Shelley Duvall Merges With The Infinite

Actress and producer Shelley Duvall has passed at the age of 75.

Most folks from my generation first saw Duvall in Popeye, before we stumbled upon other Robert Altman movies and, of course, Kubrick's The Shining.  Duvall also produced children's shows - I remember stumbling across them in high school, but she left Hollywood by 2000.  

Duvall was a fellow Texan, and grew up in the Houston area.  Most recently, she lived in Blanco County, which is a short drive west from Austin and due north of San Antonio up 281.  

In the last decade, Duvall had been known to have issues with mental illness, and was known to the folks of Blanco.  In recent years, it seemed she had received some help and appeared in a film in 2023.

We'll miss knowing Ms. Duvall is out there, either as an actress or just living in Blanco.  

Super Watch: "Superman: The Movie" (1978) in San Antonio w/ NathanC

Tollin, NathanC and yours truly

Watched:  07/02/2024

Format:  Theatrical/ Santikos/ TPR Cinema Tuesdays

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  Richard Donner

For years, our own NathanC (the famed Nathan Cone of Texas Public Radio/ TPR's Cinema Tuesdays) has been trying to secure a print or digital copy of Superman: The Movie to include in the annual summer classics film series he hosts via TPR.   

Travel and other challenges have beset our ability to pull this off, but this year the stars aligned and Nathan was able to get WB to send a copy.  On July 2nd, 2024, I was able to attend the screening and help out.  Nathan asked that I help intro the film, and then stay for a Q&A.  You can visit the Q&A as both audio and transcript here on the TRP website.

Unsurprising to me is that Nathan is a great host; professional but warm and fun.  Clearly the crowd that came out is enthusiastic - they were there a good hour before curtain and buzzing.  The Santikos theater in Northwest San Antonio was nicely appointed and had primo seats with nice side tables for popcorn and - for me - to quickly jot some notes.

I was incredibly nervous about the Q&A as (a) I have a tendency to over-answer any given question, and (b) I was concerned I would not be able to answer a question thrown my way.  

Prior to showing up, Nathan mentioned that a former DC Comics staffer, Anthony Tollin, was going to be in attendance.  Anthony was at DC during a fascinating period of transition, when the original old guard was silver-haired but still around and the next generation was coming in and bringing new ideas to comics.  Folks like Kirby were mailing in work, but working for DC, you might see Siegel and Shuster come into the office.  He knew Julie Schwartz!  He colored Gil Kane!

To someone like me, this is like finding out that you're going to be talking to Gene Kranz or an equivalent.  Especially when I found out Mr. Tollin had been assigned to Christopher Reeve to shepherd him around DC Comics when Reeve came in to do some research.  

I couldn't help it, so I jumped the gun and immediately included Mr. Tollin in the Q&A, and, after, I asked him to sign some comics which he'd worked on.  As a side-note, Mr. Tollin also works on The Shadow novella reprint collections and has written a lot of those Smithsonian mini-books you may have seen associated with CD releases of radio programs.

As a point of Mr. Tollin being kinda extra cool, if you look at the first picture, he's wearing the rings worn by The Phantom in the comic strips.

The questions were insightful and on a level interested in narrative more than the technical achievements of the film - and maybe that worked well for me.  I have *thoughts* on Superman, and I think I was able to answer folks' queries - and loved one woman's questions about the nature of our secret heroism.  I wanted to high-five her so bad.

Anyway, thanks to Nathan and Texas Public Radio for such a great night.  And to Mr. Tollin for showing patience with a fanboy.  Oh, and I got to see San Antonio-based pal, Courtney M!  Always a delight.

Depending on a few factors, I really want to slip down to San Antonio for the screening of Pandora's Box starring Louise Brooks.  

Texas Watch: Dallas (1950)

Watched:  07/09/2024

Format:  Amazon 

Viewing:  First

Director:  Stuart Heisler

Full disclosure, I was just looking to see what else Ruth Roman was in, and this came up.  And, as a long-time Texan, I was curious how a movie about Dallas, the most Dallasy city in Texas, was going to work.  Plus, Gary Cooper.  And Steve Cochran in facial hair!

Dallas (1950) takes place shortly after the Civil War, so Dallas is a small, growing western town (it was founded in the early 1840's).  Gary Cooper plays a former Confederate colonel who is sought by the law.  A young Bostonian of means has become a US Marshall to impress his fiance, and come west to prove he's no shrinking violet.  He stumbles across Cooper - a fugitive, and after finding out the situation is not so clear as his orders suggested, he and Cooper ride to Dallas together.  Cooper hears three brothers are there, and he'd like to help take them down.  

There's some frankly unnecessary identity switching as the two enter town, and we learn that the Bostonian is engaged to the daughter of a local Don, which, yes, means Ruth Roman is playing a Mexican-American.   Which...  there's a lot of Hollywood history why this was probably true.  Is Roman, of Jewish-Lithuanian heritage, a good candidate for a Latina?  Uhhhhhhhh...  man, that's a loaded question I asked myself.  

On the flip side, I don't remember too many movies from this era that include Hispanic characters quite like this, shown to be very successful ranchers (or even more so, if these criminals weren't so busy being criminals at them and taking their cattle).

In a lot of ways, this is a pretty typical Western, where some shady dudes are going to take advantage of the lawless nature of the new town/ land and exploit that weakness to steal property and land from others, and the promise of civilization coming is welcomed.  It's also likely an early of an example of the mastermind bad-guy with the loose-canon sibling he's trying to wrangle (Cochran!).  

In the course of events, Roman's character falls for Cooper, who looks old enough to be her father (she's 27-28 and he's probably 49 here).  And, man, Hollywood.  They couldn't stop pairing Cooper with women who look way too young.

There's not much to actually report about this one - other than that the terrain and town look nothing like Dallas or North Texas, which IRL is hilariously flat and so visually uninteresting that Dallas architecture has been weird since the 1970s in an effort to combat this problem.  But this movie is shot in typical ranchland outside of LA, so... behold!  The rolling hill country of Ft. Worth!  The deep valleys outside of Dallas!

If you're looking for more Ruth Roman:  good news.  She's in this.  But I'm not sure this movie is terribly ground-breaking.  It is, however, fairly entertaining and a reminder how cool vaqueros looked in their jackets and on Mexican-style saddles.

Horsey Watch: National Velvet (1944)

Watched:  07/08/2024

Format:  Max

Viewing:  First

Director:  Clarence Brown

Selection:  Jamie

It's unlikely I would have picked National Velvet (1944) for myself.  It's a movie about a 12 year old girl who loves horses.  But, Jamie mentioned it a while back, and she's sick right now, and when you're sick in our house, you get to pick the movie/ show/ etc...  Plus, it *is* a bonafide classic, and I had not seen any of Elizabeth Taylor's work from when she was a kid.*

It's good!  This is a solid, fun, sweet movie.  The cast is terrific, the sets and matte paintings and locations all very pretty.  We get Angela Lansbury as a teen, Liz as a pre-teen, Mickey Rooney in his 20's, Juanita Quigley (one of the Our Gang kids), Donald Crisp as the father and Anne Revere is phenomenal as Liz's mother.

Liz plays a girl, one Velvet Brown, in that horse-crazy phase who stumbles upon two things at the same time - a hard-travelling Mickey Rooney and a lovely new horse one of her neighbors has purchased, but can't tame.  She loves the horse immediately.  

Her family definitely has echoes of the Smiths in Meet Me In St. Louis, which has to be a coincidence given their production schedules and years of release, but one also can guess the studios were providing scenes of domesticity during pre-war years to give their war-time audiences something to remind them of normalcy.   Velvet's elder sister is boy-crazy, her younger sister a bit of a scold, her baby brother, an absolute weirdo.  And mom understands and dad does not.  

Also, it turns out that Mom once swum the English Channel for a cash prize (which was not accomplished til 1926, about when this movie occurs.  However, the film Million Dollar Mermaid is about Annette Kellerman, who tried in 1905).  

Through a series of hi-jinks, the horse, named The Pie or Pie comes into Velvet's possession, and she and Mickey Rooney work to get the horse into England's premier horse race, the Grand National Sweepstakes, which is five miles of obstacles/ jumps.  

Along the way, Mickey Rooney must determine what sort of fellow he is, the family has to come to believe in Velvet's dream and Velvet embraces what it means to take that one big shot in life.

By the time this movie was shot, Mickey Rooney was a very established star and about to ship out for war.  And Taylor was becoming established as a young star - and it's clear to see how very good she was going to be, even here.  Her role could have been saccharine or twee, but somehow she manages to make it sympathetic - helped along by the ensemble.  And, yes, Angela Lansbury is terrific, too.

I dunno.  I liked it.  There's few surprises.  And it's funny to see Rooney play another former jockey in 1979's Black Stallion (I genuinely looked up if that movie is an unofficial sequel and I just missed something.  It's not.).   But the movie is sweet, hits all the right notes for a wartime family melodrama, and takes the feelings of the young characters seriously (except for bug-collecting Donald).  

If you've got kids, I think they'd dig it.  But I'm a 49 year old dude, and I was a fan.

*I know!  You'd think I'd have watched some Lassie movies.

Christmas in July Watch: Miracle in Bethlehem, PA (2023)

Watched:  07/07/2024

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Jeff Beesly

So, someone in our house is sick, so I was trying to make her fall asleep by putting on the soothing screen-saver that is a Hallmark movie (no, really, this works like a damn charm).  It's currently the annual "Christmas in July" deal Hallmark does where they say "ah, we know what you really want", put the Golden Girls reruns on pause, and roll out their Christmas line up for a while (I have no idea if it's a couple of weeks or all month).  

But, yeah, along with Canada Dry, saltines and grilled cheese, when you're not feeling great, I can't recommend these movies enough.

I'd actually meant to watch Miracle in Bethlehem, PA (2023) last year. One of my criteria for actually putting one of these Hallmark holiday films on is if it stars anyone related to Superman media, and - lo and behold - this one stars former Smallville actress, Laura Vandervoort.  

One must bust out a very specific rubric to discuss a Hallmark movie, and among these movies, this one was not a complete trainwreck.  It has some things it keeps harping on that make it... creepy?  But our lead is charming enough and is a better actor than the material probably called for, that she basically papers over some faults.

Oh, to kick off the movie, our male hero is getting yelled at by the girlfriend who breaks up with him because he seems happy sitting on the couch with his large yellow dog (Donkey), playing video games instead of whatever nonsense she thinks he should be doing.  He picks the dog.  And they finally made a Hallmark male lead I could find buyable.

80's-Sequel Watch: Beverly Hills Cop - Axel F (2024)

Watched:  07/07/2024

Format:  Netflix

Viewing:  First

Director:  Mark Molloy

Back in 1984, my mom - KareBear, a world-renowned loose-canon - took my brother and me at ages 11 and 9 to see Beverly Hills Cop in the theater.  There's probably a whole separate post on what Rated-R movies were like in the 1980's and how the culture of suburban latchkey kids and HBO meant we were all watching those movies without anyone's permission, so it was not my first Rated-R film by a long shot.

But, yeah!  That was my first parental-sanctioned Rated-R flick, seen because my mom heard you got to see Detroit in a movie, and we'd lived there for a bit in the 1970's.  I believe her takeaway was "that Eddie Murphy is a stitch" and that's all she cared about.

I did see Beverly Hills Cop 2, but aside from Brigitte Nielsen in haute couture, I don't really remember anything else about it.  Bananas likely found their way into tailpipes.

The only reason Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F (2024) exists is because Netflix has the data to prove that people alive in the 1980's will give a modern sequel a whirl, whether it's a Star War or a Top Gun.  Countdown to us all sitting through a Goonies reunion.*

This movie follows the now proven formula of 

Disney Watch: The Princess and the Frog (2009)

Watched:  07/05/2024

Format:  Disney+

Viewing:  Second

Directors:  Ron Clements, John Musker

At long last, the Disney parks have refurbished "Splash Mountain" (based on Song of the South.  I know.) in Florida and California and are replacing it with "Tiana's Bayou Adventure" (based on the 2009 movie, The Princess and the Frog) and re-themed and built associated restaurants and gift shops.  

There are many reasons, big and small, that this is a good idea.  But it *is* basing a whole part of the park on a movie I'd seen only once, and which left me with no particularly strong impressions, so Jamie and I gave the movie a whirl.

My understanding is that The Princess and the Frog is very important to folks younger than myself, and I get it.  It's cute, it's got a few memorable characters.  And kids like stuff they watch over and over.  You go, you little numbskulls.  

But.  It is not Disney Animation's best.  I'm sorry.  I want it to be.  It's the final hand-drawn movie , I think, before they went full CGI (late edit: it's the penultimate movie.  There's a Winnie the Pooh movie that was the last one).  It's the first majority-minority feature film, and with a Black lead who has an interesting geographical and historical context.  And yet.

JLC Neo-Noir Watch: Blue Steel (1990)

Watched:  07/06/2024

Format:  Criterion

Viewing:  First

Director:  Kathryn Bigelow

Criterion Channel is showcasing Neo-Noir films this month, and I absolutely remember this coming out and not understanding what it was at the time, and then never hearing from anyone who ever saw it.

But here at The Signal Watch, JLC is one of our patron saints, and I was curious.

The movie is a curious mix of genres - certainly an homme fatale noir, but 100% a thriller.  And sets itself in the New York of the late 1980's where finance-dudes were of interest to audiences, as were blue-collar types.

Jamie Lee Curtis plays a young woman literally right out of the police academy who, on day 1, stumbles onto a hold-up occurring at a grocery, where she's forced to shoot the gunman.  Which she does in 1980's style, emptying her gun and sending the guy reeling through the front window.

Unfortunately for her, the gun the guy had goes missing, and no witnesses say they saw a gun.  And there's no tape?  In 1990 in New York?  But ok.  

She's on administrative leave when she meets a commodities exchange fellow who woos her.

But, uh-oh, he was at the scene of the crime, took the gun, and is now murdering people with the gun after carving her full name into the casings, that he leaves behind after killing innocent people.

One good cop (Clancy Brown) believes her while everyone else just wants to fire her or make her go away, but Eugene (Ron Silver) ups the ante, and eventually she figures it out just pre-coitus.  And then things get really nuts as she fights for anyone to believe her and he lawyers up while also murdering her friend (Elizabeth Pena, RIP) in front of her.  

On the whole - my take is this: 

Happy Fourth of July, Pals

 

Everyone get out there, eat some potato salad and beans, and try to stay hydrated.  

I don't think Vanessa Williams is hosting A Capitol Fourth this year on PBS, which makes this year less good than prior years.  But let's not cry that it's over, let's be happy it happened.  And may Vanessa Williams fill you with patriotism.

God bless America, I say

Doc Watch: Burden of Dreams (1982)

Watched:  07/03/2024

Format:  Criterion

Viewing:  First

Director:  Les Blank

As I mentioned when discussing Fitzcarraldo, as good as the movie is, it's probably more famous for the impossible conditions around the production of the movie - which was shot on location in the Amazon with a crew and cast comprised of indigenous locals and Klaus Kinski, famously one of the least agreeable actors to have ever walked the face of the Earth.

Burden of Dreams (1982) documents the production.  

I won't say the documentary fails to convey the catastrophe that was the production, but if you also saw Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmakers Apocalypse, a documentary chronicling the epically horrendous filming of Apocalypse Now, everything else is going to suffer by comparison.

Hearts of Darkness was originally captured by Coppola's wife, Eleanor Coppola, and so there's an intimacy to the conversations and scenes shown that Burden of Dreams is unable to achieve.   Burden of Dreams seems shot like a respectful third-party observing with the good-graces of Herzog and crew, and while it's a catalog of many of the miseries of the set - and there were innumerable setbacks and problems - it's not a camera rolling during conversations that feel private or raw, until maybe the end, where Herzog is clearly at his breaking point.

And while the emotional intensity and feeling of creeping dread is not there while watching Burden of Dreams, it's still an absolute ride watching events unfold, and the very obvious problems baked into what Herzog seemed hellbent on doing, against reason and logic.  And I wish the movie had been willing to be less dispassionate about how Herzog's weird hubris fucked with the lives of thousands of people, and got people injured and killed and disrupted multiple native tribes and the massive impact he had during his relatively short stay.  

Part of the problem is that a lot of what happened seems to have happened when the filmmakers weren't around, and so it's being reported to them when there's spats with or amongst the locals.  We never really see the rainy season, and they missed the whole part where Jason Robards shot weeks of film before taking ill and quitting the movie - meaning the movie also lost Mick Jagger.

Equally odd about the doc is that only Herzog and a few locals get real interviews.  We don't hear from Kinski, co-star Claudia Cardinale (I would love her version of events) or Miguel Angel Fuentes, who seems like he'd have plenty to say as a young actor.  

But what is abundantly clear is the recklessness and naivete with which the film was mounted, and the trust and hope the locals put in Herzog that doesn't seem to really pay off.  They're not dumb, and they know that, for example, if the boat's pulley system breaks and people are hurt of killed, it will not be Herzog who gets hurt - and they seem very unsure why they're supposed to be taking this risk.

Managing the long shoot - which has full stretches where nothing is shot - is insane, and it seems like a lot of trouble could have been managed with a better producer or production manager to ensure boats were where they needed to be, people were where they needed to be - but it's also clear if anyone tried to control this chaos, they'd have gone crazy while failing.  This is a movie that went up against the jungle and - much like Fitzcarraldo - maybe barely got what it wanted out of all the trouble it went through.

But, yeah, when you see Herzog sort of shrugging off his discomfort about hiring a prostitute for his film set to keep the peace - on the advice of a priest - you've gone through a rabbit hole.

Further - you may have seen memes or clips of Herzog's meditation on the jungle and what it represents, but it is - by far - the most powerful moment in the film, and by that time, you're inclined to agree with Herzog's take.

Anyway - I do feel like Fitzcarraldo is a richer experience for having had seen the doc and having some "how did they do that?" questions answered in this film.  I just wish they'd been able to get some better access.