Musical Watch: Swing Time (1936)

Watched:  02/17/2021

Format:  TCM on DVR

Viewing:  First

Decade:  1930's

Director:  George Stevens

What with the freeze on here in Austin, Jamie requested we watch something we didn't have to follow closely and wouldn't be depressing.  Well, I happened to have recorded Swing Time (1936), a famed Fred Astaire/ Ginger Rogers collaboration.  

We did NOT have to pay much attention to the movie to follow the film.

just a couple of Hollywood hoofers

Uh, look.  I just don't have the time, energy or headspace to give the movie proper consideration.  It has a cute, very 1930's plot about plucky underdogs finding their way to the big time and glamour through dance.  Unfortunately - the big show stopper number they give Astaire to show off his talents is a minstrel number in black face, and... you know... sometimes dealing with the racism of our forebears is a real fucking bummer.  Like, you're just going about your business and cheering on the two lovebirds of the picture, and then Astaire turns around and starts slathering on blackface, and you're like "COME ON, MOVIE."  

Anyway - already exhausted and not wanting to deal with nonsense, it was not welcome and kind of threw me off from the admittedly lovely final dance sequence ending.  The movie is a good, light-hearted musical romance.  I very much enjoyed the lead and supporting characters, and it was fun.  Oh, and, yes, I hope you like the song "The Way You Look Tonight", because this movie loves it.

I've seen other Astaire movies, but few Ginger Rogers films, and she really was perfect for the screen for what they were doing.  Lovely, all the grace you read about, and perfectly paired with Astaire.  

and she knew how to wear a gown

And, hey, she was pretty funny, too, in her own right.  

Anyway - its' worth watching at some point from an historical and entertainment persepctive, but be aware of the "oh god, this is super racist" 10 minutes or so that I would more than understand would be a solid reason not to watch the film.

Winter Storm - February 2021 Part 3

Scout ponders the inevitable slowing of all atomic motion

If you're on the outside of the freeze occurring in our Southern States - and, in particular, in Texas, it's very hard to explain the insanity of the past week.  And, I imagine, you have to do a lot of intentional empathizing to care.  Texans have a semi-earned reputation for being natively hateable, and anything bad that befalls them is schadenfreude.  

The truth is - we *are* in fact dealing with the results of bad policy, hubris and a lack of foresight.  All the stuff you'd expect from the blowhards and braggarts who've run the state for decades.

And it's costing lives.  The closest I can compare this to would be - a hurricane or similar event taking out Washington, Oregon and most of California, including LA, but leaving San Diego just fine.  

Texas is huge.  It takes 12 hours to cross from Texarkansas to El Paso and 13 hours from Texhoma to Brownsville.  That's 29 million people.  Houston is currently listed as the most diverse city in the country (don't believe it?  Go hang around the Univ. of Houston campus), and while it's easy to think of morons like Rick Perry as the face of Texas, it's not the reality on the ground.  Good people and many kinds of people live here.  

We're in an unprecendented weather event - it's not just been record cold in intensity, it's also record cold in duration.  I assume the precipitation is also record level.  I've never seen more than a dusting of snow in my decades in this town.  If we can't see the grass, we think it's a blizzard.

One common misconception I've seen is that we just need snow plows.  Well, what that this were so. 

Winter Storm - February 2021 Part 2

the neighborhood pond is frozen over

Since I was in college, way, way back in the 1990's, I've heard nothing but how the power grid in Texas was outdated and needed overhauls, improvements and extensions.  Some of that has happened, but this being Texas, the loads has been focused on the load the state requires during the summer.   Texas summers can see weeks on end with temperatures in the 100's, and if you don't provide AC, we'd all likely die of heat stroke.  There's a reason Texas was sparsely inhabited by ingidgenous people and Mexican settlers when Anglos set their sites on Texas in the early 1800's.  

Anyhoo...  what we haven't worried about a whole lot has been extreme winter weather.  Most of the time, we get into March and say "man, it never really got all that cold this winter."  I mean, we've had cold winters, and icy spells that kept us off the roads, but it was never a question of "hey, why is almost half the state without power?  And why is it different street by street?"

Because, yeah, two streets over in my same subdivision, people had power this whole time.  Go figure.  And I have no idea why we currently have power and others do not.  

Anyway - hearing that Texas has an outdated grid isn't new.  Now add in Texas' booming population and energy needs.  We've added millions of people every decade for some time.  I believe the last two decades saw about 4 million new Texans for a total of, like, 8 million new people.  And not a whole lot of new sources of power.  

Winter Storm - February 2021 Part 1

Scout figures out snow

We're in the middle of a rough winter storm.  Polar vortex nonsense.

Click here for pictures

Honestly, it's been kind of rough.  We lost power Monday at 2:00 AM, it came back on around 11:30 AM Tuesday - so 30-odd hours without heat while the temperatures never got above 25 and dropped to 7 over night.  The house has done a better-than-expected job of retaining heat, but entropy is a sonuvabitch.  

Mostly yesterday I ate dry and snack foods.  I used the Moka Pot sent to me by Steven H for making coffee.  We cooked up some chicken sausage for dinner and got in bed at 7:00 under 5 blankets, wearing 4 layers each.  We finally decided to go to sleep at 10:00.  

Our plan was to lock oursleves in the bedroom with Scout, but she became very scared in the dark so we let her sleep downstairs.  I don't think she did sleep, because she's been sleeping today.  

The power came back on at 11:30, so I immediately lit our gas fireplace, which wouldn't light before without electricity (lesson learned on that one - light that one if there's a threat of loss of power).  One of our pipes had frozen, so I went to work with a hair dryer, and I think I fixed it.  

Anyway - we're all right.  But with two more storms coming, the roads are bad now and set to get worse.  The biggest problem is Jamie's dialysis, but I have high hopes we'll get her there and get it sorted.

Frozen-In Watch: Frozen II (2019)

Watched:  02/14/2021

Format:  Disney+

Viewing:  I'm not sure

Decade:  2010's

Director(s):  Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee

The weather in Austin is historically cold and we're having a winter storm like we normally only ever see on television in other states.  It just doesn't do this in Texas.  Or, at least, it didn't tell global warming.  These polar vortexes are a real sonuvabitch.

Anyway - we're all super stressed hoping the power stays on and our pipes don't burst and we don't freeze to death in our own homes.  But, ha ha, we probably won't.  So we watched a movie with an ironic title.

(update:  02/16/21 1:35 PM - it did, indeed, freeze.  We lost power.  It's been rough.  Power is back for the moment.)

Noir Watch: Born to Kill (1947)

Watched:  02/14/2021

Format:  Noir Alley on DVR

Viewing:  Unknown.  At least 3rd.

Decade:  1940's

Director:  Robert Wise

Some time ago, when I was first exploring noir, Born to Kill (1947) was included in one of the box sets I picked up to try and learn more about the genre.  Honestly, if I wanted to blow the doors off the expectations I think a *lot* of people have about Hayes Code-era film, this is the movie I'd show them.

Our leads are a psychopath and sociopath, divorce(!), a brutal murder, one of our most virtuous characters is a lush, and a PI who is mostly there as an equal-opportunity grifter.  Heck, there's an Elisha Cook Jr. lurking around for good measure.  It's a dark, nasty little film with no POV hero - just characters who cross paths and feel a mutual appreciation and attraction, even as they're connection is going to burn them both out.

This was the movie that showed me what films of the era were really capable of when it came to stepping into the shadows.  You might get sexy obsession in penty of other films, but there was always an obvious line that the characters crossed that was going to be their downfall, the thing that made you want to do the equivalent of "don't go in the basement!" as our protagonist decides to risk it for a nice set of legs or a smokey voice.  Born to Kill doesn't bother with all that  - these characters were going to hell, anyway.  They're just speeding each other along.

Starring Claire Trevor - someone I flat out did NOT appreciate enough for several years but whom I've come back around to and adore - and the notorious Lawrence Tierney as our leads, we've got a pair with some amazing presence.  Tierney's low-key menace and chiseled jaw works phenomenally well as the handsome psychopath who attracts women, but becaomes infuriated at the slightest hint of slight.  Trevor manages to find a delicate balance - we know she's play-acting to certain parties, and we know better to buy it, but it's absolutely seemingly sincere.  

Other players include Walter Slezak as the PI of iffy moral character, Elisha Cook Jr. as a longtime friend of Tierney's who's been maybe the only force on Earth keeping him in check.  Audrey Long is Trevor's wealthy but naive foster-sister with a fortune.  And, notably, Esther Howard plays a rooming house owner with more heart than you'd figure.

There is a character who is murdered with the name "Laury Palmer", and much of the mystery for the other characters is who killed Laury Palmer - and I can't help but think Lynch was winking at this character with Twin Peaks, til it was, you know, magic dream goblins or what have you.

Anyway - "wow, this things DARK" is not really much of a selling point, I suppose, but the execution of the movie, the performances and the winding story are all masterfully handled by director Robert Wise (yes, the man who brought you films as diverse as The Set-Up, The Haunting, The Sound of Music and Star Trek: The Motion Picture).    

But if you want to see what Hollywood could pull off (and Claire Trevor plotting in some excellent outfits), highly recommended.

Beam Me Up, Valentine!

 I Googled "star trek valentine" and the internet did not disappoint!

Watch Cattrall Party Watch: Split Second (1992)

Watched:  02/12/2021

Format:  Amazon Watch Party

Viewing:  First

Decade:  1990's

Director:  Tony Maylam

JeniferSF take on same.

I picked this movie as a Watch Party because it looked like exactly what it was - a 1990's sci-fi Rated-R actioner that wasn't taking itself very seriously, but mostly because it co-starred Kim Cattrall, and after last week's Mannequin 2 viewing, I was like "we should have watched the one with Cattrall", so here we are.

Split Second (1992) is not a good movie.  A quick check after the film finished confirmed what I suspected - the movie had multiple voices seemingly at battle with one another, including star Rutger Hauer having input as they went along.  So, because the story is all over the place - and the story is basically them trying to figure out who (and then what) is killing people, nothing makes sense and nothing matters.

The answer is:  it's a big, Giger-Alien knock off that is maybe invisible, or moves very fast, or something.  They never really say.  I do know they hide the monster till the very end of the movie, but it's featured on the poster?  

We have an odd-ball pairing of the bookworm cop who has credentials that make him seem like maybe the police is a weird place for him to wind up, and Rutget Hauer, who is a loose cannon cop with self-destructive tendencies who clearly needs to be on leave, but they keep him on the streets because... well, in 2021 it'd be because the police unions will be damned before they suggest maybe someone isn't fit for duty.  Here we get a police sergeant just yelling at Hauer and telling him he's dangerous and whatnot, and then handing him back his badge.

Forget to Mention It Watch: Return of the Swamp Thing (1989)

Watched:  01/28/2021

Format:  Amazon Watch Party

Viewing:  Second?

Decade:  1980's

Director:  Does it matter?

We did this one as a watch party, and I often forget to write up watch party movies.  But, yeah, this movie isn't very good.

I...  I don't really think it bears much discussion.

Friday Watch Party: Split Second (1991)

Well, this looks like something I cannot believe I didn't see in 1991 when I was the exact audience for the movie.  But there you are.

It's the edgy future of 2008!  Rutger Hauer!  Kim Cattrall in a sassy brunette bob!  a monster!   A ridiculous gun!  Let's get 90's mid-budget actiony! 

Day: 02/12/2021
Time:  8:30 Central
Where:  Amazon Prime Watch Party

Link here to watch