I haven't been to the movies in two months sad to say...

and my one expedition to the legit theater came a cropper, but Jeezus my bibliophilia is running rampant!

Consider my book purchases for the past seven days:
"The Scarlet Empire" by David M. Parry a pre-WWI anti-socialist dystopian novel.

"How Fascism Ruled Women Italy, 1922 - 1945" by Victoria De Grazia...seemed a natural given my abiding interest in Blackshirtism.

"Hitler: The Survival Myth" by Donald M. McKale Okay this one at least is a Birthday gift for a friend but still eminently readable.

"The Tweed Ring" by Alezander B. Callow Jr. Well...what can I say, machine politics interests me.

"The Skeptic: The Life of H.L. Mencken" Terry Teachout...I could've got this one from the library, but I heard good things about it.

"The Plotters" by John Roy Carson...this is a work of non-fiction decrying the alleged possibility of a post WW II resurgence of fascism, fine but the damn thing was published in 1946 which seriously jumps the gun to say the least.

"The Impossible H.L. Mencken" edited by Marion Elizabeth Rodgers...Okay so yes Mencken was a germanophile, but he is so damn quotable and he is the only real all out stylist in the political game til the brief imperial high noon of Hunter S. Thompson.
His description of a brief encounter with William Jennings Bryan on the streets of Dayton Tennessee during the Scopes trial is a model of abbreviated hilarity.

I blame McIntyre and Moore in Davis Square , they are having a 30% off moving sale all this month, I also blame the Book Rack in Arlington Center because they ALWAYS have something I wanna buy ALWAYS!!!
How can I say no to opportunties like that??? It is their fault for TEMPTING ME!!!!
All bought second hand as well, so I can't even complain about the lack of bargains...

DAMN I have to stop this is getting out of control I have limited shelf space...

Juno

starring Ellen Page is up for all sorts of Academy Awards tonight, I like the film quite a bit, mostly because the lead figured out how to underplay almost everyone else in the cast without losing her centrality to the storyline. For a younger actress this is no small accomplishment, imagine the sort of histrionics we'd have accepted from Kirsten Dunst if by some temporal accident she'd played Juno?
My only question is whether or not Ellen Page simply lucked out here in finding a script that suited her talents or is she really that good?
Consider the case of Broderick Crawford, who won an Oscar as Best Actor in "All the King's Men" circa 1949m within a few years he was serving out his dotage in the TV show "Highway Patrol" far from the Hollywood A-list.
But what the hell, I wanna think well of the kid, she avoided tons of tempting actor pitfalls in Juno...she could be the next Jodie Foster or she could be the next Tatum O'Neal.

$46 dollars and three hours of my life down the drain...

If I had to warn you all away from a Shakespearean production this year, I'd have to settle on the A.R.T.' s Julius Caesar now running down in Harvard Square. Bloated, loaded up with inpenetrable symbolism, rife with robotic acting and glacially paced at a torpid three hours plus, this has to be one of the worst Shakespeare productions I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot of BAD interpretations of the Bard in my time.
I'm not sure what Director Arthur Nauzyciel had in mind, but it looks like he told his Brutus (one Jim True-Frost) to stare at the audience and recite the lines sans emotion or any of the actor's skill behind them. Sara Kathryn Bakker does as well as can be expected in the double role of Portia and Calpurnia but then she apparently ignored the whole "play it way android" meme
Otherwise the whole cast seems to execute on this mechanistic level, reciting, not acting...and they are SLOW reciters at that, what when they are not creeping around on stage like arthritis sufferers or listening rapturously at an inexplicable Jazz Trio complete with chanteuse.
If you are wondering why the play clocks in at three plus hours you can start with the above listed elements and do the math.
Orson Welles electrified Broadway when he dressed Julius Caesar up fascist regalia and got the whole thing down to about ninety minutes with no intermission so the legend goes. The A.R.T. isn't satsfied until it can double that running time no matter how many inappropriate song or dance interludes have to be hammered into Shakespeare's play til the damn thing rings up finally as ART!

Cultural Note...

Let me assert quite freely that the Old Country Buffet in the Medford's Meadow Glen Mall is NOTHING but a gastronomic whore-house and an invitation to the deadly sin of GLUTTONY.
There are FIVE Buffets, plus a desert counter, pink lemonade and soft serve ice cream....the siren call to bloated self indulgence is as blatant as any I've seen this side of the old Combat Zone.
Shameful
Disgusting...
I ate like a starving government mule....undoubtedly the "build your own taco" alone took a day off my life.

The joint ought to be picketed, they picket Planned Parenthood...gluttony is a sin isn't it?????

And the prices were very reasonable, Jesus Lord isn't THIS a sign of the end times?

Leave some money in your budget for new pants, yer gonna need them afterwards trust me.

"I Am Legend" (2007)

This is a mis-named movie, The title refers to the seminal 1954 science fiction novel by Richard Matheson, but in fact the film itself is more or less a remake of "The Omega Man" (1971) itself a heavily re-written adaptation of the above book.
What unites both films is the strength of the core performance, Cinema's eternal rugged individualist Charlton Heston was born to play the Last Man on Earth, Will Smith cast in the same role opts to do about five variants on the pain of irreparable isolation. It is a great acting job to say the least that deftly elevates what is in the end, mediocre material.
The credits give screenplay props to John and Joyce Corrington, who adapted "I Am Legend" in 1971 turning it into "The Omega Man" for better or worse, turning protagonist Robert Neville into an US Army germ warfare expert and de-emphasizing the obivous vampirism of the infected remnants of humanity.
Hope they got a nice check for their troubles.
Meanwhile the current film is well worth seeing, mostly because Will Smith really is that good.

Overheard at my health club

(Conveniently located in a big hotel in Waltham wherein a baby shower was going full blast as I left)...a gaggle of tall well dressed twenty-something women sweep past me heading for the pre-natal festivities, one was heard to mutter gaily
"I can't wait for MY baby-shower, but I can sure wait a while on the baby!"

American Madness (1932)

Nothing quite brings the holiday cheer like a depression era drama about an embattled bank president who is contending with an unfaithful wife and a bank-panic all on the same day.
If you said "this sounds like a Frank Capra film" and you would be right on that score.
It is a good movie, Walter Huston is great, Pat O'Brien is wonderful, even Sterling Holloway has a good scene or two. It is a stone cold shame more of Capra's early works like "Miracle Woman" (1931) and "Submarine" (1927) aren't available at all on DVD.
In some ways this is a sort of early sketch for the later classic Jimmy Stewart vehicle "It's a Wonderful Life", which again features a virtuous banker in close battle with personal and professional challenges.
Can't recommend a single local outlet that might rent this film, nor does it play much on cable, hell I had to watch via a "private source".
However, we will be able to download it someday but only after spending hundeds and hundreds of dollars on bandwith upgrades.

Amazon will sell you the film as part of a collection...here: take that for whatever comfort it may bring.

Kudos to the classically heroic soul who delivered

the Sunday Globe on this icy merciless morning. I live amidst some ill-plowed hills deep in the provincial heart of Arlington, delivering the paper today was a feat akin to Achilles' taking down Hector.

Time to reconsider upwards the annual Christmas tip....

Grenade Soup in Middlesex County....

Last night I dropped by the home of a married couple I know, purely to assess the chill-battling qualities of Absolut vanilla flavored vodka you understand.
Their oldest son was completing an elementary school homework assignment which required him to generate a list of instructions.
He chose to compose a recipe for "grenade soup", he assured his mother that said potable would only "blow up the pot and the stove".
Last I checked the mother was ardently campaigning for a disclaimer to be inserted on the grounds of "silliness".
Amidst the process she gave me the puppy-dawg eyes and said "I am the mother of boys...in case you needed any reminder".

BTW Absolut vanilla flavored vodka, chilled in the freezer has the ironic effect of chasing off the cold like a trained hunting dog.

Ar The Brattle Theater for a screening of

"The Hound of the Baskervilles" starring Basil Rathbone on Friday night, starring Peter Cushing!
This is Hammer version and a fine film IMHO but I'd still love to see Universal's adaptation starring Basil Rathbone on the big screen.
Anyhow, Cushing makes a very good Holmes with his clipped delivery and falcon profile...the only major plot hole is the off screen escape and capture of the killer convict "Seldon" which becomes a very clumsy device for plot exposition. Conan Doyle handled these trifles with so much more panache.
The whole thing reminded me to track down some of the Holmes adaptations Cushing did for the BBC in the late 1960's including the seldom adapted "Study in Scarlet" which generally gets short shrift do to it's low view of Mormonism.

Bad Poets Society comes in for some publicity...

You can read Victoria Cheng's article here:


Well Blogger.com isn't fully compatible the Mac OS and at the same time, Kinko's PCs are incredible slow and unreliable...they wouldn't even let me cut and paste a simple URL!
"Ease of use" and "reliability" are largely bygone notions in today's technological civilization...and that is NOT a good thing!
Thus I had to revise this post the next day! From work where at least I can cut and paste and do a hotlink without falling into full scale ranting and raving.

Anyway it's a good article please read it.

T-Minus 24 Hours and Counting (give or take) til the 2007 Bad Poets Society

Hope you can all make it there...we've got our poems picked and our readers all set. We've also cracked the listings at Boston Globe Calendar and the Phoenix's coveted "8 Days a Week" column.
So we are in good shape.
Anyhow the balloon goes up tomorrow night at 8pm at the Speigel Auditorium 56 Brattle Street Cambridge MA, admission a mere $5...it's the worst know comedy event in Boston that has somehow lasted seven long years.
See you there!

I leave you with a short appetite builder courtesy the one and only William McGonagall:
Sunlight Soap
You can use it with great pleasure and ease
Without wasting any elbow grease;
And when washing the most dirty clothes
The sweat won't be dripping off your nose
You can wash your clothes with little rubbing
And without scarcely any scrubbing;
And I tell you once again without any joke
There's no soap can surpass Sunlight Soap;
And believe me, charwomen one and all,
I remain yours truly, the Poet McGonagall.

Who knew he wrote advertising copy? Seems like a good fit for his technique I'd say.

All Soul's Day

It was my habit in the lead up to Halloween to rent two titles from the now closed Video Oasis in East Cambridge courtesy of the late Dennis Arruda's incomparable horror film collection.
Typically I'd get a classic, something like "The Mask of Fu Manchu" starring Boris Karloff and something weird and obscure like "Blood Shack" directed by Las Vegas own Ray Dennis Steckler.
In no other video store north of New York could I have such choices.
All gone now...so I'm thinking about Dennis tonight, not in sad way but happy that I had access to such an amazing collection of movies for so long.

Somehow we must move forward, the best of times are always just ahead.

Rest in Peace Dennis.

The Secret of Sherlock Holmes

by Jeremy Paul directed by Robert Walsh at Shakespeare & Co in Lenox Ma.

Seems pointless to review something that just closed, but what the hell I spent good money on a hotel room to see the show so...

Generally I liked the script, the "secret" of the title is a bit contrived for my tastes, but the dialogue largely lifted from the original Conan-Doyle stories has an unexpected vibrancy. Doyle didn't write for the stage so it's a treat to hear his conversations recreated verbatim - who knew he could be read as actor's dialogue?
Moreover the play is a strong revisionist look at Watson and his contribution to Holmes' crimefighting crusade. That much I enjoyed, the Watson-as-Dimwit meme is very much a played out thing.
No if I have a problem with the show it lies with the casting, Michael Hammond is just too old to play Sherlock Holmes, oh he is vigorous enough, but he is balding and what remains of his hair is turning white. This contrasts poorly with David Demke's Dr. Watson who looks acts and sounds like a man in his thirties, together they are less popular literatures greatest detectives and more akin to father and son. Maybe the make-up design should have been reconsidered, bring Demke up a few years and bring Hammond down, because their acting is uniformly excellent, but they made an incongruous duo.

Despite the Regatta and a town swarming with Touristas

I want you all to know, I found legit on street parking in the Back Bay today and managed to do a leisurely leaflet drop on behalf of Channel Zero and the Bad Poets Society.
Yay me!
The big revelation this time around is the slow agonizing death of the local second hand record story, CD Spins has closed, as well Satellite Records - there used to be fours of five of these places on Newbury street now they are down to exactly none.
As a drop zone the Back Bay is becoming a backwater, which is an unhappy sign of the times I think.

Did Lindsay Lohan really call...

rehab "a sobering experience"?

Mother of Ghod!
I mean, maybe she has kicked booze-n-drugs, but clearly da girl still has a bad jones for stupid pills and imbecile capsules.

Sputnik Fool's Day...

All those movies in the below post are fabrications by the way, you just can't expect to get away with spoofs like that on April Fool's Day anymore.
Moreoever, today is "Sputnik Day"...the wrong date was a dead tip off...right?
:)
And besides that the IMDb has pretty much ruined the old "phoney flicks" routine for the enterprising fantasist.
Anyway, here is some newsreel footage, until Channel Zero can get the scratch up to produce an acutal film called "Sputnik a Go Go" this will have to do.

Anyway The Bad Poets Society convenes next month, if you have any good representative examples of awful poesy, feel free to paste them into the comments field or sent us a note at JohnIAT@aol.com
:)

Happy Sputnik Day...

today marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Russian earth satellite's launch.
Someday, Channel Zero will mark the occasion with a revival screening of one of the great late 1950s early 1960's "Sputnik Movies".
Our favorites are listed below:
"I Hijacked Sputnik" (1958) starring Beverly Garland, John Ireland, Jay Robinson and Jonathan Haze

"Hercules against Sputnik" (1960) starring Ed Fury and Claudia Mori

"Sputnik a-Go-Go" (1965)Starring "Batavian singing sensation Rochester Hammerlink Jr."

"Sputnik Flies, Django Kills" (1966) starring Franco Nero and Montgomery Wood.

:)

Yesterday...Nelly Furtado assured some bimbo

interviewer on CNN that (unlike Lindsay & Britney) she was proud to own "many many panties".
She was even prepared to give viewers recommendations on the best sources of women's underwear...
Oh it was jolly to be sure and a good ten minutes of congressionally licensed airtime on CNN no less.
CNN!

November IS Bad Poetry Month

Yes indeed folks the rumors are all true, the Bad Poets Society an epic reading of the world's worst verse RETURNS Friday November 9th at 8pm at the Blacksmith House deep in the beating heart of Harvard Square!
Watch this space for details, announcements on special guests, ruminations on poetry good and bad and the revelation most sacred as to this year's "Anchor Poet".