Good Lord but Seth MacFarlane is a hack in extremis

punching ineffectually waaa-ay above his weight on the Oscars Telecast last night. I'd a paid Sally Field $10,000.00 of my hard earned money to beat on Seth's no talent ass with a baseball bat like a pinata during a "Flying Nun" sketch early in the broadcast. Ah but nothing quite saves the Oscars from irrelevancy and derision quite like a Nazi Gag derived from "The Sound of Music", a Broadway Musical that is fifty years old....sheer comic genius at work. For that fact I'd a paid Bruce Vilanch $15,000 to waddle out on stage and quietly hand MacFarlane a pink slip and a cab voacher.

Hope everyone got a good night's rest last night....

Because after last night's Waterloo-esque debacle on the Oscar's telecast, now today begins the long twilight struggle to repair William Shatner's Reputation. I suggest an evening of readings from Shakespeare at the A.R.T. with some suitable patter to bridge the varied soliloquys. I'd pay a hundred bucks to hear William Shatner read "Now is the winter of our discontent" at the A.R.T. Proposed titles "Bill & Will, A Love Story"? "Shat-n-Shake"? The mind reels with the possibilities!

Congrats to Hometown Hero Ben Affleck

his latest picture "Argo" won the Oscar last night. That boyo has completed his resurrection from the ashes of "Gigli", "Daredevil", "Pearl Harbor" etc etc. Now he is gonna hafata work 24-7 to mess it all up again and crash back onto skid row...I suggest he start with some parenting advise from Alicia Silverstone or a lecture on exobiology from John Travolta.

Seth "The Family Guy" MacFarlane...is Hosting the Oscars tomorrow night?

My Ghod but Hollywood is desperate for attention isn't it? And doubling down on that whole "we need younger hipper viewers" meme that lead tinseltown to it's Waterloo in 2011 with James "The Sedated Zombie" Franco and Anne "The Zombie's Waitress" Hathaway as the event's co-hosts. Well these "tentpole television events", the Oscars, the Miss America Contest, The MD Labor Day Telethon, institutions that might've predated broadcast television but certainly reached "operational maturity" under the aegis of TV...all have aging audiences, the networks themselves rapidly becoming antiques. A process like that is historic in scope getting some mediocre cartoonist to host The Oscars can't stop it in any manner shape or form. Yup and when Hollywood is Desperate for Attention (over and above the norm) they make all sorts of bizarre entertaining mistakes...

Channel Zero Returns, Friday March 8th at 8pm Sharp!

With a screening of.... Jim Finn's "The Juche Idea" (2008)  an uproarious and provocative mockumentary deconstruction of North Korean propaganda and philosophy. Mixing together eye-popping archival footage with deadpan re-enactments, Finn has created a complex docu-fiction that is equally thought-provoking and entertaining. Translated as self-reliance, Juche (CHOO-chay) is a hybrid of Confucian and Stalinist thought that Kim Jong-il applied to the entire culture. In "The Juche Idea", a sympathetic South Korean filmmaker visits a North Korean artists' colony to bring Juche ideas into the 21st century. She ends up producing hilariously stilted shorts, including a nonsensical sci-fi story and the enigmatic "Dentures of Imperialism." "The Juche Idea" is both sardonic satire and historical excavation, an exuberant collage that reveals the absurdity at the heart of Kim-Jong-il's regime. Friday March 8th at 8pm (Sharp!) The Somerville Theatre, Micro-Cinema 55 Davis Square Somerville Ma 617 625 5700 Admission $7.50 In Korean and Bulgarian Subtitled in English

Channel Zero Now in our Seventeenth Year of Genteel Cinematic Transcendence!

The Bird Watcher Takes Flight....

Let the record show that one weekends, when he could get away from his family, my honorable father would tip toe into his room and using a pair of binoculars (this a man who'd be half blind from the age of twenty three) would bird watch for hours on end. He knew nothing about ornithology, he simply found the birds that loafed in our back yard droll and interesting. There may have been something of the "consider the lillies" variety going on, who can say, The Old Boy declined to discuss his hobby with the family. When you are Francis L. Galligan Sr, you have endured much and must therefore find grace wherever it may be found. Because if there was a man in this life who suffered, it was my father. He survived being orphaned, The Battle of the Bulge (St. Vith, the 168th Combat Engineers, his first Purple Heart), the Crossing of the Rhine (second Purple Heart wherein he stopped a shell with his head and lived). He endured forty separate plastic surgical procedure six years of hospitalization, a shoulder separation, partial loss of eyesight & hearing, a round of sepsis and a ruptured ulcer that damn near killed him right before my eyes in 1966. In later years there was anemia, vertigo, skin cancer, a prostate problem, eyesight issues, a god-awful stomach hernia, pesky digestive issues, UTIs dementia (induced by "blunt force impact trauma") and a fractured hip. And at long last, eight days ago, at the age of ninety one, the flu and pneumonia fetched Him off to that final muster, the one place I may no longer stand the honorable watch over him. He finally died for his country, it just took him sixty plus years, ah but that was my Old Man, he always took his time with the Big Challenges. And never once in all that time and in all that pain and suffering did I ever hear him express so much as an iota of self pity, he treated his problems with amused contempt and soon enough his problems learned to fear him. That is the secret of being an old disabled veteran, laugh and make witticisms, it scares Inscrutable Fate shitless. And oh how my father liked to laugh and crack jokes, a mere month ago up at the VA Hospital that was tasked with his care these last three years my mother asked my wheelchair bound father if he needed to use the bathroom in an unctuous syrupy tone. My Father templed his fingers with academic hauteur and muttered "That is an awful personal question dear don't you think..?" The man could have taught timing and dry wit to "Bert and I". Along the way he collected some titles: "All Highest, Son of Destiny, Supreme Leader, Boss of Bosses and King of Heroes", only about half of them were in fact tinged with irony. My boisterous uncles all dummied up when he sat down at the holiday feast, at Robbins Farm in Arlington dogs would cease barking & seek him out for vigorous petting and he could use the word "nomenclature" in a sentence correctly and despite the eye patch he taught me how to drive (wanna learn to drive the Right Way? Get a one-eyed man to teach you). The whole cult of "The Greatest Generation" left him cold "everyone has challenges" Father once muttered in response to it all. He was mild, gentle, peaceful, people looked out for him instinctively, he was patient and kind with one and all. What an Honor to be his son. But alas it is required of old men, that they die, it is a miracle he lived so long, truly if ever a man overthrew destiny, it was Francis Leo Galligan Senior, Last of the Stoics my departed Father. Take Care Boss, you are making a sentimental wreck of me at age fifty.

My Top Ten Movies of 2012

(Frankly I am still shocked that I saw enough movies in 2013 to fill up a Top Ten List...Way to go complicated private life!) 1.) Coriolanus Directed by and starring Ralph Fiennes. Ralph will always get props from me for adapting a Shakespeare play for the screen that the late Orson Welles insisted was "Shakespeare's worst play for film treatment". And moreover, he got Gerard Butler out of the action movie ghetto and into a serious part, what more can we ask of any Shakespeare movie? 2.) The Avengers. Stan Lee is a credit stealing hack who loves money the way a hog loves slop. Just needed to establish that...because Joss Whedon did indeed take Stan Lee's superhero franchise and did something seemingly impossible, he pulled off a great multiple super hero team up. That and he got Mark Ruffalo off the rom com circuit...hell Ruffalo is best Incredible Hulk since....Bill Bixby. For better or worse this is will be the Gold Standard Superhero movie they will all be riffing off of for the next twenty years. Remember this when it comes time for Superman and Batman to team up in the movies. 3.) The Dictator Normally I can't stand Sacha Ben Cohen's act, mostly because it is predicated on persecuting the unsuspecting in comical ways...but give him a script and a character to play lo Cohen can really step up. Kudos to his sentimentally unsentimental ending as well. 4.) Moonrise Kingdom Best movie I saw all year hands down, Wes Anderson is a genius, Harvey Keitel in a Boy Scout Uniform and a walrus moustache is worth the price of admission alone. 5.) Hit and Run There are some old genres I will always linger over, we thought the car-chase movie had gone the way of Burt Reynolds' hairline...but no thank Ghod Dax Sheperd and Kristen Bell and co-director David Palmer believed enough in this project loopy gearheadeness and all to invest their own money!. And anyway, one willing to drag Tom Arnold out of obscurity and dress him up as a gay US Marshal is ace's high in my books! 6.) Bachelorette Y'know, Kirsten Dunst is funny because she realizes when she has to throw her beauty and poise onto the comic bonfire. The rest of the cast, Isla Fisher, Rebel Wilson, Lizzy Caplan have to squeak thru by being merely excellent in every way. Besides we are long past due for a purely distaff response to the berserker antics of Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill...and these ladies threw down with aplomb. 7.) Seven Psychopaths Another scene stealing triumph from Woody Harrelson who shines here in every way when he isn't being upstaged of course by Christopher Walken. Yeah I know Colin Farrell is in this thing somewheres as well. 8.) The Queen of Versailles Cautionary tale on what happens when David Siegel a real estate mogul and GOP fundraiser builds a bloated super mansion to dwarf Hearst's own ode to Gigantism, San Simeon, only to have the economy crash as the tile is being laid...How will his willfully optimistic trophy wife Jacqueline ever adapt? I could be a Chevy Chase comedy or a bad sitcom starring Mark Harmon, but no...did I mention this is a documentary? 9.) Flight Denzel Washington has been in some bad movies, but he rarely if every turns in a bad performance. So it's all the more pleasurable when he gets a script worthy of his talents. 10.) Lincoln I was skeptical of Daniel Day Lewis as the Great Emancipator, but this guy IS LINCOLN...the midwestern drawl, the clumsy grace the weird charisma of the man and even the tendency towards prolonged anecdote it is all there in once package. This is another film that'll be the measure of future Lincoln based projects going forward.

Children of a Lesser Tarzan...

As prior mentioned, 2012 marks the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Creation of Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle. As far as his film career goes, Tarzan's topmost avatar has always been Johnny Weissmuller, the Olympic Swimming Champ who took the Ape Man to Glory and Big Box Office back in the 1930's and 40's. Thus Weissmuller is in a rare cinematic category along with Sean Connery as 007 and Chris Reeve as Kal El, consistently everyone's favorite version of their respective characters. Johnny's appeal was simple, he was first Tarzan explicitly marketed to women on the basis of his good looks and simpleminded relationship with Maureen O'Sullivan as Jane. Whatever problems purists may have with the scripts and Tarzan's pidgin english or progeny "Boy"...The approach stands the test of time as the iconic Tarzan interpretation. So far as Tarzan is concerned literally the race is to come in second behind Weissmuller. For me three actors come into contention:

Jock Mahoney The great problem of Mahoney's brief two film reign as Tarzan back in the early 1960's is that he came to the part a decade too late, being almost forty two when he was cast in what is my favorite color Tarzan movie "Tarzan goes to India" (1963). Forty two or not, Mahoney is a lean, quick, slightly feral Tarzan who is trying to save a herd of Indian elephants from a dam project that threatens to flood their home. Its a simple movie and Mahoney plays it with a lot of heart as a very human sort of a Jungle Lord. This is also the first Tarzan film to push Lord Greystoke into the role of "International Adventurer" all in color and shot on location as well.

Ya gotta love Mike Henry last of the original All-Up Color Movie Tarzans, a pro football player turned actor, he reputedly refuses to this day to sell his autograph to fans at nostalgia shows despite the fact that his association with the Tarzan franchise could net him a nice annuity. Nope Mike has wonky sort of integrity and he is in the weirdest of the 1960's adaptations of the character "Tarzan and the City of Gold" (1966) which takes Lord Greystoke from International Adventurer to outright Secret Agent as the Jungle Lord must thwart a coup plot in Mexico! 007 needs a souped up Astin Martin & a Walther PPK, Tarzan gets by with a Bowie knife and some arrows. And anyway, look at Mike Henry's physique...the man is literally a Renaissance statuary come to life! His muscles had muscles! Mike is no scenery chewer, none of the post Weismuller Jungle Lords ever were, but when he goes prowling thru the underbrush, he looks at home like he is the Apex Predator of legend.

Gordon Scott, who must have been a yard across at the shoulders in his prime, can credibly claim to be the Man Who Saved the Tarzan Franchise. Initially cast as the successor to Lex Barker Scott limped thru a few cheerless black and white jungle features complete with pidgin English until Producers Sy Weintraub & Sol Lesser got their hooks into the series shot them in color made lavish use of location work and set Gordon Scott free to speak in proper syntax. The result was a box office bonanza, the films started doing huge business overseas with Scott as the most massive, seemingly unstoppable Tarzan of all...Hell in "Tarzan's Greatest Adventure" he throws down with 007 Sean Connery(in a rare villainous role) and wins... All the above mentioned films are available for purchase thru the Warner Brothers Archives, either on Blue Ray or DVD.

FAB R.I.P.

Late word comes to us of the death of British TV Producer, Gerry Anderson creative spirit behind such classic kidvid series as "Stingray", "The Thunderbirds" and that SF-noir for the Elementary School crowd, "Captain Scarlet". I will remember him primary as a technical innovator of the first rank, if the public wanted puppet shows from him then he made sure that the puppets he was using were technological marvels of the first rank. Anderson was smart, maybe not the best writer in the world (this became apparent when he made the leap to human actors in the 1970's) but he reinvested in his own product and tried to do better with each succeeding series. Like The Beatles, he figured out early on that $uccess depended on penetrating the American market, to this end he made sure to leaven his British produced product with some American voices (chiefly US actors Shane Rimmer and Ed Bishop) as his shows became less comical, more adventuresome and violent.

Like William Shatner and Jonathan Harris, Anderson's various characters, the stolid Thunderbirds crew or the pre-liberated Lady Penelope, or the semi suicidal Captain Scarlet, all form veritable pillars in a pre-Star Wars science fiction driven childhood. In point of fact, the whole of the special effects industry in Great Britain has its origin with Gerry Anderson's many supermarionation series, dozens of creatives who worked with Gerry and his talented then-wife Sylvia all went on to work on almost all the major SF films of the 1970s. Truly there is no Star Wars without "Joe 90". Alas though, supermarionation eventually maxed out (ten years of research and still Anderson could make his puppets walk realistically) and Anderson tried his hand at producing an all up live action "Star Trek" style franchise "Space 1999" there some of his creative limitations revealed themselves... But to the end of his life he remained invested in the latest technology, a decade ago he was executive producing a remake of "Captain Scarlet" using CGI animation and at last the immortal Captain could walk right! Anderson must have been relieved....

Happy Birthday Lord Greystoke....

Its been a bittersweet year for the protean fantasy worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs, "John Carter" (Warlord of Mars) tanked at the box office compelling a managerial shake up at Disney and consigning ERB's science fiction to bookshelves for the foreseeable future. A certain amount of stock taking is in order, but at the very least lets take a moment to celebrate the Century Anniversary of Burrough's greatest creation, Tarzan of the Apes! Ah but Tarzan was a marvelous creation, an English Aristocrats sense of duty married to an animal's ferocity and lust for freedom. Indeed how could the Ape Man miss? Unlike most of Edgar Rice Burroughs' other creations, Tarzan though a titled English Baronet AND "Lord of the Jungle" is not a conqueror per se. Once Tarzan emerges from the jungle to claim his hereditary birthright he settles down to ranch live in some fabled rainforest with his chosen mate Jane Porter. Tarzan "is" he does not "rule" any more than any other prowling predator rules over abd above the dictates of their animal instinct. That to me is what has given Tarzan his unique appeal down thru the years, he is Free and has the Strength and Character to maintain his freedom without recourse to brutality or mendacity. He speaks several languages (including the gutteral tongue of the Great Apes) and yet he holds all civilization as a very paltry thing indeed. Conquerors & tyrants are almost always Tarzan's mortal enemies...running some lost City founded by a lost Roman Legion on the up and up is NEVER on the Ape Man's agenda. Tarzan is in short, the ultimate escape fantasy...he is also very much rooted in the contemporary world even if his version of Africa may as well be another planet given the inconstant nature of Edgar Rice Burroughs' zoology. Still it's a milieu that needs little explanation and is accessible to everyone from Tarzan's mate Jane Porter to the usual motley collection of communists, film crews and absent minded scientists. Proof of the Ape Man's power lies in the fact that even as jungles and rainforests shrink...his power over the imagination crashes thru the tree tops unabated...And with the Broadway musical and the Disney ice show, the Ape Man has demonstrated unmatched popularity in almost ALL media outside the printed page. Let me close then with one of Edgar Rice Burrough's greatest descriptive quotes from the original "Tarzan of the Apes" "Mother Was a Lovely Beast..."

Red Dawn (2012)

Y'know it probably isn't a good idea to remake a bumptious xenophobic anti-communist "classic" with a cast seeded with all too pretty Australians. I mean you haven't heard sheer irony in a flat mid pacific accent until your hear Chris "Thor" Hemsworth inspire his scrappy band of American guerillas with a cataract of Patriotic sentiments. I mean sheee-it can't the commies invade and occupy Canberra for once? Then maybe some American actors can stumble into some work... *** The problem with "Red Dawn" (2012) is plain and simple it is a famously anti-appeasement plotline, alas the people who made this misbegotten mess chickened out completely and went the Munich route digitally reconfiguring the film in post production to excise the original Chinese invaders and replacing them with...North Koreans. Oh and the big McGuffin in this script, Chris Hemsworth's scrappy rebels have to steal North Korea's unhackable walkie-talkie system. *** It seems The People's Republic of China is a biii-ig export market for US Films so everyone had nice Neville Chamberlainish second thoughts about offending the Middle Kingdom to say nothing of awakening their terrible wrath. You can't denounce appeasement by...appeasing, that sort of cognitive dissonance is strictly Mitt Romney in form and content. *** The current version suffers from the angst of Modern Conservatism, sans communism to denounce & exploit today's wingnuttery are reduced to pumping hot air into the ruptured envelope of Muslim Extremism, North Korean Irredentism etc, all pale shadows of the original Red Threat. Hell the original anticommunist films of the 1940's & 50's are counter cultural classics compared to this bilge..."The Red Threat" (1948), "My Son John" (1952) or the utterly demented "Red Planet Mars" well worth screening in revival. Not so "Red Dawn", cowardice fairly leaks off the screen, what would R. Emmett Tyrell & Bill Safire say about such truckling before Peking?? Anyway NORTH KOREA??? Give me a break the Minuteman Council of the Boy Scouts of America could take them down in a week who are these mooks kidding???

May the Mouse be With You...

Lucasfilm has sold out completely to Disney, netting George Lucas a four billion dollar windfall. My first impressions of the acquisition were entirely venal and sarcastic "George Lucas loves Money like a Hog Loves Slop" to paraphrase the late lamented Earl K. Long. Of course I resent the "corporatization of fantasy", but I then again I truly wonder what a Star Wars movie with worthwhile dialogue would entail.... Shee-it if The Mouse has any brains they will coproduce the new franchise with Pixar...that might be a Star Wars worth anticipating at long last.

"The Man with the Iron Fists" (2012)

Y'know, I wanna believe that RZA can produce, direct and star in a successful revival of the classic formula chop-socky epics of the 1970s...Honestly I am pulling for him to be the next Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan....even the next Alexander Lo Rei. And the film has it's merits, good pacing, akin to "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" sans all that lovey-dovey stuff. And his CAST! Ricky Yune, David Bautista (who has future in the movies IMHO),Lucy Liu and Russell Crowe at his most dissolute and cameos from Gordon Liu &Pam Grier as well! And it isn't like RZA doesn't have the best sort of an education to be a martial arts movie star, like me he clearly watched a lot of "Ocean Shores Video LTD" titles on VHS back in the day.

Alas though, the man just doesn't have the acting skills or the physical props to carry an all up Wu Shu movie, I admire his moxie, I hope he perseveres in his efforts to revive the genre but this film was a bit of a glorious well intentioned misfire. I think RZA needs to direct and write and find someone to act as his on camera muse...exactly who that person would be I cannot say, but Gina Carana is surely at loose ends she might do some business goin' forward.

Y'know...

THIS is a good book! Why? Edgar Rice Burroughs just communed with his audience, it wasn't enough to send Tarzan to a land of prehistoric monsters and cave people, oh no he had to throw in reptile men, man-apes, a Zeppelin, a sexy cave princess and of course, 17th Century Pirates! The man practically invented "Fan Service"....

Atlas Shrugged Part Two (2012) or "Fear and Loathing in Galtsylvania"

Let the record show that I had to pay $10.50 at the Woburn Ma multiplex to finally hear Raymond Joseph Teller (of "Penn & Teller" fame) actually say something in a motion picture. Too bad that motion picture is "Atlas Shrugged Part II" a cheaply made, crudely acted mishaugas that doggedly cashes in on the classic objectivist novel and it's cult appeal. Teller must have wanted to speak up in defense of his well know libertarian principles in the worst possible way....and so he did. There is just something grimly ironic about a group of artistic nonentities creating a two hour long piece of utter hackwork whose core mission it is to denounce and deplore the mediocrities that persecute the producing class. *** It is important to locate Ayn Rand within a larger continuum of 20th century political thougt, that is the ongoing quest for a rigorous Counter-Marxist system of thought. For a while there, Counter Marxism was Big Medicine within and without political science with a diverse range of players everyone from Dr. Fred C. Schwarz to Billy Graham, William F. Buckley, William Simon (that founder of numberless conservative think tanks in Washington DC) along with heavy hitting intellectuals like Eric Voegelin and Friedrich Hayek and numerous others along for the ride. There were some serious charlatans mixed in there as well, Counter-Marxism could be a lucrative intellectual discipline if you played your cards right. And right there at the center of the maelstrom was Russian refugee, novelist, screenwriter & philopher Ayn Rand who saw no validity to anyone else's system of thought but her own, even her fellow Counter-Marxists. It is ironic to note that in some ways, Rand was a better Bolshevik than she herself realized, utterly humorless, zealous to the point of fanatism and a militant atheistic to her dying day....and indeed its her Godlessness that put her at lifelong odds with the more conventionally spiritual US Anti-communists, the William F. Buckleys and Billy Grahams. No, Rand believed in elites, good old fashioned Pre-Marxist Nietzchean elites, success was the indispensible indicator of superiority, as long as wealth favored cunning then the elites were secure and the masses can go hang. This is a ideology of particular appeal to US Sophomores, everyone wants to belong to an elite, especially in college, unself conscious mediocrities on the other hand always crave a caste of helots and thralls to patronize and deplore. It was all so simple simple enough to ensnare two generations of college sophomores. What unites Rand with Buckley and Schwarz and all the rest is the unstated notion that the confrontation with Marxism-Leninism is somehow a crisis of faith, and that what gives communism its power over the masses is the fervor and density of the belief system. The response therefore is simple anti-communists must generate and then simultaneously proclaim a powerful Counter-Marxist Creed and transform the whole confrontation into a cosmic war for intellectual, spirit and physical supremacy. There is something ironic about so famous an atheist as Ayn Rand birthing an entire system of theology for others to moon over and worship, but then again there was always a dead void where Counter Marxism's sense of humor should have been. To which I stand athwart the whole process and cry HALT!! A clash of faiths, especially synthetic ones derived from political philosophy is a conflict uniquely freighted with fantasy distortion and cognitive dissonance. Moreover you read history, economics, sociology and mere factuality right out of the argument. Faith is easy, the facts are always hard to find and tougher to proclaim. *** Ah but the movie is was awful, the SyFy does it better with it's Saturday Afternoons devoted to "Mega Octo-Squid versus the Atomic TornadoQuake" they certainly take the time to collect and rehearse better actors. I think SyFy stalwart Debbie Gibson would definitely make a better Dagny Taggart than Samantha Mathis...Gibson would pout less and wouldn't perhaps bark her orders with so much uncertainty. Ah but these are true believers we are talking about, all they need is a threadbare $20 million dollar production to sell to the true believers for the next generation or more. Certainly a mere two years ago word on the street was the two planned sequels to "Atlas Shrugged" were cancelled on grounds of poor box office, clearly DVD sales made up for this or a new collection of suckers were dug up to back the franchise. It is also notable that nearly the entire franchise was recaast from part one to part two with no appreciable improvement in the delivery of Rand's leaden self satisfied dialogue. And indeed we must recall when we see films as bad as "Atlas Shrugged Part II" that to the end of his life Ed Wood Jr. insisted that "Plan Nine from Outer Space" was a very serious anti-nuclear movie.

Channel Zero Returns This Friday Night!

With a screening of "Journey Into Fear" (1942) (Allegedly) Directed by Norman Foster Joseph Cotten stars in this classic WW II spy movie as a befuddled American engineer who must flee wartime Turkey with Nazi Assassin's in pursuit! Starring Joseph Cotten, Ruth Warwick, Jack Moss, Orson Welles, Everett Sloane, Agnes Moorhead & Delores Del Rio. See this movie & recall one of the great mysteries of Hollywood's Golden Age, "Did Orson Welles Really Direct Journey into Fear"? This Friday October 12th 8pm The Somerville Theatre (micro cinema) 55 Davis Square Somerville MA Admission $5 (CHEAP!) 617 625 5700 Good Luck Finding Us on Facebook!! *** Y'know,let the record show that every time, Orson Welles tried to reintroduce himself to Hollywood it was usually with some sort of a thriller movie. This is sort of ironic given his reputation as an iconic auteur of heavy dramas. Stop and think though, "The Stranger"(1946) was spy drama designed to repair Welles' reputation for profligacy and "Artiness" after the whole It's All True/Magnificent Ambersons mishaugas. "The Lady from Shanghai"? A doomed bid to land himself a production deal at Columbia using the unique leverage of Welles own wife Rita Hayworth over Studio Boss Harry Cohn. The result was a quirky noir that is one of Rita Hayworth's best films...even if she plays a thoroughly disreputable character. In 1958 Welles made yet another attempt to re-enter the Hollywood ranks with the very last of the noir thrillers "Touch of Evil". Hell the very first property the Mercury Theater optioned was a spy story called "The Smiler with a Knife". Taken all together one gets the distinct impression that Welles was constantly trying to create a default position for himself in Hollywood as a sort of domestic brand of Alfred Hitchcock. Who was perhaps the Wellesian ideal, a superb artist with a robust record of success at the box office. As for "Journey into Fear" the script is a bit of a mess (little of the source novel's risque atmosphere makes it into the screenplay) but the whole thing is enlivened by an excellent Mercury Theater cast and a sock-o ending worthy of Hitchcock at his best. Supposedly Norman Foster directed the film, but we here at Channel Zero have our doubts...maybe Orson Welles did direct this film after all- It sure looks like an Orson Welles movie if shot on the fly a bit...

Come and see for yourself!

Late word comes to us

that WMFP-TV Channel 62 in Lawrence Ma has changed hands from the eminently watchable "ME-TV" with the re-runs of "The Rifleman:,"Lost in Space" and "Batman" to something called "Plum-TV" defined as "Lifestyle Television" ergo infomercials, 24-7. Appalling! WMFP-TV was quite literally the last place on basic cable where one could see Van Williams and Bruce Lee in "The Green Hornet"on the small screen the Way Ghod Intended! Oh well I guess it is back to watching Texas'unfolding "Feral Pig Crisis" on A&E. More and more I suspect that if we do not want to live in a television world dominated by the thrilling antics of pawn shop clerks, we may have to make a Last Stand on Local Cable Access.

Marie Antoinette at the A.R.T.

Y'know I liked this play, but I did not love it. But that is a huge concession from me given the A.R.T.'s record of artistic bungling nigh these past five years or so. Oh it is a flashy witty production to be sure, anchored by a bravura performance from Brooke Bloom as the doomed Queen of France she goes easily from a sort of Lucille Ball clown to a trembling haughty Hepburn facing that final blade. Ms. Bloom seems bound for bigger places based on this performance. If I have a complaint its that the scenario is nigh hilarious in the first act and then as the Royal Family faces deposition and execution it darkens and darkens to pitch black. But then again that tracks pretty much with the broad flow of French History before and during the revolution, first farce then the massacre. Kudos to dramatist David Adjmi for catching that aspect of the story. As for the A.R.T.I'm gonna go out on a limb and suggest their current fascination with all things transgressive, flashy and contemporary strongly suggests they ought to abandon all classical revivals and confine themselves to new plays a'la The Gate Theatre in Dublin. There is nothing worse than watching the A.R.T. work a disco glitter ball into something like Marlowe's Doctor Faustus. They are doing "Pippin" in december, that seems like a good start.

Pick of the Week...

is undoubtedly Carmine Gallone's 1926 silent Italian epic "The Last Days of Pompeii" screening at 4pm Sunday September 23rd at the Harvard Film Archive (for free no less!).

Carmine Gallone was a reliable hack who directed any number of forgettable fare under the aegis of Benito Mussolini back when the Blackshirts ruled the roost. His high point was directing "Scipio Africanus" (1937) a bloated lumbering epic given to celebrating the joys of Roman colonization in North Africa. After the war his career staggered on directing costume epics until the early 1960's....the man was nothing if not consistent. Well, we should know, Channel Zero first screened "Scipio Africanus" over ten years ago at the Coolidge Corner Theater. I just wanna say that this appears to be the third time in a year that the HFA has screened films dating from the Italian Fascist era, a film making epoch which, up until now, has been pretty much been the province of Channel Zero. Oh well, this is the HFA we are talkin' about they at least understand the worth of the film. But I reiterate, anyone out there who can get me a line on North Korean propaganda films....drop me a little note. Either that or wartime Japanese fare...I'm starting to get desperate...

Channel Zero Returns Next Month!!

With a screening of "Journey Into Fear" (1942)

(Allegedly) Directed by Norman Foster

Joseph Cotten stars in this classic WW II spy movie as a befuddled American engineer who must flee wartime Turkey with Nazi Assassin's in pursuit!
Starring Joseph Cotten, Ruth Warwick, Jack Moss, Orson Welles, Everett Sloane, Agnes Moorhead & Delores Del Rio.
See this movie & recall one of the great mysteries of Hollywood's Golden Age,

"Did Orson Welles Really Direct Journey into Fear"?

Friday October 12th 8pm
The Somerville Theatre (micro cinema)
55 Davis Square
Somerville MA
Admission $5 (CHEAP!)
617 625 5700
Good Luck Finding Us on Facebook!!
Channel Zero, now in our sixteenth year of genteel video transcendence…