The Queen Elizabeth II is a freakin' ship...it has class, dignity, character and is as sleek as it was when it was commissioned in 1969. Those other so called cruise liners that tie up at the Black Falcon Terminal here in South Boston, are nothing but bloated Motel 8's dropped down on a boat's keel.
And they have MERMAIDS painted on the sides...vulgar and tasteless.
Anyway, Farewell to the QE2...class all the way, who'd a thunk the real Queen Elizabeth the Second would outlive the ship named in her royal honor?
The house of Windsor has some long-tailed genes lemme tell yuh.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Mark your calendars...
The Bad Poets Society RETURNS Friday November 21st at 8pm at the Spiegel Auditorium of the Cambridge Center for Adult Education...admission a paltry $5 for a cornucopia of the world's worst verse!
We are so deep into our bad poetry research it is appalling, the stacks may be huge but we are always open to any recommended substandard poesy....
Watch this space for details!
We are so deep into our bad poetry research it is appalling, the stacks may be huge but we are always open to any recommended substandard poesy....
Watch this space for details!
Friday, September 05, 2008
Pick of the Week
"Major Dundee" a pre-"Wild Bunch" Peckipah western is screening at the Harvard Film tonight at 9:15pm...and it stars that monolith of man, Charlton Heston. A very tempting offering to say the least.
And the Tri Town Drive in has a superb double feature this weekend, "Death Race" (a re-make of Corman's "Death Race 2000") with "Tropic Thunder, certainly the funniest movie I've seen all summer. The only complication is the weather forecast, a tropical storm is supposed to blow thru tomorrow and that makes the drive in a chancey propostion, but day-um that line up is worth checking the weather channel for updates I think.
And the Tri Town Drive in has a superb double feature this weekend, "Death Race" (a re-make of Corman's "Death Race 2000") with "Tropic Thunder, certainly the funniest movie I've seen all summer. The only complication is the weather forecast, a tropical storm is supposed to blow thru tomorrow and that makes the drive in a chancey propostion, but day-um that line up is worth checking the weather channel for updates I think.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Tropic Thunder (2008)
Who knew Tom Cruise harbored such gruesome anti-semitic notions?
As "Les Grossman" studio chief for Ben Stiller's overblown Viet Nam war epic, Cruise is bloated, vulgar and a sort of Jewish sasquatch gone mad on power.
Man can he cut a rug though....
Hitler used to dismiss the Jews as "cunning semi-apes", clearly this is the image Cruise had in mind when he was getting in character to play Grossman.
Yeesh the man still resents all those arguments Spielberg gave him over the merits of psychotropic pharmacology on the set of "War of the Worlds".
***
Well what of it, the movie IS gut-busting funny, as Brandon T.Jackson, Jay Baruchel, Jack Black , Robert Downey Jr and Stiller all essentially play extreme parodies of themselves as a motley team of a-list actors forced into a firefight with a jungle Southeast Asian drug gang.
Got to hand it to Stiller this time, normally he is a comic narcissisist a'la Jerry Lewis this time however he cuts in his co-stars for a big piece of the humor-action...this is a big artistic step forward for him bringing Ben that much closer to the land of the Gods lorded over by Chaplin and WC Fields.
Particularly enjoyed Jack Black who seems to have decided that his character (a beefy gross out comedian) was nothing more than the sort of actor he'd be if he had made easy-money career choices. In that light, when you see the film pay close attention to the trailer one of Black's faux-comedies...
As for the beef with the developmentally disabled, the r-word gets used freely in this film but only as signifier for the toxic self worship of A-list Hollywood actors.
My only regret is that I did not see this at the Drive In, woulda been well worth it.
As "Les Grossman" studio chief for Ben Stiller's overblown Viet Nam war epic, Cruise is bloated, vulgar and a sort of Jewish sasquatch gone mad on power.
Man can he cut a rug though....
Hitler used to dismiss the Jews as "cunning semi-apes", clearly this is the image Cruise had in mind when he was getting in character to play Grossman.
Yeesh the man still resents all those arguments Spielberg gave him over the merits of psychotropic pharmacology on the set of "War of the Worlds".
***
Well what of it, the movie IS gut-busting funny, as Brandon T.Jackson, Jay Baruchel, Jack Black , Robert Downey Jr and Stiller all essentially play extreme parodies of themselves as a motley team of a-list actors forced into a firefight with a jungle Southeast Asian drug gang.
Got to hand it to Stiller this time, normally he is a comic narcissisist a'la Jerry Lewis this time however he cuts in his co-stars for a big piece of the humor-action...this is a big artistic step forward for him bringing Ben that much closer to the land of the Gods lorded over by Chaplin and WC Fields.
Particularly enjoyed Jack Black who seems to have decided that his character (a beefy gross out comedian) was nothing more than the sort of actor he'd be if he had made easy-money career choices. In that light, when you see the film pay close attention to the trailer one of Black's faux-comedies...
As for the beef with the developmentally disabled, the r-word gets used freely in this film but only as signifier for the toxic self worship of A-list Hollywood actors.
My only regret is that I did not see this at the Drive In, woulda been well worth it.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Othello (Shakespeare & Co Lenox Ma.)
RUN don't walk to see "Othello" out at the S&C's "campus" in Berkshires!
As the Bard's A-list tragedy's go, Othello can be a problem, most productions telephone in the race angle and just let the modern sensibility do the rest. As far as casting goes, you have to hit a trifecta, a strong but not ludicrously bombastic Othello, an Iago who doesn't come off as "Dr. Zachary Smith" and a Desdemona who isn't a bimbo in a whimple.
It is much harder than it looks believe me.
None of that is at issue with S&C's current Othello it is a strong production all the way through.
John Douglas Thompson was born to the part in the fashion of the late Paul Robeson, he is confident, soldierly, manly but fatally cursed with credulity when faced with Iago's subtle Venetian trickery. Most actors when they are called to fake an epilectic seizure, Othello's fugue of despair and jealousy, would come damn close to looking foolish...not Thompson though, he looks like he is dying down there on the floor.
Michael Hammond is also seemingly born to play Iago, full of false good fellowship and a sort of blankfaced false loyalty...Othello is simply no match for him when it comes to this sort of conflict.
And then there is Merritt Janson's Desdemona, as clueless and guileless as her poor husband...like Iago she tries a few subtle tricks of her own to get Cassio back into Othello's favor, and for her favor she ends up dead. Janson plays it straight up the middle and wisely avoids the easy path of dimwitted Elizabethan victim.
After the show I ran into a few old friends from my drudgework days at IBM, one of them had never seen Othello before and asked "Is it always a thru the wringer type experience?"
I replied "It is when done right".
Trust me, S&C's "Othello" is done right...I haven't seen the Moor executed at this high a level since Johnny Lee Davenport played him at the old S&C "Stables Theater" at the Mount.
Orson Welles once opined that all good theater is "written on the air" so make tracks for Lenox my friends whilst the air is still good.
As the Bard's A-list tragedy's go, Othello can be a problem, most productions telephone in the race angle and just let the modern sensibility do the rest. As far as casting goes, you have to hit a trifecta, a strong but not ludicrously bombastic Othello, an Iago who doesn't come off as "Dr. Zachary Smith" and a Desdemona who isn't a bimbo in a whimple.
It is much harder than it looks believe me.
None of that is at issue with S&C's current Othello it is a strong production all the way through.
John Douglas Thompson was born to the part in the fashion of the late Paul Robeson, he is confident, soldierly, manly but fatally cursed with credulity when faced with Iago's subtle Venetian trickery. Most actors when they are called to fake an epilectic seizure, Othello's fugue of despair and jealousy, would come damn close to looking foolish...not Thompson though, he looks like he is dying down there on the floor.
Michael Hammond is also seemingly born to play Iago, full of false good fellowship and a sort of blankfaced false loyalty...Othello is simply no match for him when it comes to this sort of conflict.
And then there is Merritt Janson's Desdemona, as clueless and guileless as her poor husband...like Iago she tries a few subtle tricks of her own to get Cassio back into Othello's favor, and for her favor she ends up dead. Janson plays it straight up the middle and wisely avoids the easy path of dimwitted Elizabethan victim.
After the show I ran into a few old friends from my drudgework days at IBM, one of them had never seen Othello before and asked "Is it always a thru the wringer type experience?"
I replied "It is when done right".
Trust me, S&C's "Othello" is done right...I haven't seen the Moor executed at this high a level since Johnny Lee Davenport played him at the old S&C "Stables Theater" at the Mount.
Orson Welles once opined that all good theater is "written on the air" so make tracks for Lenox my friends whilst the air is still good.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
If Vince McMahon and World Wrestling Entertainment
ever got the contract to produce the opening ceremonies for the Olympics, the final product would much resemble the spectacle put on by the People's Republic of China friday night.
The "runner" on the flying harness looked pretty awesome until I remembered that poor Owen Hart fell to his death using a similar aerial gimmick at a WWE show oh so many years ago.
Oh and there would be more bra-and-panty fights...all staged under the noses of the world's leaders.
The "runner" on the flying harness looked pretty awesome until I remembered that poor Owen Hart fell to his death using a similar aerial gimmick at a WWE show oh so many years ago.
Oh and there would be more bra-and-panty fights...all staged under the noses of the world's leaders.
Thursday, August 07, 2008
Alias Atlas Carnegie
The whole Clark Rockefeller affair puts me in mind of a old Simpsons' episode wherein Homer decides to legally change his name as he now shares nomenclature with a idiotic comedy relief character on TV. Before settling on "Max Power" he conjures with "Hercules Rockefeller" among other odd monickers.
SO I dunno obviously "Clark Rockefeller" is an alias, but I suspect a Homer Simpsonish turn of creativity here from "Hercules Rockefeller" to "Clark (KENT) Rockefeller"...subtle big guy, real subtle.
George Orwell once lamented the decline of the "good old fashioned english murder" usually executed in a locked room with plenty of clues to bedevil Scotland Yard. Orwell was incensed that such good solid Sunday afternoon sport had been superceded by gruesome anatomical mayhem of a low and crude sort.
Here in America, kidnapping once the province of the Symbionese Liberation Army and Hollywood celebrities also degenerated into the sordid weapon of last resort in U.S. divorce cases.
Ah well at least the kid is okay and got to see Baltimore's upscale waterfront.
But frankly the man looks like a freak, you wonder how the hell dubious dingbats like this ever get to the altar to begin with.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Pick of the Week
Clearly "Danger Diabolik" at the Brattle Theatre tonight and tomorrow...best high camp euro-thriller you can see this weekend for the money.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
The Dark Knight (2008)
A lot of sequels simply suck it up and server more of the same in larger more expensive quantities, excess of this kind has sunk the hardiest of film series, think of the "Indiana Jones" canon if you doubt me.
And then occasionally, some sequels go deeper, harder, crazier even, here "The Bride of Frankenstein" can be enrolled with honor, also "The Dark Knight".
Oh don't get me wrong, the film has it's problems, the plotlines are too numerous, the script writers all decided for some inexplicable reason that The Joker's first outing HAD to occasion the creation of Batman's other nemesis, Two Face no matter how badly this marred the storyline...and as usual the film has something akin to three very shrill climaxes.
But...the acting is uniformly excellent thru out, nobody so much as winks at the camera once...nothing is held and not one false or smug note was sounded.
Everyone out there in cyberspace is going into ecstatic convulsions about the late Heath Ledger's performance (very much a bookend to Max Shreck in "Nosferatu" or Anthony Hopkins' as Hanninbal Lector) as the Joker...but let me just note that Aaron Eckhart comes within an ace of stealing the show as Harvey Dent (The future Two Face) and Gary Oldman's Police Chief James Gordon plays it as a worn flint of man...the grand batman freakshow has only just begun and already he is overwhelmed.
Maggie Gyllenhaal as Rachel Dawes the inevitable love interest is right in there throwing haymakers in a role previous phoned in my Katie Holmes.
The diff between the two performances is stark and simple, Gyllenhaal rides a beast called talent while Holmes has a cute show pony called "celebrity".
Alas and alack amidst all this stellar wattage, Christian Bale's Batman is merely fine in every respect, angry tough, stoical and full of coiled doubts as to the efficacy of his mission even as he goes on and on busting heads....hard to outdo the competition this time around.
It is indeed a violent and even nihilistic film DON'T bring the kids this is at last as dark and as brutal a Batman as the popular cinema can tolerate. There is no Robin, No Batgirl and only the faintest scintilla of hope.
Appropriately we saw it at the Tri Town Drive In, the biggest remaining outdoor screen in Massachusetts and for setting alone it was worth the $17 per carload price. We even managed to "part the clouds" so to speak and dodge a savage thunder storm just before the film started.
Drama indeed.
And then occasionally, some sequels go deeper, harder, crazier even, here "The Bride of Frankenstein" can be enrolled with honor, also "The Dark Knight".
Oh don't get me wrong, the film has it's problems, the plotlines are too numerous, the script writers all decided for some inexplicable reason that The Joker's first outing HAD to occasion the creation of Batman's other nemesis, Two Face no matter how badly this marred the storyline...and as usual the film has something akin to three very shrill climaxes.
But...the acting is uniformly excellent thru out, nobody so much as winks at the camera once...nothing is held and not one false or smug note was sounded.
Everyone out there in cyberspace is going into ecstatic convulsions about the late Heath Ledger's performance (very much a bookend to Max Shreck in "Nosferatu" or Anthony Hopkins' as Hanninbal Lector) as the Joker...but let me just note that Aaron Eckhart comes within an ace of stealing the show as Harvey Dent (The future Two Face) and Gary Oldman's Police Chief James Gordon plays it as a worn flint of man...the grand batman freakshow has only just begun and already he is overwhelmed.
Maggie Gyllenhaal as Rachel Dawes the inevitable love interest is right in there throwing haymakers in a role previous phoned in my Katie Holmes.
The diff between the two performances is stark and simple, Gyllenhaal rides a beast called talent while Holmes has a cute show pony called "celebrity".
Alas and alack amidst all this stellar wattage, Christian Bale's Batman is merely fine in every respect, angry tough, stoical and full of coiled doubts as to the efficacy of his mission even as he goes on and on busting heads....hard to outdo the competition this time around.
It is indeed a violent and even nihilistic film DON'T bring the kids this is at last as dark and as brutal a Batman as the popular cinema can tolerate. There is no Robin, No Batgirl and only the faintest scintilla of hope.
Appropriately we saw it at the Tri Town Drive In, the biggest remaining outdoor screen in Massachusetts and for setting alone it was worth the $17 per carload price. We even managed to "part the clouds" so to speak and dodge a savage thunder storm just before the film started.
Drama indeed.
Friday, July 18, 2008
Pick of the Week
hands down it has to be "The Dark Knight" at the Tri Town Drive In in romantic Leominster tonight...on a strong double bill with "Get Smart".
Sure, the Mendon Twin Drive In is cozier with better amenities, but the Tri Town's HUGE outdoor screen is made for super hero actioners like "Batman the Dark Knight".
Check out the link to the left, hell gawd willin' and da creek don't rise I'll be there.
Sure, the Mendon Twin Drive In is cozier with better amenities, but the Tri Town's HUGE outdoor screen is made for super hero actioners like "Batman the Dark Knight".
Check out the link to the left, hell gawd willin' and da creek don't rise I'll be there.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
"an Old Fashioned Chinese Fire Drill" (apologies to all the Chinese persons out there)
went down at the Alewife Red Line station today.
A simple disable train had as usual backed the T up to North Cambridge but just as the matter was straightened out...the starters went completely to pieces, offloaded everyone on Track B's train and put them on the Track A train, as that was "the next one out". These passengers were then packed in like sardines and thus were fuming when the train they'd just exited then blithely pulled out of the station.
The MBTA made it up to us though, we were treated to a fifteen minute delay interrupted by a bleating voice on the PA insisting this was an "Ashmont Dorchester" train.
Twice a week now it seems the Red Line treats me to a spectacles like this, either symphonies of delay and torpidity or service ineptitude to do no credit to teachables at the Fernald School.
A simple disable train had as usual backed the T up to North Cambridge but just as the matter was straightened out...the starters went completely to pieces, offloaded everyone on Track B's train and put them on the Track A train, as that was "the next one out". These passengers were then packed in like sardines and thus were fuming when the train they'd just exited then blithely pulled out of the station.
The MBTA made it up to us though, we were treated to a fifteen minute delay interrupted by a bleating voice on the PA insisting this was an "Ashmont Dorchester" train.
Twice a week now it seems the Red Line treats me to a spectacles like this, either symphonies of delay and torpidity or service ineptitude to do no credit to teachables at the Fernald School.
Friday, July 04, 2008
Hancock (2008)
"Hancock" WANTS to be great movie, not just a summer blockbuster but a real film with a heart and a story. Alas the script is a clumsy somehwat underwritten mess, half comedy half superhero opera with a definite "Spiderman" motif none of which ever exceeds the sum of it's parts.
As such the movie is at best an "interesting failure" enhanced with a strong plot twist at the forty five minute mark. In fact that plot twist is too damn strong and really felt like a desperate last minute re-write of the screenplay.
Honestly, I had a flashback to "Ratfink a Boo Boo" there fore a minute.
Mind, you Will Smith as a maladriot dipsomaniacal superhero, "Hancock" is great as usual but not even his formidable charisma can deliver the film.
Jason Bateman sort of scuttles around the edges as Hancock's appallingly naive' PR guy and the plot never quite gets around to generating appropriate villainage (vitally important in today's superhero genre, it is the diff between "Superman II" and "Catwoman").
As for Charlize Theron, what can I say? She must have demanded a huge pay day for a role that any "Smallville" actress out on haitus could've execute in their sleep.
But what the hell, they tried to do something different that much is clear, and I'll give Will Smith big props for bringing back solid film acting to the sci fi film genre after nearly a generation of Arnold Schwarzenegger's graceless one dimensional performance style.
As such the movie is at best an "interesting failure" enhanced with a strong plot twist at the forty five minute mark. In fact that plot twist is too damn strong and really felt like a desperate last minute re-write of the screenplay.
Honestly, I had a flashback to "Ratfink a Boo Boo" there fore a minute.
Mind, you Will Smith as a maladriot dipsomaniacal superhero, "Hancock" is great as usual but not even his formidable charisma can deliver the film.
Jason Bateman sort of scuttles around the edges as Hancock's appallingly naive' PR guy and the plot never quite gets around to generating appropriate villainage (vitally important in today's superhero genre, it is the diff between "Superman II" and "Catwoman").
As for Charlize Theron, what can I say? She must have demanded a huge pay day for a role that any "Smallville" actress out on haitus could've execute in their sleep.
But what the hell, they tried to do something different that much is clear, and I'll give Will Smith big props for bringing back solid film acting to the sci fi film genre after nearly a generation of Arnold Schwarzenegger's graceless one dimensional performance style.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
"My Son John" (1952) reviewed (briefly)
The HFA was kind enough to screen this 1950's anti-communist rarity a few weeks ago, indeed I think I've been waiting a full fifteen years to see it as it is unavailable on VHS or DVD or anything...hell even my favorite video bootleggers don't have it!
Well for once it was worth it, Helen Hayes plays a coying somewhat deluded middle class mom who slowly discovers her bright Ivy League educated son, the rising man in the State Department is in fact a Soviet Spy.
Unlike a a lot of the other anti-communist movies of the era, "My Son John" delves into the whole notion of Ivy League perfidy, that well educated young men were themselves vulnerable to KGB recruitment. Senator Joe McCarthy helped put this cliche on the map when he went after Secretary of State Dean Acheson and some of the allegedly bright young men around him back during the Korean War.
It's a sort of red-baiting soap opera enlivened by a strong performances from Hayes and the title star Robert Walker who died before shooting concluded. This required the director, Leo McCarey to use stock footage and out-takes from Hitchcock's "Strangers on the Train" to finish off the final reel! This is why "John" must deliver his final recantation before the graduating class of his alma mater via tape recorder complete with beatific spotlight on the machine as the late spy drones on about the possibility that they grads themselves were already under KGB surveillance.
Why this film isn't more generally available is a mystery to me....hell they don't make em' like this no more.
Well for once it was worth it, Helen Hayes plays a coying somewhat deluded middle class mom who slowly discovers her bright Ivy League educated son, the rising man in the State Department is in fact a Soviet Spy.
Unlike a a lot of the other anti-communist movies of the era, "My Son John" delves into the whole notion of Ivy League perfidy, that well educated young men were themselves vulnerable to KGB recruitment. Senator Joe McCarthy helped put this cliche on the map when he went after Secretary of State Dean Acheson and some of the allegedly bright young men around him back during the Korean War.
It's a sort of red-baiting soap opera enlivened by a strong performances from Hayes and the title star Robert Walker who died before shooting concluded. This required the director, Leo McCarey to use stock footage and out-takes from Hitchcock's "Strangers on the Train" to finish off the final reel! This is why "John" must deliver his final recantation before the graduating class of his alma mater via tape recorder complete with beatific spotlight on the machine as the late spy drones on about the possibility that they grads themselves were already under KGB surveillance.
Why this film isn't more generally available is a mystery to me....hell they don't make em' like this no more.
Pick of the Week:
The Brezhnev era Russian 'western" "The White Sun of the Desert" (1969) which screens today at the Coolidge Corner today at 1pm. Legend has it the director simply imbibed all the Joh Ford iconography and then simply exported the whole western setting to the Russian Civil war complete with bandits and wild tribesmen and a stern hero on horseback.
Should be interesting.
(In Russian with English subtitles)
Let the record show though, that when Channel Zero was in residence at the Coolidge Corner Theater, we were the first to start screening contemporary Russian cinema as a means to excite the interest of Brookline/Brighton's sizable Russian expat population.
We did well with it and were looking around for new titles to screen when we were tossed out. Nice to see the Coolidge Corner has taken up with the notion.
Should be interesting.
(In Russian with English subtitles)
Let the record show though, that when Channel Zero was in residence at the Coolidge Corner Theater, we were the first to start screening contemporary Russian cinema as a means to excite the interest of Brookline/Brighton's sizable Russian expat population.
We did well with it and were looking around for new titles to screen when we were tossed out. Nice to see the Coolidge Corner has taken up with the notion.
Monday, June 23, 2008
George Carlin is dead...
the heavens do quake.
I can recall with the simplest nostalgia that dozens of guys I knew growing up slavishly imitated Carlin's tone, inflection and demeanor...he was a very common influence for a lot of high school kids growing up in the 1970's. For all his irreverence (and that was a consider component of his personality) Carlin was an ubiquitous presence on television for years, yes he hosted the first "Saturday Night Live" but does anyone else remember his guest appearance as a DJ on Welcome Back Kotter?
Well...as Lenny Bruce once famously observed, "I'm a hustler, as long as they are willing to give, I'll tak!e".
And of course Bruce's shadow falls long over George Carlin's career it was Lenny's free form act that inspired Carlin to go solo and start really pushing boundaries on stage.
There however, the two men diverge, Lenny ultimately destroyed himself, whilst the tide of his career dropped Carlin safely down in Malibu sans appreciable damage to his sensibility.
At least until last night when the squarest of square maladies, heart disease took Carlin's life at age 71.
Should satirists die in bed? Or is that just their secret fantasy?
I can recall with the simplest nostalgia that dozens of guys I knew growing up slavishly imitated Carlin's tone, inflection and demeanor...he was a very common influence for a lot of high school kids growing up in the 1970's. For all his irreverence (and that was a consider component of his personality) Carlin was an ubiquitous presence on television for years, yes he hosted the first "Saturday Night Live" but does anyone else remember his guest appearance as a DJ on Welcome Back Kotter?
Well...as Lenny Bruce once famously observed, "I'm a hustler, as long as they are willing to give, I'll tak!e".
And of course Bruce's shadow falls long over George Carlin's career it was Lenny's free form act that inspired Carlin to go solo and start really pushing boundaries on stage.
There however, the two men diverge, Lenny ultimately destroyed himself, whilst the tide of his career dropped Carlin safely down in Malibu sans appreciable damage to his sensibility.
At least until last night when the squarest of square maladies, heart disease took Carlin's life at age 71.
Should satirists die in bed? Or is that just their secret fantasy?
Sunday, June 15, 2008
"Pick of the Week"
Clearly it is "My Son John" seminal anti-communist McCarthy era film that was coincidentally Robert Walker's last film.
Helen Hayes plays the cloying mother to a nice young man who just might be a Soviet Spy!!!
For some reason "My Son John" has never been released on VHR or DVD nor does it circulate on the bootleg circuit making it an authentic rarity from the 1950's.
"My Son John" screens at 9pm tonight at the Harvard Film Archive 24 Quincy Street in the teeming heart of Harvard Square Cambridge.
Helen Hayes plays the cloying mother to a nice young man who just might be a Soviet Spy!!!
For some reason "My Son John" has never been released on VHR or DVD nor does it circulate on the bootleg circuit making it an authentic rarity from the 1950's.
"My Son John" screens at 9pm tonight at the Harvard Film Archive 24 Quincy Street in the teeming heart of Harvard Square Cambridge.
Monday, June 09, 2008
Grace Note in Fresh Pond
Like a damn fool I accidentally left my huge trade paperback copy of "The Impossible Mencken" (a compilation of his newspaper columns)behind at Whole Foods in the Fresh Pond Shopping Center.
Sure enough I went back after supper and some kind soul had left it at the customer service desk, no fuss no bother no theft more importantly.
So kudos to Whole Foods it is patronized and run by honest people.
Sure enough I went back after supper and some kind soul had left it at the customer service desk, no fuss no bother no theft more importantly.
So kudos to Whole Foods it is patronized and run by honest people.
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Sure enough...
Swarms of little blonde girls from the suburbs came lopin' thru Alewife Station this morning clutching trade paperback Harry Potter books bound for Harvard's Commencement wherein JK Rowling is scheduled to speak.
More than a few were being escorted by beaming parents...I guess they though hooking school to attend the augustan proceedings at Harvard constituted extra-curricular educational enrichment.
Still and all that, maybe I'm an old cuss, but I just can't see JK Rowling making much of an impression as a commencement speaker at Big Red. She is quite literally standing on a platform where George Catlett Marshall once proclaimed a new world order...what will Rowling discuss? Broomstick aerodynamics?
Oh well hope the rain lets up.
More than a few were being escorted by beaming parents...I guess they though hooking school to attend the augustan proceedings at Harvard constituted extra-curricular educational enrichment.
Still and all that, maybe I'm an old cuss, but I just can't see JK Rowling making much of an impression as a commencement speaker at Big Red. She is quite literally standing on a platform where George Catlett Marshall once proclaimed a new world order...what will Rowling discuss? Broomstick aerodynamics?
Oh well hope the rain lets up.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Picks of the week
Clearly it is tonight's double bill at the Harvard Film Archive, The Shaw Brother's Five Deadly Venoms with King Boxer both martial ars classics.
I'm definitely in for "King Boxer" tonight at 9pm and hopefully I can see "The 14 Amazons" on Sunday.
I'm definitely in for "King Boxer" tonight at 9pm and hopefully I can see "The 14 Amazons" on Sunday.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Sighted at Alewife Station this morning
A real live nun.
Elderly to be sure but walking to the trains sans assistance.
Hell they are all elderly these days, nuns and priests...not sure where they get any of them anymore.
Good lord I think it has been thirty years since I've seen a young nun (under the age of fifty I mean)and I went to parochial schools where nuns did swarm freely.
I guess it is a sign of the times.
Elderly to be sure but walking to the trains sans assistance.
Hell they are all elderly these days, nuns and priests...not sure where they get any of them anymore.
Good lord I think it has been thirty years since I've seen a young nun (under the age of fifty I mean)and I went to parochial schools where nuns did swarm freely.
I guess it is a sign of the times.
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