to see ALL the Connery Bonds on a the big screen as God Almighty Intended. When I was a wee Justin, I had to make do with the "ABC Sunday Night Movie" don'cha know. AND IF You are of a Bohemian disposition with rarified tastes, then you may then wanna ease your way over to the Harvard Film Archive where at 12:15 am EDT they are actually screening Jack Benny in "The Horn Blows at Midnight", wherein Jack plays the angel seconded by the Almighty to blow the Horn heralding Armageddon...this is actually a comedy, who sez the Golden Age of Hollywood admitted no surrealism??