Russell/ Noir Watch: The Las Vegas Story (1952)

Watched:  04/18/2020
Format:  TCM on DVR
Viewing:  First
Decade:  1950's
Director: Robert Stevenson

Pivoting from the exotic locale of Macao to the oasis in the desert that is Las Vegas, Nevada, Jane Russell drops Mitchum and picks up Victor Mature, Vincent Price and "the guy who will be a bad guy", Brad Dexter.

Catch-Up Watch: Booksmart (2019)

Watched:  04/18/2020
Format:  Hulu Streaming
Viewing:  First
Decade:  2010's
Director: Olivia Wilde

I'd had a few trusted sources go to the mat for this one and been interested in seeing it when it was out, but... didn't.  A few blunt points on the movie:  in many ways, this movie is very, very familiar as a high school comedy about privileged kids and has a lot in common with movies that get routinely dismissed as dumb comedies.

But, sometimes it's about the execution.

PODCAST: "Why Do We Watch Movies?" w/ SimonUK (episode 2)

We start our new series which asks "Why do people watch movies?"

No, really.

Why?

What do they mean to us? Why do we care about fictional characters doing fictional things? How do certain movies impact us more than others? What draws us in? What makes us come back?

And who better to ask about "Why movies?" than SimonUK?

Who he is and how he came to be!




Music
One Barrel Chase - John Williams, Jaws OST
Over The Rainbow - Israel "IZ" Kamakawiwoʻole


Why Do We Watch Movies? - Playlist

Noir/ Russell Watch: Macao (1952)

Watched:  04/15/2020
Format:  TCM on DVR
Viewing:  First
Decade:  1950's
Director: Josef von Sternberg/ Nicholas Ray


I've been trying to track this movie down for years.  Fortunately, this month on TCM, Jane Russell is Star of the Month on TCM.  And, in any circumstance, Jane Russell is just an excellent idea.

This one has not just Russell as a lounge singer, she co-stars with Robert Mitchum, with whom she was apparently pretty good pals.  It also has Thomas Gomez and Gloria Grahame in an oddly small role for her chops (this is five years after Crossfire and the same year she got an Oscar nom for The Bad and the Beautiful).   Throw in William Bendix (as one always should) and Brad Dexter, and you've got an interesting cast.  Not to mention the large cast of Asian and Asian-American extras and supporting roles.

Brian Dennehy Merges With The Infinite

Brain Dennehy has passed at the age of 81. 

I've been a fan since first knowing who he was thanks to Silverado, and enjoyed him in a number of films in the years since.  As a fellow larger gentleman, it was always nice to know he was out there representing. 

But, truly, he was a gifted talent. 

In a Time of Virus: Within Our Four Walls

From October of 2017 to August of 2019, I worked from home for, technically, Northwestern University in Chicago.  Really I was working for a larger open source software coalition 50%, and for a sub-group of that coalition 50%.  It was a weird and cool job, and I will always look back on it fondly.

But it also meant I got used to the rhythms of working from home long before all this mess started.  Waking up, showering and having a ten second commute is not uncharted territory.  But, man, the days of just sitting in the same chair all day can get to be a bit much.  Especially as it's all-screens all day, tied to video conferencing with colleagues.

Since getting sent home, I have not been getting up early to walk the dog, as my preference is to do it to unwind after work if I've been sitting in my chair all day.  Scout is an easy walker, and doesn't pull toward other dogs.  She just wants to stay within 4 feet of me as we go about our business.  We talk to neighbors from about 15-20 feet away.  Sometimes I linger, sometimes I keep on going after waving hello.

Oz Watch: The Wizard of Oz (1939)

Watched:  04/11/2020
Format:  TCM on DVR
Viewing:  Ha ha ha ha
Decade:  1930's
Director: Victor Fleming

It's hard to think of a film more universal in the American imagination than The Wizard of Oz (1939).  Watching the film is as much a right of passage as Kindergarten, organized sports or name-your-item for a good chunk of America, and has been for 80 years.

We refer to it in popular culture and literature, make allusion to the film (for surely the books would now be mostly forgotten without the movie) as often as Biblical reference, Superman, and, maybe Star Wars.  It's weirdly universal for a fantasy movie about a girl who has no idea what's going on, her three goofy friends and a witch who just wants a new pair of shoes.  The songs are all familiar as Christmas carols.  People on the street will automatically know Dorothy, rainbows, little dogs, tin men, flying monkeys...

And the weird thing is how the movie really doesn't get old.  And it holds up.

It's a technical marvel, and even in 2020 and an era with CG and everything in color, that door opening on Oz still works.  It doesn't matter how many times you've seen it.  Flying monkeys remain flying monkeys, and Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch of the West remains a revelation.  As is Frank Morgan in about 20 different roles.

But the kaleidoscope vision of the movie, the dialog that has become part of the American venacular (ex: "pay no attention to that man behind the curtain", "we're not in Kansas anymore", "and your little dog, too!"), is just now part and parcel of how we've taken the movie in and refract it back out onto the world.  Similar stories may get lots of nods - Alice in Wonderland, for example - but it's hard to say the movie is more popular than the book, and perhaps it's Englishness and sheer nonsense has kept it from having exactly the same impact.  As familiar a film as Gone with the Wind has aged(... poorly) it's simply not considered something everyone should have to see at least once.  Star Wars stands a chance of retaining the same level of cultural integration if Disney doesn't accidentally kill the golden goose and gives it another 40 years.

I have seen the movie run up against Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, and it is pretty crazy.  But I really do think it's a coincidence.  And, of course, we can endlessly debate whether or not Baum meant the story as an allegory for the Gold Standard v Silver Standard v Greenbacks that the liberty the studios took with the story kind of annihilates.  Still: Flying monkeys!

Anyway, it's The Wizard of Oz, and it's a sort of singular thing that is, really, everyone's favorite movie about hallucinations induced by head trauma.  But I will fight anyone who says anything negative about this movie.

45

Keep the Car Running
Arcade Fire


Every night my dream's the same
Same old city with a different name
They're not coming to take me away
I don't know why, but I know I can't stay
There's a weight that's pressing down
Late at night you can hear the sound
Even the noise you make when you sleep
Can't swim across a river so deep
They know my name because I told it to them
But they don't know where, and they don't know when
It's coming
When it's coming
There's this fear I keep so deep
Knew it's name since before I could speak
Oh, oh, oh, oh
They know my name because I told it to them
But they don't know where, and they don't know when
It's coming, oh when
But it's coming, keep the car running
If some night I don't come home
Please don't think I've left you alone
The same place that I must go when they die
You can't climb across a mountain so high
The same city where I go when I sleep
Can't swim across a river so deep
They know my name because I told it to them
But they don't know where, and they don't know when
It's coming, oh when
Is it's coming?
Keep the car running
Keep the car running
Keep the car running

Lockdown Actually: a Signal Watch Video

This was entirely Simon's idea and I blame him.

Twitter Watch: The Shadow (1994)

Watched:  04/10/2020
Format:  Amazon Streaming and tweet-along
Viewing:  Unknown
Decade:  1990's
Director: Russell MulCahy


I dunno.  I still like this movie.  It's a mess, but it wasn't what I was expecting when I saw it the first time, and while I would, one day, love a ahrd-edged anti-hero version of The Shadow to make it to TV or the big screen, this very-90's take on the character is okay for what it is, in my book.  But I am well aware, when I went to go see stuff like this back in the day, the bar was so low, you had to dig for it. 

When I first started getting *into* comics I found out you could get, for free, something called the Bud Plant catalog, which offered up stuff you weren't going to find on the Piggly Wiggly spinner rack, and they had sections dedicated to the pulp characters like The Shadow and The Spirit.  The art I saw for The Shadow made The Punisher look tame by comparison (the work was Mike Kaluta's Shadow). 

I didn't know, at the time, how far back The Shadow went - originally appearing as the voice of a nameless narrator on a crime fiction radio program in the 1920's, and eventually becoming a character in his own right, making the move to short stories and novellas, comics, movie serials, and more.  There's zero question that he's part of the inspiration for Batman.  And Orson Welles cut his teeth on a Shadow radio show. 

But I'm not sure 1994 movie audiences who were there for action-figure-spawning movies were ready for the complicated world of The Shadow.  So, things got really, really streamlined and the movie feels like a set-up so they can get on to sequels where more things happen.  Which is usually a mistake.  And while the movie did fine, it didn't do Batman numbers, and that was the end of that for everybody. 

The movie certainly feels the way too many comics projects wound up in the aftermath of Batman in 1989.  The look of the film seems to borrow a lot from Burton and Co., and they even try to replicate some Danny Elfman.  Fortunately, I think Baldwin finds his own path to Lamont Cranston (if he's not actually Kent Allard, but let's not quibble), and it's hard to complain about the cast beyond teh fairly broad performances of the kinda all-star cast of John Lone, Jonathan Winters, Peter Boyle, Tim Curry, Penelope Ann Miller and more. 

And, it's kind of fun.  Baldwin's take on Cranston isn't exactly camp, but more of a battle of wits where he can't help but be a smart ass.  Which, you know, he *is* a guy who laughs while in life or death situations.  Not that I think there's deep character stuff going on here, but it's not a flawed performance.  But it does give for some questions as to what everyone involved thought this movie was as it was being produced.  It's kinda brutal in some parts even as they will have incredibly jokey parts in the next shot.

Anyway - We watched it and tweeted it!  You should have been there.