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.