I was watching the US v John Lennon doc, which is pretty good- Gore Vidal is real good, especially- and Renee made some crack about something silly John and Yoko did.
And she is right. John and Yoko did do a lot of silly, naive stuff. But I would much rather watch the John and Yoko Reality Show than any of the Kardashians, Pretty Wild, Flipping Out, Zoe Whatever, any of that crap.
Plus, John and (yes, even) Yoko made way better music on their "Show" than any of those vacuous, obnoxious housewives do today.
Hum hum hum hum hum hum ... ... Decisions decisions as the table is surveyed; mental notes, and calculations made. Hum hum hum and I watch an eager child stick his finger (peeking first, making sure no one else is watching) in to a hot, bubbling, delectable ... ...
It is August (well, still barely August), which means that TCM is doing their Summer Under the Stars deal-y. They pick a star for each day and show movies they were in. Today is Carole Lombard. Check out this line-up: Fools For Scandal (1938) [and which I watched this morning w/ the sound down while listening to Bob Wills, drinking two cups of Mariage tea, and it seemed delightful]; Lady By Choice (1934) [Pre Code film set in England or Ireland, whatnot]; a 1932 Street Melodrama w/ Lombard as a prostitute, Virtue; In Name Only (1939) w/ Cary Grant [which I am dvr-ing as I type and Oklahoman movie star, Kay Francis stars, as well]; [and now, it gets really good:] Twentieth Century (1934); Lubitsch's Polish Resistance Masterpiece [and pretty much a blueprint for all of Mel Brooks' career and was also Lombard's last film], To Be Or Not To Be (1942); My Man Godfrey (1936); Hands Across the Table (1935) [never heard of't]; Nothing Sacred (1937) [not my cup of Mariage tea but I could see how others would like it]; and Hitch's criminally underrated comedy, Mr and Mrs Smith (1941). And there are two more after that. ... ... I know it is wrong, frowned upon, but I love drinking sparkling wine from a coupe sometimes. ... ... About a week and a half ago The Rangers had won six in a row, all on the road, including three against the only team trailing them in the AL West that has a shot of catching them, the LA Angels of Anaheim Disneyland Whatnot. Plus the Rangers were leading one nil going in to the bottom of the ninth when Mike Adams gave up a lead-off single to Torii Hunter and then a two-run walk off homer to Mark Trumbo. Before Adams' awful pitch to Trumbo, the Rangers had a seven game lead on the Angels and the magic number was thirty-two. Since then, the Rangers have lost six of nine (seven of ten, including the walk off game) and the Angels have won six of seven (seven of eight, including the walk off game), their only loss in that stretch to the Rangers two nights ago. The magic number is twenty-eight and the Rangers lead by two games, but only by one in the loss column. The Rangers and I can forget about the Magic Number right now. This is going down to the wire (the last three games of the season are Rangers/Angels in Disneyland) and I am v concerned about the Rangers immediate schedule, namely one more against the Angels tonight (home, on ESPN, which I am not counting on the Rangers winning), a day off (thank gawd!), three at home against the Tampa Rays (still a good ballclub), three at Fenway (oh, dear!), and then three in Tampa. It is likely we will be chasing the Angels after that stretch and I just hope we will have enough time to catch them and win the division, but, you know, maybe it is the Angels year. Ugh. ... ... What is especially galling is that punk manager, Mike Scioscia, is pitching Santana and Weaver on three days rest this week, in August! Talk about panic! But it worked last night and it will prob work tonight, too. Double Ugh. ... ... Finished Carlos and it is frickin good. It is a film I will own (Criterion blu-ray released at the end of September) and watch again and again. I have two more things to say about Carlos, and then I will shut up about it (well, on this blog, at least): First, the soundtrack is phenomenal. It is all post-punk music, incl A Certain Ratio, The Feelies, and three Wire songs, incl Wire's buzzing, monolithic masterpiece, Drill. Second, watching this film, you cannot help but notice what a failure Carlos was as a terrorist. Everything is botched. His best operations were done after his wife was imprisoned in France and he conducted a terror war on Paris, from his bedroom, in Hungary. It did not work. France did not back down. It made them tougher. The CIA wanted no part of Carlos, and told the French to fucking deal with it. And they did. But, even if you are a failure as a terrorist, you can still be very effective, since terrorism is all about fear, and the looming threat of disruption, destruction. Look what has happened to the United States since 9/11. Who has really won that battle? ... ... Also saw Klute for the first time. What an awful mess, full of preposterous acting styles, a ridiculous score, and a severely underwhelming denouement. Who really believes that Fonda and Sutherland are going to ride off in to the sunset? I understand that this was 1971. It could be one of those instances, where I was not there, so I cannot truly appreciate how risky and groundbreaking this film was; Fonda's feminist call-girl saying "Fuck" a lot, and trying to make it as an actress; and the whole "who's the real actress? The star, like Fonda, or the prostitute?" But from my vantage point, thirty years later: I am not buying it. ... ... Also started Bonjour Tristesse but had to abandon it due to other things. Nice to see Greco sing in a nightclub w/ no make up, and I like the dimwit, sizzling hot girlfriend, but Jean Seberg makes me want to self-harm, and her father/daughter relationship w/ David Niven is v unseemly. I like the switches between color and black and white. Seberg is much better looking two-tone. Interesting film. Otto Preminger directed. ... ... Do not look now but Friends' David Schwimmer has directed two v different decent little films. Simon Pegg saved his bacon in Run Fatboy Run, writing the script, and moving it to England but Trust is a sneaky little film, that starts out as a LMN Pick a Flick but turns in to something v different, indeed, w/ an ambiguous ending, to boot. Good for Schwimmer. Clive Owen and Catherine Keener star and they are great, as usual. Recommended for sure. ... ...
Carlos says, "You have got to watch out for those German Feminists."
Mwah, everyone have a fabulous Sunday and a great last week of August. I loves you alls!
Director, Joe Wright, referred to her, is engaged to the lead singer from the folk-rock group, The Incredible String Band Mumford and Sons.
Angel, he's a folk rock singer, he plays the mandolin, for crying out loud!
My friend-ie on The Facebook (who is a fan of the group) says that Mr Mumford likes to wear vests (puh-leeze) and gets v sweaty when he does shows. She also says that Mulligan and Mumford (there is a law firm for ya!) were buddies as children at Church of England Christian Camp.
Well.
(I checked out Mumford and Sons on the olde Steven Jobs iTunes-y thing, and I was not impressed.)
Anyroad, best of luck to you, Sister. I hope you guys are v v v happy together.
Love and kisses, Ardent Henry.
UPDATE! 1/23/12: So, they have set a date. In April. Congratulations, kids!
Ms Scherfig seems to enjoy working in England these days.
To be able to get Renee to go see the movie, One Day. She has stated flatly that she does not want to see Anne Hathaway in anything right now, much less a film wherein Anne has to do an English accent.
And Hathaway ain't exactly one of my faves, either. But, One Day is directed by Lone Scherfig, director of Italian for Beginners and An Education (one of my all-time fave films) and is based on an English novel, has a really neat story idea, and has an all English cast (minus Hathaway, natch), incl Rafe Spall.
Mungiu shows off his Palme d'Or to many v proud Romanians
For the chance to see Tales From the Golden Age, a Romanian omnibus film, produced and written by Christian Mungiu (who also directed one of the six episodes, though it is not explained who directs each episode in the credits. I suspect Mungiu directed The Legend of the Air Sellers but I could be completely wrong.)
I only learned about the new Romanian Cinema through David Thomson's book, Have You Seen, ... ? in an essay on Mungiu's near-masterpiece, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days, which concerns a young co-ed trying to help her friend get an illegal abortion in 1980s "Golden Age" Romania. 4 Months won the Palme d'Or at Cannes and made Mungiu an international director/writer star.
Since then I have seen four Romanian films, including 4 Months. Three of them; Tales, 4 Months, and California Dreamin', are all truly great films, and should be essential viewing for any true lover of cinema. Of course, there are numerous other Romanian films out there that I need to see, just noticed from a v cursory glance on the internet, and then, also, who knows what other great films there are that I have no idea about, as well.
From what I gather, life in Romania today is not too much better than it was in the 1980s, but at least, it must be a wonderful time to go the cinema in Romania right now.
I read an interview with Mungiu that he wrote Tales From the Golden Age (an urban legend comedy) before 4 Months, but when he showed the script to younger Romanians that had missed Ceausescu's brutal reign, and they pointed out what a silly time that must have been for their parents, he decided to first write and direct a film about how truly awful it was to live during those times. Thus, 4 Months.
Tales From the Golden Age (or, at least, the version I saw) is actually six short films (three v short and three, like, one-act play length) that tell the stories of famous urban legends that were passed around amongst Romanians in the 1980s. Befitting a former Soviet-Bloc State, the film has also acquired a perhaps Urban Legend around itself. I saw six Tales (Legends) but I had heard that when the film traveled there were numerous prints cut, each one containing just five Tales, and that nearly each "house" or theater would get a different running order, and would miss out on one of the stories. I really hope that was true. And I wish I could have been a witness to it, because, what a brilliant idea that is, and so perfect and true to the spirit of the film!
The running order I saw was the three shorter films first, which mostly take place in the remote (and verdant, beautiful) sheep herding villages. The last three are concentrated in the typical Communist tower block urban areas.
The parts that stand out to me most, the things I love about this picture are: The colorful, gorgeous carousel; the red-haired singer in the first film; the numerous crazy trips up and down staircases in the second; the awesome wool shawl that the illiterate, cheese-making, regal shepherd wears as the activist is rolled out on a chicken and egg carriage; the whole fabulist bent to the school room scenes, a battle for a young girl's attention, between a poor, chubby smart kid, and the handsome, dumb rich child in The Legend of the Greedy Policeman; the party scene in the fourth tale; and the scene in the same episode wherein nineteen teenagers are craning their necks, smoking furiously, in the dark to watch a video of Bonnie and Clyde in the tiniest of bedrooms; the citizens being hoodwinked in each of their absolutely identical tower block apartments; the ending of the fifth episode (The Legend of the Air Sellers); and the end of the film and sixth episode, such hope and expectation on the lorry driver's face.
I thought the film would be bleak, a severe black comedy. But it is near wistful, detached, and ever so gently satirical. It is not mean-spirited in the least. It is a lovely creation, hopeful, and full of love towards all of its' subjects, no matter what their fate. It is a touching collection of fables that refrains from passing judgement on anyone, even the silly Party Members, who come off the most worse for wear here, natch. It is like a classical play comedy, full of fools, idiot leaders, and attractive ingenues.
It is a film that nudges me further away from politics, still. I am beginning to believe like Welles' speech in The Third Man. We will always be ruled by fools, fear-merchants, ideologues, power-hungry despots, religious reactionaries, and the like. Forever. It is what the ruled, the folks like you and me do with our own lives that is really important. It is the art we leave behind in this country that will drown out all the torture and imperialism and fear and war-mongering when all is said and done of the United States, perhaps the last gasp of Western Rule of this planet.
Art is what we must truly live for over politics today. Art.
Re baseball, "It is all foreplay until September." I miss Ray Ratto a lot. He used to write for the SF Examiner, back when The City had two Big Newspapers. (I remember in 1992 when I moved here that the fairly Liberal SFChronicle- still kicking today, barely- actually had a living Hearst on the Editorial Board. He wrote the (minority opinion) Presidential Endorsement. Hearst picked Daddy Bush. What a maroon.) The Examiner, which was even a little more Liberal than the Chron, and was an Afternoon City Daily, back in the olden daies, when Afternoon Dailies still existed, tanked, natch, and many of the Examiner folks came to work for the Hearst outfit. Ray Ratto joined the Chron and carried on with his twice weekly column and even wrote game stories on the frickin' Sharks.
Then, the internet happened, of course. Publishers started worrying more about their stockholders and their profit margins, almost completely forgetting about the folks and the communities that read the damn thing and suddenly many of the Chron's best writers (and probably editors) left or were "let go". (Luckily, we still have Jon Carroll. I do not know how that happened.)
In terms of The Sporting Green (Sports) section the first I was sad to see go was Tim Keown. He went on to become a freelancer, oftentimes writing for ESPN, The Magazine. Or, maybe now their Website, whatever. He is much better in smudgy print. He wrote the game story for the Giants' infamous 1993, Dusty Baker starting fricking Salamon Torres on the last day of the season to make the playoffs after the team had just about fucking moved to Florida the year before but got bought by the Safeway folks and acquired frickin Barry Bonds and went through this miraculous season where they won over a hundred games but did not make the playoffs cause the Braves won one more game back in the great old daies before stupid interleague play and wild cards and because Dusty Baker started fricking Salamon Torreson the last day of the season. (Whew!) The Dodgers and Lasorda, who had none playoff aspirations, at all, started Orel Hershiser, just to piss the Giants off, probably. Torres did not last but a few innings and the Giants lost, like ten to one (or none), or something. Anyhoo, Tim Keown wrote the greatest game story I have ever read that day.
(Writing game stories is a piece of piss, by the way. Anyone can do it, just about. But writing good or great game stories (especially today) is very very hard. When you read them in the papers these days, you really remember and treasure them. Back a billion years ago in the glory days of Ring Lardner it was different. Back then Lardner misspelled words on purpose, put songs or poetry straight in to the copy and did whatever the fuck he pleased, and he was amazing. His fiction is to die for, too. John Sayles played a dead-ringer Lardner in his movie, Eight Men Out. And Lardner is Holden Caulfield's favorite author, too. Plus, Lardner's son, Lardner Jr, wrote the screenplay for Altman's excellent, groundbreaking M*A*S*H.)
Then Ira Miller left. Miller covers the NFL better than anyone alive. He is way better than ESPN's John Clayton, and Miller has to do most of his work in print. Clayton is a meat puppet pundit. Miller was, of course, very fortunate to be working here when the 'Niners were the shit. My favorite Miller moment was when he alone saw the coming of the new AFC dominated NFL (the Superbowl works like the MLB All-Star Game and the Texas/OU game, in that it works in long cycles of dominance for one side over the other) and picked Elway's (really Terrell Davis') Broncos over Brett Favre and the Packers. I do not know if you remember just how little chance the Broncos were given in that most excellent of Superbowls?
Finally, Ratto was gone, too. I was crushed. Ratto worked Johnny Rotten's immortal, "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" line in to a column once. (And, do not forget, Rotten uttered that in San Francisco, in Jan 1978.) I cannot remember if it was a Monday column or a game story (prob a column) but Ratto's article about the famous USFL rematch between Kelly's Bills and Young's 'Niners (a game the Bills won up here, in Candlestick; a game which ended like, 45-41, or something, and neither team punted) was some of the best sportswriting I have ever read. (And I grew up in Dallas with Dan Jenkins, Blackie Sherrod and Skip Bayliss [before he turned in to a twat.]) Ratto was the only guy up here who gave a tinker's damn about the Sharks and was a v quick read on hockey. His columns on the seven game Sharks playoff upset of the Blues back in the late 90s were great.
Now, the Sporting Green's shining stars are Bruce Jenkins and Henry Schulman. Schulman is the beat reporter for the Giants and is v old and has been covering baseball and the Giants since the Stretch McCovey days, I suppose. Jenkins is always raving about Schulman. To me, though, Schulman seems past his prime. He is not much of a writer and John Shea, who is marginally better, is being blocked at the position like an shortstop stuck at AAA behind Cal Ripken, or whatnot.
Bruce Jenkins, on the other hand, who is the serious Major Domo in the Sports Room, and can cover whatever the fuck he pleases (which is the Giants, the Warriors [ugh], tennis [he looooves himself some Serena], golf, Cal football [double triple ugh]) is a man I have serious issues with.
Albeit, he does have his good points. Jenkins is a v good writer. Why, just last week, he wrote a tender, hopefu,l beautiful column about the Giants' win on Grateful Dead day at the ballpark. (ESPN did a neat thing, too, that day, showing the highlights through a lava lamp filter.) And, Jenkins is old school. He loved hanging out at the Pink Pony and he is not PC, at all. He does not find anything wrong with drinkin' or smoking. And he is the only writer, pundit, whathaveyou, who thinks that Tiger manager, Jim Leyland, having to sneak off to the hallway to smoke his cigarettes is absolutely ludicrous. He's the fucking manager, one of the best of our generation. If Leyland wants to smoke and the players do not give a shit, let him smoke. Lately, he has also been spot-on re Tiger Woods, as well. i.e. That it is fucking time that we move on and stop covering every single thing Tiger does. Who cares anymore?
Like Pee-Wee sed, though, everyone has got a big but. My big but with Jenkins centers around baseball. Jenkins rarely writes columns. His showpiece is a proto-blog called Three Dot Lounge which appears every Saturday morning, unless he is on vacay, natch. This, itself, is a flat-out rip-off off of Blackie Sherrod's groundbreaking (and prob the first ever Sports Blog) Hither and Yon columns back in Dallas, which ran from Bud Wilkinson up until Phi Slamma Jamma. Look, I understand how desperate the situation was in 1992, trying to keep an Original NL franchise in one of the greatest cities of the world, San Francisco. And I know how important Barry Bonds was to that, to keep Jenkins' beloved Giants here. But to ignore the obvious cheating, and pardon Bonds' insane, assholish, arrogant behavior to his own teammates, for crying out loud, and then claim a false equivalency, that Hank Aaron (not Mays, mind you) used "greenies" (speed) back in his day, is repulsive to me. I know it is sports, not the Washington beat, but Jenkins is still supposedly a journalist, right? To be a Barry Bonds apologist two or three times a week in the paper is so unseemly, to me. Especially when it was the hard hard working news guys at the Chron (his co-workers, for crying out loud) who busted the story wide-open! (Like you could not tell just looking at Bonds, anyway.)
Naturally, since Bonds' "retirement" (which, still, has not officially happened) and the Giants' World Title, Jenkins has "toughened" up a bit on Bonds but still rails at any sportswriter that would not put Bonds in the Hall of Fame, first ballot.
Jenkins is also hopelessly aghast at sabermetrics, Moneyball, whathaveyou. Just a couple of weeks ago he lashed out at the A's organization for "working the count." His plum source for this amazing insight? The Dad of a former Major League A's player who was traded away. He then backed up this Major Revelation in another column, less than a week later, QED, because the Giants got two big hits in a game, swinging at the first pitch.
First off, a game, (four or five plate appearances) is what we like to call an SSSS, a Super Small Sample Size, and no matter how important that game is (this one was not, by the way) it is not in any single frickin way indicative of a batter's skill or a franchise's batting philosophy. Second, the "free-swingin'" World Champion Giants are one of the worst offenses in baseball today, even at full-strength!
Jenkins is also a gawd-awful National League snob. I never met these folks til I moved up here and they are extremely annoying. And it is silly, besides, thinking one league is vastly superior to the other, especially, mainly because in one league the pitcher bats and in the other, he does not. So childish.
I have got to go. Renee is on her way home and the Rangers have a huge showdown against the hottest pitcher in baseball right now, Ervin Santana.
I love you all. I hope you enjoyed my post about sportswriting and Ray Ratto and the SF Chron and I would urge all of you to please please please buy a newspaper a few times a week. Pretty soon they will all be gone and that will be a v sad day, indeed.
Koji Uehara (pronounced Ko-gee Wuh-hara). The Rangers got him at the Trade Deadline from the Baltimore Orioles for Chris "Crash" Davis and Tommy "Big Game" Hunter.
Koji is Japanese, has a beard, looks like he is like my height (not tall), and wears his pants above his navel. And he loves getting guys out. He loves baseball. He gets so pumped up and excited w/ each out. And when he ends an inning he high-fives every single coach, trainer, player, bat boy, whatever in the dugout. As soon as I find a better video of him I will post it.
Oh, and he is a fantastic pitcher, too. He is one of the Rangers' two new shiny set-up guys the Club just acquired. And we have him for next year, too.
Movie, Carlos? I have only seen Part One, so far, and have Part Three in the dvr. I suppose, I will have to netflix Part Two and then I would like to start all over and watch it in one go (or, whatever, just buy the damn thing next Friday and then watch it.)
Why can not I speak six different languages and grow sideburns like that?
Anyhow, Part One is fantastic. It is extremely addictive and I love so many things about it: I love how the opening titles talk about what a brutal terrorist Carlos was and then they promptly bask the sizzling hot, Edgar Ramirez, in hazy golden hues and light. I love all the suitcases and bags, one or more in every frickin' scene it seems. I love how the suitcases are always underneath one of his Revolutionary Lovers' beds. I love how the Revolutionary Lovers are all incredibly attractive. I love how there is a Che poster on nearly every wall. I love how his network stretches throughout all Europe and Japan(?!) I love how fast paced the film is. I love how short many of the scenes are, incl a proclivity towards cutting the meatier story parts of scenes completely off at the end (a trick The Wire used a lot.) I love the bungled missile-launcher scene. I love the scenes all over Europe's famous cities. (We get to see Budapest on film! That never frickin' happens. Why? Budapest is beautiful. Whatever, ... ) Did I mention the very attractive Revolutionary Sweethearts? (h/t to Camper.) I love how all this was happening when Saddam Hussein was still an up and comer. I love Ramirez' performance and how nimbly he switches from French to South American (presumably Peruvian) Spanish to English at the drop of a hat, immaculately. I love many other things in Part One that I will not mention here, so as not to spoil it.
Flat-out popcorn-munching fun. Kind of like a twentieth-century Dumas novel on screen that you do not want to end.
Would rather Wacky Ron Paul just fricking go away. They only use him to show what an absolute loon he is and ignore him right after debates. The second they can "justifiably" drop him from the GOP debates, they will.
He is still crazier than a peach orchard boar and thankfully has absolutely no shot in hell of winning the GOP nomination or General Election (and Paul will not be a CongressCritter anymore, either, meaning he will be Fox News favorite Weirdo Righty Pundit to counterbalance Kucinich on the Left.) (h/t to Molly Ivins, natch, for the boar quote.)
Man, I am not scared of any of those bozos I saw the other night. And Gubner Goodhair do not scare me, either.
Bachman and Cain will be the Early Darlings, throwing batshit-crazy Red Meat to the tri-corner crowd but eventually the Money Men will weigh in and go with someone like Mittens or Goodhair. The GOP always goes with the "safe, respectable" White Dude.
(And to see Fox slobber all over these losers is really unseemly.)
(and this is another baseball post, so, I know no one is reading, anyhow:)
The Angels won again tonight, on the road, hung a loss on Rivera (who is not the same when the game is tied as when he has a lead, whatever.)
The Rangers Rookie of the Year, Neftali Feiz, of the triple digit fastballs, has not had a great season so far through the 2011 campaign.
The Rangers play their last three games on the road, in frickin' Anaheim. The last time Feliz pitched three games in a row he stunk up the joint & the Rangers lost.
What do you do?
My point is: That real baseball is not Strat-o-Matic, APBA, Baseball Mogul, or OOTP 12. That if it comes down to the last day of the season in frickin' Disneyland, and Feliz was used the previous two games, you know that Wash is gonna roll him out again. There will be screaming on webchats and liveblogs, but that is the difference between real life and "fantasy" baseball, in whatever form it might take, i.e., table games, fantasy leagues, or computer sims.
It troubles me the amount of abuse Ron Washington has to suffer as a black manager in the Dallas area.
Gosh, he only guided the Rangers to their first-ever pennant.
(And all my A's buddies would be ever so glad to welcome Wash back to the A's.) (Wash, black, got screwed in the Moneyball movie, too. He did not even exist, apparently. But Phillip Seymour Hoffman plays Art Howe!)
Released in 1992 is sooooo good. From the fantastic sleeve art by Malcolm Bucknall to the bad acid flashback, flown-in guitar solo on Boilermaker to the Slave's Litany at the end of Slave Ship to the strangely out of place Puss that somehow fits snugly and seamlessly at the end of side one.
Me & Chris McClung used to call this "baby-making music".
Robert Aldrich, is a flat-out Camp Masterpiece. How has this film escaped me for so long? The ending of the film is so ludicrous and over-the-top, yet, you are still there, sweating, on the edge of your seat.
Obv, Kiss Me Deadly is a big blueprint for much of Tarantino's work, but I also see this film as a huge influence on Todd Haynes and Thomas Pynchon. Well, at least, on Pynchon's shorter (and better) "California" novels, i.e., Crying of Lot 49, Vineland, Inherent Vice, etc, ...
(Sidebar: A fun game to play w/ those truly sad Pynchon freaks, who carry a copy of Gravity's Rainbow in their hip pocket, is to get right up in their grill, and tell them that Gravity's Rainbow is a pile of shit, and that Vineland is Pynchon's best novel, by far. Watch theys heads explodes.)
The violence in Kiss Me Deadly is shocking, at times laughable, certainly full of malice, small, mean, and brutal. The "sex", as it were, in Kiss Me Deadly is sub-tropical, at times laughable (the "make-out/pumping my assistant for info scene" comes to mind), full more of malice than love certainly, small, mean, and a little unseemly at times.
And, who the hell is thisMike Hammer? I do not know poop about Mickey Spillane, but I thought Hammer was supposed to be a seedy, down on his luck dick, trying to make his fortune by setting the honeys up with his client's deadbeat, loser husbands.
(Sidebar two: There is a fantastic, real-life crime story going on up here in Walnut Creek right now, wherein a private dick had a deal with the cops that he would get his client's husbands sloshed at the frickin' Spaghetti Factory in Concord, seducing the dudes w/ hot chicks he had hired, and then having the cops immediately bust the dudes for DUI as they left the restaurant. There is so much more, too, all local. But that is for another time.)
Anyhoo, in the movie Mike Hammer is a sadistic, bitter, v rich (?!), renaissance man, who can relate to boxers as well as mezzo-sopranos. He lives in a penthouse apartment (in L.A.?, wha?) and has an answering machine (1955, mind you) built in to the wall. You half expect for him to bust out humming Esquivel at any moment.
Moreover, Hammer has absolutely no problem essentially pimping out the love of his life, his "secretary/His Girl Friday/assistant" (who basically does all the leg work, if you'll pardon the expression, while Hammer looks tough, drinks, and punches guys down staircases.)
It has got to be a joke, right? This film is so mean. It is meta-Noir. Natch, Spillane was displeased, but authors are always hurt, yes? A bunch of poor, whiny cry babies, authors are.
If you are hungry for a Space Age Bachelor Pad Film full of gritty, weird-ass amazing cinematography, unseemly sex barely skirting S&M, nasty violence, and ludicrous apocalyptic endings (and who is not hungry for that) than Kiss Me Deadly fits the fucking bill.
An absolute Camp Masterpiece. I'll watch it again and again and again, ...
Ms Godreche plays a right-winger I would like to convert.
by The Devil's Double. It looks like a slick piece of crap, all soundtrack and porn lighting. But it does have Dominic Cooper in it and he has gotten rave reviews, even if the reviewer did not like the film.
(Another bad sign: Peter Travers from Rolling Stone loves the film.)
Very much on the fence am I, still.
I did finally see Potiche, though. It was great, a period piece with impeccable design, rich color, a v smart, witty script, and great performances all-around. Deneuve and Depardieu are splendid. But my fave character was the right-wing daughter, with her "Farrah" haircut until she starts working at the factory.
The flashback sequences are superb, not washed-out, at all, but vibrant and showy and v raunchy.
Have known this for a long time: Mike Scioscia is a punk. This is the manager who had John Lackey come off the disabled list and throw twice at Ian Kinsler's head to start a game.
Nice guys finish last, indeed.
Last Sunday was a real treat, though. In Detroit, the Angels' Jared Weaver was squaring off against Justin Verlander, a real marquee American League match-up. Weaver pitched well but was losing due to giving up a couple of long home runs to Carlos Guillen and Magglio Ordonez. Verlander meanwhile was pitching a no-hitter through seven. Weaver (Scioscia) did not like the way Ordonez and Guillen "admired" their blasts and took a long time to round the bases. Weaver promptly threw at the Alex Avila's head after Guillen's homer, was ejected, yelling at the Tiger bench on his way out the door.
We get the top of the eighth, no-hitter still intact, and Erick Aybar leads off with a bunt attempt. Weaver, ultimately, was suspended six games. (He is appealing that ruling.) Hopefully, the baseball gods will remember this come September.
