Our Next Thrilling Chapter..."Jungle Gold"

Y'know, for years we've had this internal debate here at Channel Zero about the mechanics of screening a classic movie serial for a modern moviegoing audience. "Binge watching" the sumbitch is right out, a twelve or fifteen episode chapter play clocks in at over three hundred minutes. Just booking the venue for such a long program is nigh impossible and will a paying audience sit there in one go for material loaded with filler for such a long time? Doubtful. The Harvard Film Archive did it once back in the 1990's, dedicating an entire Saturday Afternoon to "Flash Gordon" (1936) in a marathon screening, it played to an audience of three as I recall (but it remains solid boasting rights on my part at least). The Brattle Theatre, in the summer of 1994 screened Victor Jory starring as "The Shadow" (1940) in five episode clumps over successive Monday evenings. Its worked but the Alec Baldwin "Shadow" was out that summer (more boasting rights, I saw it at the Drive In) and attendance certainly lagged that third Monday night. We love the serial format, even the misbegotten chapter plays like "Brick Bradford" (which features aggressive extraterrestrial moon-men in tee shirts and bermuda shorts, the sheer energy and violence of the better examples stand up even today against today's blockbusters. It should be noted that the first all-up comic book adaptations were serials notably "The Adventures of Captain Marvel" (1941) a CLASSIC Republic Serial full of that studios signature quality stunts and action. The irony is, that back in 1914 or so, at the outset of the silent chapter plays all the heroes in the early serials were all women! Pearl White in the "Perils of Pauline" had all sorts of agency, she operated locomotives, indulged in gun fights with bad guys and demonstrated all sorts of self rescuing independence before she ever had the right to vote! And no, she was never once tied to the railroad tracks! Republic Pictures with its spate of jungle girl chapter plays in the 1940's was merely hearkening back to the estrogen-laden heroics of early days of serials. Some of cinemas first male versus female fistfights, where the woman carried the day, are in serials. Linda Stirling, in particular has a robust judo toss in her repertoire. So after much debate, Channel Zero has decided to screen "Jungle Gold" (1944) a complete feature length film edited out of Republic's classic jungle girl serial "The Tiger Woman". Linda Stirling stars as a Jungle Queen defending her own personal lost tribe in the Brazilian Jungle from oil wildcatters. This film is literally "highlight reel" of Republic Studios stunts, action and general lightning paced mayhem! The Somerville Theatre (micro cinema) Friday, July 26th 8pm (sharp!) 55 Davis Square, Somerville Ma Admission: $7.50 (cash only) 617-625-5700

Why Sadko (1952)?

It is sad to say, but Classic Soviet Films are rarely screened on the local repertory circuit, save for certain "sure fire" titles (exp "Battleship Potemkin" "Alexander Nevsky" the art-house propaganda titles in other words), this is a shame because even a colossal totalitarian system can produce genre films of rare sophistication & beauty. "Sadko" was the product of a testing time in Soviet History, Stalin had purged the arts (chiefly of any "Jewish Influence") and now set out to illustrate the intensification of class conflict by decreeing that All Soviet Films must be artistic masterpieces. So of course, film production in the USSR plunged during this period, no one dared approve a script that might result in a film that wasn't a Masterpiece. Director Alexandr Ptushko though, had two things going in his favor as he prepared to shoot "Sadko" one, Soviet Film Censors were pretty lax about approving films set in the distant past reasoning that the modern class conflict dynamic didn't exist per se in the Dark Ages, so filmmakers were absolved of the need to make The Vanguard Party of the Workers look good. Secondly, "Sadko" is a famous Russian Folk tale about a 10th Century troubadour who travels to strange magic realms in a brave search of a mythic Bird of Happiness by which to revive his beleaguered home town. This "Bylina" (a traditional slavic oral folk tale) had already been adapted by Rimsky-Korsakov into a Opera that was a mainstay of Russian Theatre throughout the Stalinist Era. So Ptushko had the right setting and the right property, he also had a profound epic visual sense and a straining desire to burst the limits of cinema in his time. And what the hell he succeeded. A Bright Colorful Poignant Fantasia that could easily be considered the USSR's Answer to "The Wizard of Oz"directed a man who could easily go toe-to-toe with Walt Disney. And in 1952, in the USSR that meant something, specifically because of the rigid application of Stalin's demand for film masterpieces, "Sadko", is one of exactly five Russian Language Movies produced under Soviet Auspices in 1952, the fact that it got made, and made so well, is nothing short of miraculous. So Hell to the Yeah, Channel Zero is screening Sadko, bold colors, state of the art special effects, folksongs and all! The Somerville Theatre (micro cinema) Friday, May 17th 8pm (sharp!) 55 Davis Square, Somerville Ma Admission: $7.50 (cash only, please note tickets are on sale thirty minutes prior to showtime in front of the micro cinema) 617-625-5700 In Russian (folksongs and all) Subtitled into English!!

David Kleiler, RIP...

Let the record show, that Channel Zero had some three attempts to collaborate with the departed local film maven, David Kleiler (former GM of the Coolidge Corner, Curator of the Boston Underground Film Festival, Programmer of the Woods Hole Film Festival, that boy got around yo!), all of them ended in disaster. Nonetheless we had no regrets things went wrong for reasons unrelated to David or Us, and our little film franchise gained always in wisdom and experience, something Kleiler freely gave away every day of his life. He died last week after all long illness, and the local film scene is the poorer for it by far. The First time, was likely in the summer of 1996, we were negotiating with the Coolidge Corner's then Marketing Director, the incomparable Robert Deutsch for a coveted repertory film screening slot, in prime time no less! As General Manager, Kleiler had literally saved said venue from the wrecking ball and was now outreaching to us, Channel Zero with an opportunity to reach a Boston Audience. At this time, we were doing screenings on VHS for free in the now defunct Liberty Cafe in Central Square, this was a very big thing on offer indeed. Alas it was not to be, Kleiler and Deutsch were both shown the door almost as soon as we passed in our proposal (for the record it was "The Evil Dead Part II", so sue us, we wanted a pre sold audience...and we'd never worked with celluloid before!). Two years later, in the Summer of 1998, and David Kleiler was doing his own private repertory screenings at "Bill's Bar" in the Fenway, he invited Channel Zero to come in and "sublet" for a night when the Red Sox were out of season. This Time we went with one of our dependable programs "Custer Lives" a screening of the misbegotten 1967-1968 western series starring Wayne Maunder as the doomed Colonel Custer riding the prairie like Captain Kirk on Horseback. We'd done quite well in Central Square with a similar program (tarted up with a reading of bad "Custer Elegy" poetry that in turn inspired the infamous "Bad Poets Society") and dutifully began flogging the event thru our column in "Editorial Humor" and with our now ubiquitous flyers. And wouldn't you know it, one week before showtime, Kleiler and his ad-hoc repertory series gets shown the door. We were livid, he was philosophical.... And then...in 2000, when David Kleiler was ensconced at the top his own film festival, the Boston Underground Film Festival no less, he offered Channel Zero a precious screening opportunity at the Revolving Museum in South Boston. We were ecstatic, at last validation! And this time, we had the title, Peter Watkins'controversial nuclear war "documentary "The War Game"...we were just about to secure the screening rights to said film when the Harvard Film Archive swooped down and announced a retrospective of Peter Watkins' films, two weeks before our screening including of course, "The War Game". Kleiler, counseled steadfastness (we should have listened to him), but we had catastrophic visions of an empty theatre with crickets chirping on the soundtrack, we canceled "The War Game" and in sheer desperation opted for High Camp, in this case, "Hercules Unchained" (1960) starring Steve Reeves. Our reasoning was "classic psychotronic titles" hadn't made a big inroad yet on the local midnight movie circuit so we were reasonable free of the fear of pre-emption. This would prove to be a rare example of Channel Zero misjudging its audience, never ever try to sell camp escapism to a Boho Audience of rising Cineastes....they never get the joke, I guess they shouldn't have to, either. They were faking heart attacks to get out of that bunker like room in South Boston, we couldn't have chosen a worse movie for the crowd at hand, it was indeed "Our Waterloo". If you'd like you can watch the whole thing on Youtube its a long way from a 16mm rental indeed....but what the hell David gave us the agency to triumph or screw up all by ourselves. Alas we never again collaborated with David Kleiler sad to say, the man was unflappable in this movie market, you have to be, he did grace us by attending some of our more recent screenings at the Somerville Theatre, he was relaxed, wise as truly one who had seen it all, if he bought one of our tickets it a virtual endorsement that we had the most interesting screening in town. Back in 2015, when Channel Zero hit a bad patch with unique programming that inspired nothing but empty seats David Kleiler counseled patience and resilience, "not quitting was the best path to triumph" was his sage advice. I'd see him sometimes at the Harvard Film Archive, lately he was clearly sick but still cogent and wise, it was always a pleasure to talk with him, I will miss him, the local film scene will have to wait a long time before it grows another conscience and institutional memory like David Kleiler.

We got good Ink!!! WE GOT GOOD INK!!!

From Betsy Sherman in the Arts Fuse!! Oh and Lauren King, That Empress of Insight, came thru as well!! (sorry folks dis ain't da golden age, yer gonna have to pay someone to read that Boston Globe article) I mean lemme tell yuh, its hard to get decent arts press attention in this town, always has been and I've been at this twenty four years!!!

Why Screen..."Million Dollar Legs" (1932) ?

Because it is "pre-code"comedy and as such is pitched at a slightly more adult audience, and mostly because its literally the only film in W.C. Fields'surviving catalogue wherein The Great Man plays a person of influence, the President of the Balkan Duchy of Klopstokia. Of course in the whole of Western Civilization no Chief Executive, President Prime Minster or Duce, has ever had to hold on to power by prevailing in the Summer Olympics weightlifting competition! That may frenz is the very spirit of Dada come to roost in the Hollywood Hills. It is also a prime illustration of Moe Howard's dictum that the very sole of comedy emerges in a Hegelian sense from the Annihilation of Dignity. Director Eddie Cline was a frequent collaborator with Fields, he would subsequently direct two of The Great Man's Best Films, "The Bank Dick" & "Never Give a Sucker an Even Break". The rest of the cast includes beefy Jack Oakie (in a rare purely romantic Lead) and veritable cavalry charge of slapstick comedians, Cross Eyed Ben Turpin, spindly Andy Clyde and the ever excitable Hugh Herbert among others. It is the sort of film they don't make anymore, a slapstick farce with a strong overlay of pure satire, hell they weren't making many of these back in the day, so this is a rare opportunity to reacquaint oneself with the Incomparable Comedy of W.C. Fields, don't miss it!! The Somerville Theatre (micro-cinema) Friday, February 22nd 8pm (sharp!) 55 Davis Square Somerville Ma. Admission $7.50 (Cheap! Cash Only) 617) 625-5700 Note Tickets go on sale thirty minutes or so before showtime outside the Micro Cinema downstairs at the Somerville Theatre

This is as close as I got to...

Sam J. "Flash Gordon" Jones at the Somerville Theatre last Friday Night, let the record show that is a small bag of popcorn in his hand, please indulge no rumors. Amazingly Jones is the subject of a fairly comprehensive film documentary detailing his ubiquitous career after the 1980 Flash Gordon adaptation. The man is nothing if not indomitable, working as bodyguard when he isn't on the convention circuit or collaborating with Seth McFarlane. Ubiquity like that, DESERVES a documentary!! Lt@: Garen Daly (CapoRegime, Boston Sci Fi Film Festival), Lisa Downes (Director of "After Flash")and Sam J.Jones.

My Top Ten Movies for 2018

Sadly due to ongoing career and family crises, I just barely got to ten movies this year...but I got there all the same. Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, great documentary about the world's only pinup beauty who held a legit patent on a electronic invention whose principle is still very much in use today. The Death of Stalin, Its an odd thing but the 20th Century's A-List "Tyrannical Trio" (Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin), lavish film depictions of the death of the two fascists are a common thing, but Stalin, who had the bad form to die in bad has gone a-begging until now. Besides any film willing to cast Steve Buscemi as Nikita Khrushchev and Michael Palin as Molotov, deserves an Academy Award for sheer chutzpah. Isle of Dogs, I love Wes Anderson, he was clearly drawing on the legacy of Czech filmmaker Karel Zemen for this stop motion puppet feature...the man can do no wrong in my books. Eighth Grade, Bo Turnham has a future he knows how to extract evocative realistic performances from youth players...its a useful talent. Given her strong performance, I'm not sure where Elsie Fisher goes after this, but then I once said that about Chloe Grace-Moritz. "Sorry to Bother You", Every year, America needs a good parable on racial politics and the intricacies of sheer identity, and we'll need it annually until we finally all get past some stuff. "The Miseducation of Cameron Post" Remember what I said about Chloe Grace Moritz earlier? Here is a good sign she can perpetuate a career in Hollywood, of the odious process of "praying away the gay" I will pass over in silence. The BlacKkKlansman This might be, Spike Lee's First (and likely last) film with a happy ending. The enormity of the deed was such, that he had to tack on a depressing contemporary epilogue to hold onto his prophecy props. "Operation Finale"..."Eichmann had it coming, he made enemies!" "Bathtubs over Broadway" a long overdue documentary about the lost genre of "Industrial Musicals", Letterman show alum Steve Young scours the world for the composers, scores and recordings that make up these elaborate trade show extravaganzas. But its the human dimension here that enchants, Young makes friends, revives long lost music, becomes a genre activist...the guy is so "Channel Zero" it hurts. "The Favourite" Who knew that Emma Stone's breakthrough movie would be as an ambitious lady in waiting to the sexually ambiguous Queen Anne of England? Seriously who knew???

Stan Lee: In Memoriam...

Every Entertainment Industry, Gets the Brand Ambassador it Deserves. And so it was, that Stan Lee aka Stanley Lieber, former Editor Publisher of Marvel Comics, finally died last month at the age of ninety four. I will give him credit, he took a fourth rate outfit from impotence to market dominance, and it teetered on the brink of bankruptcy the entire time. As a writer, he wrote the worst women in comics, craven passive unheroic creatures, worth remembering that Marvel didn't have a single super hero comic that centered on a female character up and running until the 1970's. In the 1960's Marvel was a chest burs tingly patriotic publisher in the vein of Mickey Spillane until Stan discovered his comics had some cachet on College Campuses and then overnight it enabled so called youth culture to a hilarious degree. He did train a generation of writers and creative, all of them to write just like him. The man had two great talents, he could write (bombastic pseudo mythic dialogue admittedly, but with a heart certainly) and he could hype, lord how he could hype. Hype so strong he himself began to believe it by the nineteen seventies, proclaiming himself soul creator of a good dozen of Marvel's bestselling superhero books, he called Marvel's audience "true believers" but clearly he true believer in his own almighty myth. The man spent most of the nineteen eighties walking back boasts he'd made in the public prints in the nineteen seventies...only Donald Trump can beat a record like that. After Chris Reeve's "proof of concept" with "Superman the Movie" in 1978, Lee managed to convince Marvel Comics to release him from his publishing duties and allow him to take up residence as the company's multimedia ambassador to Hollywood. Thereafter he signed bad development deal after bad development deal, A cheap "Fantastic Four" Movie that has become the exclusive property of video bootleggers a "Captain America" movie wherein the patriotic ubermensch fights...Mussolini (my legally blind ninety five year old mother could take down Il Duce who are we kidding...) and a handful of TV pilots best forgotten. The man had a genius talent for a bad deal, in fact Marvel's cinematic revolution was likely delayed a good decade because key characters like The Hulk, The Fantastic Four or the X-Men were scattered around tinseltown optioned out to different rival studios...somehow that universe has prevailed at the box office despite Stan Lee's legendary business ineptitude. Someday someone is gonna write a great history of this period in Stan Lee's life, from a "what-not-to-do" perspective...it'll be instructive. He Hyped, and he Believed, that is Stan Lee's legacy. If I criticize and list his faults its more or less in the shadow of that legacy, a fantasy empire in Hollywood with global reach, one that will likely soon rival Walt Disney's planetary predominance. When you've conjured at that level, you can afford a little candor..."Excelsior Stan, Excelsior"

Orson Welles alleged "Last Movie"....

the heretofore uncompleted "The Other Side of the Wind" Has finally be finished and dropped onto Netflix. Its currently playing in New York and Los Angeles, we may get it here in due course. I am legitimately conflicted as to this project, a longtime labor of love from Welles' proteges Peter Bogdanovich among others, I am never sure if the director's intentions are being honored when other's finish the film. The very act of finishing a film, especially from a chronic auteur like Welles strongly compromises it's innate status as a "Film" Directed By "Orson Welles". Ironically Welles himself ruminated on the complicated issue of "artistic provenance" in his 1973 film "F for Fake", ostensively a discursive look at Art Forger Elmyr De Hory among other fakers of note (including Welles himself). On the other hand, just the mere fact that Bogdanovich & Co even finished the damn thing and rendered up a comprehensive film at all is an achievement. I myself sat not one hundred feet away from Stefan Droessler the curator of the Munich Film Museum and the legatees of Welles' personal film collection who told an audience at Harvard that owing to the highly idiosyncratic editing, "The Other Side of the Wind" could never be completed. Welles' personal story is a "cautionary tale" that could easily be summarized as "how to do everything wrong and still somehow make movies". That part of his biography, the endless conflicts with studios and backers, I think sadly obscures his role as a still vibrant film educator, the man literally revised his style several times over the course of his career and made each revision work like gangbusters. A close study of his feature films, a bare fourteen or so (the number may grow, who knows?)is a complete film education unto itself. Which brings me to my own personal utopian vision as "Welles as Film Educator to the World", why not declare his unfinished "Don Quixote" adaptation a public domain property, digitally scan in all the exposed footage into a database and allow everyone a chance to collaborate with Orson Welles and complete "theirs and his" own version of said film? Well, we all know the answer to that, you can't make money off of that utopian vision(at least the people who own the unfinished film itself, several persons and institutions are in play) and if "The Other Side of the Wind" makes money, count on it, Welles other unfinished films (there are at least three more lying around) will be put in play. Which is the final irony, only long after his death, is Orson Welles making money for the studios in Hollywood.

Why Screen "Attack of the Mushroom People"? (1963)

The dirty secret is, most of the classic Kaiju movies, are not particularly scary per se, they are more akin to opera with giant radioactive mutant dinosaurs made of foam rubber as the defacto stars and vocalists. "Attack of the Mushroom People" (AKA "Matango, Fungus of Terror", I am sure that title is way more frightening in Japanese) is a genuinely scary and unsettling Kaiju by every measure. A collection of Japanese Bourgeoisie are shipwrecked on a radioactive desert island presided over by an invasive species of sentient mushrooms, intent of absorbing the castaways into that malevolent vegetable collective. Director Ishiro Honda, clearly wanted to comment on the hedonism and selfishness that came along with Japan's hallowed post war economic miracle...and what better prism by which to do that than a grim little Kaiju movie? The irony is, the film was not a box office success in Japan and the international rights were sold off to American International Pictures where it was duly dubbed and dumped on the US Television where locally it was creepy little staple on WLVI TV 56's "Creature Feature" for years. So far as I can tell, the film has never had an proper theatrical screening in the USA...at least not in the 21st Century as its very much not in that Japanese Kaiju classic repertory canon (I'm looking at You, Gojira!). Channel Zero, as always thinks that is a shame, and bids on Friday October Fifth to kick off the local Repertory Halloween Season with a screening of "Attack of the Mushroom People" in the Somerville Theatre's Micro Cinema. "Be Prepared, To Be Scared! This is a Kaiju Like No Other!!" The Somerville Theatre (micro-cinema) Friday, October 5th 8pm (sharp!) 55 Davis Square Somerville Ma. 617) 625-5700 Admission $7.50 (Cheap! Cash Only) And while yer at it, why not join our official Facebook Fan Group for all the early word on Upcoming Screenings?

Kudos to the Somerville Theatre...

As part of their 70mmm Film Festival this week, they are screening two excellent examples of the Late Charlton Heston's "epic historic drama" filmography, "El Cid" with Sophia Loren & "Khartoum" costarring Sir Laurence Olivier. The Full Schedule Can Be Found Here. I've been fitfully lobbying various local repertory entities for some sort of a retrospective for the late Charlton Heston, (an "axiom" of the cinema per Michel Mourlet) who career spanned decades and overleaped genres with ease. Tickets are still on sale for today's 2pm screening of "El Cid" in sumptuous 35mm... advise purchasing tickets early, a leisurely lunch before settling in.

"Best Popular Picture"...

Is a new category being introduced by the Motion Picture Academy of Arts & Sciences (AKA "The Oscars") in a attempt to improve the TV broadcast's ratings and hand a statue to a profitable film production with a high recognition factor. The critics have pounced on the proposal and mocked it as a "dumbing down" of the Oscars, which is ironic to me, because the Academy Awards are hardly "movie night" at your local Mensa chapter. There is also some criticism to the effect that this is a transparent ploy of obscure the heavy round of allegedly partisan politics that overshadows the balloting. There is a shit ton of politics in the lead up to the Academy Awards but it isn't always a bicoastal liberal caricature, there is definite "block voting", notoriously by British Artists working in Hollywood, how else to account for Eddie Redmayne's sudden vault to the A-List? And then there is Hollywood's ongoing exploitation of women In Front and Behind the Cameras, everyone sweats and tugs their collars about it, then hands a golden statuette to Judi Dench or Meryl Streep to ease the collective anxiety...for one night anyway. No...I'm guarded FOR this idea, I know it sounds like half baked pandering, but hear me out. Correctly deployed, this might finally get American Comedies they recognition they so desperately deserve, comedy remains the USA's best and most reliably self regenerating genre, it is overlooked almost every single year during "Oscar Season". Science Fiction and Fantasy (once Hollywood's "Red Headed Stepchild") gets a friendlier reception from The Academy that the hard work of Kate McKinnon or Seth Rogen or even James Franco... Granted the whole premise of the Oscars is bullshit from start to finish, anxiety wracked creatives and certain technical guilds none of whom have a strong sense of job security all voting themselves awards down to laughably obscure categories without any critical or outside input of any kind. I say the comedians and the comedy writers in Hollywood, who get Academy Ballots" ought to do some "block voting' themselves, how else to finally grab off what Jim Carrey has called "The Ultimate Tchotchke"? And who knows, this might be Gal Gadot or The Rock's Once Chance to Get Up on that Podium...or (dare I say it,) Bobcat Goldthwaite?

Whatever happened to Slapstick Comedy?

Ya never see it anymore in the movies save for the redoubtable Johnny Knoxville and his crew (and they are rapidly aging out of their "JackAss" racket sad to say). Even the crazy hilarious Kate McKinnon clearly had recourse to a stunt person for a half-dangerous half funny trapeze fight in "The Spy Who Dumped Me". There are still comical chases and explosions and the like in the movies, but the sort of intensive physical slapstick where the performer clears metes it out and or receives it is becoming a thing of the past. The only other example I can think of, is Jackie Chan, and he has pretty much aged out of the slapstick racket entirely alas and alack... I'll say this, Johnny Knoxville's last movie "Action Pointe" lasted a bare two weeks this summer and proved an unstable mix of fiction and "real time stunt work", but it was also likely an epitaph for the whole "JackAss" phenom. You now cringe with fright when a careworn middle aged Johnny gets himself catapulted thru the side of a barn, like when you see an elderly relation slip & fall in the kitchen. This is sad to me, can anyone out there think of even one performer in Hollywood whose comedy schtick is preeminently physical in nature? Sadly CGI has pulled the fangs of strict slapstick I think...you can literally use computers to create sequences that a Charlie Chaplin would have shot in real time. The modern justification is that CGI saves wear and tear on performers, but it also deals the artist out of the creative process in some ways. If Chaplin denied the sound era as long as he did (up to 1939 or so) then he'd a never ever have tolerated CGI on his sound stage. Bring Back the Clowns I Say....

Apropos of Nothing...

Insofar as "Christopher Robin" is concerned, (a new release told from the entirely superfluous perspective of Winnie-the-Pooh's humanoid sidekick)how much money do you suppose Buena Vista/Disney spent to dig up voice actors that could successfully impersonate Sterling Holloway and Paul Winchell? I'm thinking a million bucks and some digital intervention as well....

"Why Don Quixote?"

On Friday Night at 8pm Channel Zero, is gonna try some summer counter programming with a screening of G.W. Pabst's 1933 adaptation of "Don Quixote" starring Feodor Chaliapin. Cervantes classic novel is a wonder of the renaissance and a book that reverberates down to the current era as the "Knight of the Doleful Countenance" wanders Spain with his sidekick Sancho Panza desperately seeking a life of adventure and chivalry. In his battered comical armor and stern devotion to "staying in knightly character", Don Quixote is literally classical literature's first true cosplayer! Indeed the Mad Knight has all the symptoms, his entire world view is subverted, overwhelmed and guided by, the fiction he himself has imbibed. Don Quixote is literally the first character in all of literature to have a rudimentary self awareness of his own fictional status...hell its a book that literally breaks the Fifth Wall! Its always been a sort of wonderment to me at least,that this supremely subtle comical and multilayered book has never yet generated a definitive Hollywood Adaptation, although artists as diverse as Orson Welles and Mister Magoo have all taken a stab at it down thru the years. Some great books are strangely resistant to the full Tinseltown Treatment another example of which could well be "Moby Dick"...but I digress, this is fodder for a future post indeed. Director G.W. Pabst might perhaps be a good counterintuitive choice to adapt Don Quixote, he was in his heyday the only realist working and indeed prospering in German silent cinema, and sometimes as rich as character as The Old Windmill Tilter needs a steady hand to stave off caricature. Anyhow...this is also a film unseen in Boston as an experience of cinema, for perhaps eighty five years, so tell your friends. "DON QUIXOTE" (1933) Friday, July 20th 8pm The Somerville Theatre (Micro Cinema) 55 Davis Square Somerville Ma 617-625-5700 Admission: $7.50 (cheap!, cash only) In French, Subtitled in English

"When Harlie Was Dead..."

At age eight four, Harlan Ellison at last died in his sleep, much like William Randolph Hearst, a minor parallel that would move the late fantasist to litigation if the blood still surged in his veins. All snark aside, if you encountered Ellison's science fiction short stories at the right time in adolescence you'd be well served the rest of your life, the man was a strong even strident truth teller in his fiction, not many happy endings, much suspicions as to human motives, greed and cowardice very much on display in all those futuristic or fantastical landscapes. In a genre much given to fan service, cliches, stock characterizations and plain phoniness, he stood out with vigorous readable unflinching prose. His uncompromising advocacy on behalf of writers within and without Hollywood is a legendary thing, indeed writers are ripped off every day from Bangor to Guam, something he fought all thru his career. I agree with Ellison on one point, there has never been a Writer's Guild Strike in Hollywood that wasn't Completely Justified and Likely Overdue. As a scriptwriter he turned in superlative work tightly written and reasoned for everything from "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" to "Star Trek", by his own standards he was a success in Hollywood sans compromise, I have no doubt about the essential truth of this given the many shows and producers he feuded with down or else turned down thru the years. The man's capacity for litigation, even successful litigation was storied thing up to his death and beyond. He lost out on some good and bad things thanks to that unyielding attitude, a attempt to bring "Two-Face" to the small screen on "Batman" failed mostly due to an ongoing feud with ABC. On the other hand Ellison thankfully missed out on being one of Irwin Allen's pet scriptwriters mostly because of an alleged altercation during a story conference. Harlan refused to be rewritten or worse plagiarized, indeed he was a harsh critic of the many spurious reasons scripts were rewritten or simply stolen in Hollywood. That having been said, if an Ellison Fan avoid his "Man from UNCLE" "The Do It Yourself Dreadful Affair", you'll be amazed such a slack lugubrious effort was ever written by the one and only Harlan Ellison, moreover on a show where he supposedly got on well with the producers. In his truth telling, in his zeal, in his courage, in his caustic wit, Harlan Ellison resembles no one so much as Samuel Johnson, he looms that big in the realm of fantasy fiction. His volumes of film and television reviews are themselves virtual textbooks on "good criticism, well rendered", he pioneered television criticism at a time when the genre was little more than regurgitating press releases. Harlan Ellison was honest, but he wasn't flawless, the man was a notorious fabulist sometimes to an absurd degree, he once claimed that the intervention of then VP Spiro Agnew had held up publication a collection of his TV columns "The Other Glass Teat". His writings are littered with absurd hyperbole,some of it hilarious some of it frankly inaccurate and misleading and...well...wrong. His literary output peaked in the 1970's just as science fiction into a sudden profitable haven for millionaires, rightly so Ellison criticized this tendency, he pointed out that prior to "Star Wars" the celebrities in science fiction were all writers, now the big names were producers & directors, persons of wealth, whose money was made off of movie ticket sales. Harlan also pointed out, that this cataract of money never really reached the Fritz Liebers or the Robert Silverbergs so now those creatives could enjoy both poverty AND obscurity. This is a criticism of the post Star Wars world I've taken to heart and repeat endlessly....a very insightful observation from the Departed Harlan. So in the end, its always seemed to me, a dreadful irony that Harlan Ellison, the loud, righteous & pugnacious defender of the rights of writers,ended up keeping up to one hundred and fifty science fiction short stories off the market up to the time of his death because he couldn't finish editing the third volume of his notorious collection "The Last Dangerous Visions". Christopher Priest goes into detail about that whole sad ironic situation in his pamphlet "The Book on the Edge of Forever", I'm sure it can found on Amazon or Ebay, I shan't bore you with the details of an already cringeworthy tale. As Herodotus Notes "By Great Thing are The Mighty Undone"and truly "The Last Dangerous Visions" is Harlan Ellison's Waterloo. That having been said, I don't think we've heard the last of Harlan he has a huge bibliography of fiction just waiting to be adapted...sadly by others IF it happens. Like Phillip K. Dick his fiction may finally start seeping into the film zeitgeist bit by bit, one can but hope for honest guardians of Ellisonian truth telling. On the other hand Harlan also had an awesome collection of ex-wives, who knows they may have litigious drives all of themselves...that would be the last irony of a supremely ironic iconoclast. :) "I Have No Mouthpiece And I Must Scream"

Margot Kidder, A Brief Memorial

There are a lot of "Lois Lanes" out there, seven by my count and the numbers will likely rise going forward. But Margot Kidder was the "You've Come A Long Way Baby" Lois Lane, career-centered, liberated, a achiever on her way to achieving more until Superman alighted on her penthouse rooftop (what city beat reporter could afford a penthouse in 1978??? Kidder was the envy of every newsroom from San Diego to Bangor on those grounds alone). If you ever get a chance, check out the audition tapes on the "Superman the Movie" Deluxe DVD, Kidder never smirks or condescends to the material, she knows exactly where the line is between wit and toneless camp, she never steps over it. You can see instantly why she got the part (although clearly Stockard Channing made it a tight camel race to the end), Kidder threw down her endless aces effortlessly...aspiring actresses should watch Kidder's auditions there is plenty to be learned therein. In the end, Margot Kidder was a leather lunged scrapper, she happily entered into a tacit three way alliance with Superman Director Richard Donner and her costar Chris Reeve to prevent said movie from degenerating into a Campy Burlesque, and their efforts paid off. Would to God those three ever got a script they could all invest themselves in...that would've been a Supermanfor all times. She had her challenges, psychiatric, financial,marital...like a lot of actors that did comic book movies back in the day it was certainly not the sort of resume builder that would get her up on the "A-List", but she worked and worked, and when necessary she signed autographs for money at conventions. I once saw her from a distance at a convention a few years ago, she seemed alert, lively & interested in everything, clearly she had gotten the help she needed. If anyone deserved to die peacefully and painlessly even if all too soon, it was Margot Kidder.

Proof Positive that the Somerville Theatre is Doing the Lord's Work...

lies in the fact that they are still screening "The Death of Stalin" AND Wes Anderson's "Isle of Dogs", varied films to be sure, but two out of my top ten for 2018 to be sure. Of course, Channel Zero (that redoubtable film and video franchise, now in it's improbable twenty third year) has all sorts priors with The Soviet Union's Premiere Genocidal Uber Tyrant.... Over at the Coolidge Corner we screened the documentary "I Was Stalin's Bodyguard" to a sold out audience, and later on at the Somerville Theater we screened the CPSU's official "obituary propaganda movie" "History's Great Loss" which is literally the last gasp of "High Stalinism" over the leader's corpse. It also features selections of the politburo's eulogies which were in turn recreated in the current film. And yes Lavrenty Beria really did look like Boris Badenoff up there on Lenin's Tomb.

Channel Zero Proudly Presents: "Smile Til It Hurts; The Up With People Story" (2009)

Director Lee Storey examines the story of the music group “Up With People”, that relentlessly Upbeat Singing Bulwark of TV Variety Shows in the 1960’s, & 70’s. Seemingly perpetually “On Tour” for Decades this Peppy Youth Choir was embraced by everyone from Billy Graham to Richard Nixon & was a Super Bowl Half-Time Mainstay! But behind the scenes, cult-like conditions are alleged!! Arranged Marriages!, Bumptious evangelical "moral rearmament", Shady Corporates Sponsors & Weird Politics! See the documentary that dares to tell the whole truth behind “Up With People”! The Somerville Theatre (Micro Cinema) Friday May 4th
 8pm (sharp!) 
55 Davis Square Somerville Ma
 617 625 5700
 Admission: $8.50 (cash only, tickets on sale thirty minutes before showtime in front of the downstairs micro-cinema) One Night Only, A Full Cinema Experience! If there was a musical vaccine for youth rebellion in the 1960's, it was "Up With People", this is a story worth seeing!

It did my heart good to sit with a sold out audience

at the 7pm screening of "Isle of Dogs" last night @ the Somerville Theatre. I loved this movie...and I'm a tough sell on "Dog Movies", maybe its the faux stop motion animation, or the improbable all star cast, or director We Anderson's weird mixture of magic realism & Karel Zeman. Ah Karel Zeman, a filmmaker of the first rank, literally Communist Czechoslovakia's answer to Walt Disney, Dr, Suess & Ray Harryhausen all in one go! I am convinced with his emphasis on "radical unrealism" that Wes Anderson has screened such uber rare Zeman films as "The Stolen Airship" & "Off on a Comet" (both based on works by Jules Verne) wherein live action was incorporated with animation derived from the original illustrations. Someday Channel Zero will screen one of those obscure Karel Zeman science fiction titles, we won't sell many tickets, but it is a truism among us that the necessity to screen certain films is in no way conditioned by the potential audience. Wes Anderson doesn't have that problem a humorist, a stylist, an artist perfectly unafraid to make a "dog movie" and at least last night sold a shit ton of tickets as well....