My Muxtape Is Chullin’
I have been so busy lately, getting some extra work in before taking the dream trip next week — but I did have time to do a little fun thing last night. I went to Muxtape.com and set up a little playlist at scrubbles.muxtape.com (thanks to Jonny). This playlist is the result of an early ’90s female R&B fixation I was on earlier this week, and it’ll keep me briefly hopping for the inevitable more work later on. It’s phat, it’s da bomb, Bill Bellamy digs, peace out.
Weekly Mishmash: March 30-April 5
Atonement (2007). This one seemed a bit too predictable from the previews, but I found it really absorbing once the momentum of what will happen to Keira Knightley and James MacAvoy started building. Direction was good if a little show-offy (the six-minute tracking shot on the beach, and a scene with Knightley primping in front of a mirror looking like a TV commercial), and I loved the ending. Also, the ’30s-’40s period settings were spot-on.
From Rags to Bitches: An Autobiography by Mr. Blackwell with Vernon Patterson. An out of print tell-all from 1995 that I found at a used book sale (autographed, even!). Blackwell had an interesting life story that took him from poverty-stricken Brooklyn childhood to Hollywood also-ran to chichi California fashion designer. Not a lot of bitchiness here, unless you want some serious dirt on the forgotten singers Lily Pons and Connie Haines. It’s hard to take the author seriously as he describes his youthful self as “Hollywood’s most in-demand boy toy” — when the photos have him looking like a young Adam Goldberg. But that’s part of the fun of breezy books like this.
Nine Lives (2005). Nine short films, all centered around women of various walks of life, with most of the characters interconnected in some way. I enjoyed it, even though at times it played like an arty Lifetime movie. At times it reminded me of Crash (and, unlike many others, I liked Crash). The final sequence with Glenn Close and Dakota Fanning made me appreciate the treat that a well-crafted short film can be.
The Notebook (2004). A goopy romance recommended by one of Christopher’s co-workers. Not as bad as it could’ve been, but the ’40s period sloppiness makes Atonement look like a documentary by comparison. The cast is very good — except toothy Rachel McAdams, who seems like a distinct step below costars Ryan Gosling, Gena Rowlands and James Garner talent-wise. I need a he-man action movie now.
That ‘Screen Saver’ Look
A new Two Bunnies and a Duck hatched today … and now for something completely different. I was rearranging shelves in my bedroom yesterday and came across a few stowed-away items that have been saved since my first computer came into my life in 1992. First is the sheet of Apple Computer decals which came packaged with my Mac IIci machine. Very rainbowy. Second are a pair of items from Berkeley Systems, makers of the popular-in-the-day After Dark screen saver. An ad for More After Dark carries all the hallmarks of clunky early desktop publishing — including a garish color gradation. Finally there’s a brochure where one could purchase a variety of After Dark attire, modeled by the fashionistas pictured below. Flying toasters away!
It’s Always Time for Flying Penguins
An April Fools joke from Terry Jones and the BBC:
White Elephant Blogging: Follow That Bird
I have to admit that my maiden voyage into the second annual White Elephant Film Blogathon was approached with some trepidation. What kind of cinematic turd are they gonna hand me? Then I found out the movie I was to write about was Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird — hey, that’s not so bad. Sesame Street played a big part in my fondest childhood memories. As long as it doesn’t have that idiot Elmo, we should be fine.
Although Elmo does briefly appear near the end (not speaking, thank heavens), overall the movie offers a sweet and gentle peek into the hermetically sealed world of Sesame Street as it existed in 1985. The thin plot kicks off with Big Bird getting adopted out to a family of muppet dodo birds by a busybody social worker named Miss Finch (voiced by Sally Kellerman). Not being happy in Dodo’s prefab suburban birdhouse, our feathered friend decides to walk his way back home across America’s rural landscape — will the other Sesame Streeters ever find him and take him back home?
If there’s a central message to SSP:FTB, it might be that city dwelling is the only true way to live. As this film has it, even the friendliest of country folk have a certain dark something to hide. Just look at some of the shady characters who turn up: a creepy singing truck driver (Waylon Jennings). A surly, salad-throwing waitress (Sandra Bernhard). Two sadistic carnival operators (SCTV’s Dave Thomas and Joe Flaherty). Not to mention the pair of frighteningly generic farm kids who want to adopt Big Bird, probably to subject him to some kind of Children of the Corn thing.
Which brings me to another nagging element in this movie — everything is so clean. Despite the Americana setting, this movie was filmed entirely in Ontario, Canada. It’s odd to see country roads without billboards and trash everywhere. Worse yet, the re-created outdoor Sesame Street set looks so spotless one could eat right off Oscar the Grouch’s can. Where’s the grittiness?
The Follow that Bird DVD is presented in pan-and-scan full frame with no extras to speak of. Those looking for a salty commentary by an out-of-character Caroll Spinney (”John Candy was a bitch”) will be sorely disappointed. Despite that, I succumbed to its sweetness. Read the rest of the 2nd Annual White Elephant Film Blogathon.
Weekly Mishmash: March 23-29
Cadbury Orange Creme Eggs. Amid a marked down candy buying spree at Walgreen’s, I spotted this variant on my favorite Easter treat for only a quarter each. Man, where have these babies been all my life? P.S. I miss the classic bunny commercials.
The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (1937). On the 24th, TCM ran a 24-hour Joan Crawford tribute. Two films never seen before, including this jewel robbery comedy, ended up getting recorded. Slogging through this labored and overly-scripted affair, “What were they thinking?” was the only thing that came to my mind. As much as I love and admire Miss Crawford, she never was a very effective light comedienne (The Women was the great exception). The movie is actually well-cast and beautifully mounted with all the gloss that MGM could buy, but what came out of all that effort was a snail-paced antique that gets way too bogged down in its frou-frou fake Britishness. Joanie, ya let me down again.
Spring Fever (1927). My other Crawford viewing was this little-seen silent starring the gay and not hiding it well William Haines. Looking like a completely different person a decade earlier, the fresh and appealing Crawford made the best of a nondescript “girlfriend” role here. Silents are always interesting in a way because they’re a window on their time with a unique point of view not seen in sound films. This one is no exception — even though it also drags a bit, switching from fluffy golfing comedy to heavy relationship drama to whiplash-inducing effect. On the plus side, Crawford and Haines play wonderfully off each other. And isn’t this a lovely poster?
The Tom & Jerry Spotlight Collection, Vol. 3. Tom & Jerry fan Christopher bought this for his DVD collection and we were enjoying it all week. Well, “enjoying” is a strong word. How about “watching”, instead? Volume one was packed with classic, award-winning T&J cartoons, while the second volume benefited from having most of the earlier (and therefore better) shorts co-starring the controversial Mammy character. The third and concluding volume of this series was meant to cover all the remaining classic-era MGM cartoons not covered in the first two sets, but Warner Home Video left off two cartoons with “objectionable” scenes in a bit of spineless corporate p.c. behavior. Most of the cartoons here aren’t even true Tom & Jerry vehicles anyway, with Spike and Tyke and that annoying little duckling taking up much of the screen time. The only mitigating thing on this set is a making-of documentary that includes several nightmare-inducing clips of the weird, weird Gene Deitch-directed Tom & Jerry shorts from the early ’60s.
Wall Art at Home
Due to not having a car (fuel pump gave out), I was housebound for much of this week. Yesterday I took my camera and photographed various pieces of wall art around the house. The pics were assembled in a flickr set creatively titled Wall Art at Home. Most pieces have a little background info on where we got it. Enjoy, amigos!
He-Man Adventure Club
In a strange bit of synergy, two recent articles have appeared dealing with established cable channels changing their content to be more “edgy” — one on The History Channel and another on Animal Planet. It’s telling that both channels are going after the elusive Young Male demographic by diluting the very images they were founded on. Animal Planet’s upcoming whaling industry exposé doesn’t seem so bad, but why is The History Channel doing all these “dangerous tough-guy jobs” documentaries — and what pray tell does that have to do with history?
Uneasy as those stories are, they really do reflect what’s happening in the bigger picture. Browse through a cable/satellite lineup and you’ll find ’80s-’90s movies on TV Land, wrestling on the Sci-Fi channel, and white-trashy candid reality on A&E. HGTV and The Food Network, once valuable sources of information across a wide spectrum, are now filled with competition shows and filler aimed at dumbasses whose points of reference don’t extend beyond what can be gotten at the closest Wal-Mart Supercenter. I guess having a niche and doing it really well (hello, Turner Classic Movies) doesn’t count for much these days.
Weekly Mishmash: March 16-22
Ace of Base - Singles of the 90s. When this imported Best-Of collection appeared a few months back as a surprise offering on the defiantly indie eMusic.com, I saw the sign and gave it a guilt-free download. Listening to it gives me a serious yen for good ’90s Europop — and makes me wonder why so much of this stuff never made it to the U.S. market. Their luscious Motown tribute “Always Have, Always Will” or the wonderfully retro “C’est La Vie Always 21″ are both fantastically constructed pieces of pure pop, but they never got a chance on our soils. “The Sign” and “All That She Wants” are here, of course, along with the underrated goodness of “Beautiful Life” and “Lucky Love” (the superior original version, not the acoustic remix made for U.S. radio). Yes, after reading everything about Ace of Base on Wikipedia, I’m almost embarrassed about how much knowledge I’ve accrued!
Patrick Cleandenim - Baby Comes Home. My other eMusic download. I’d never heard of this guy before, but his debut album has an appealingly scrappy “retro” vibe which takes in swing, ’60s soft pop and Broadway as influences. It’s nice and all, but the only song that truly stuck was the moody “Days Without Rain” — sort of a lost Mamas & Papas song. Cleandenim has ambition to spare, but his melodies aren’t too memorable and the production came off as too sloppy (especially compared with Ace of Base!). But then again he’s only 22, so whatever he comes up with later on down the line should be worth the wait.
Into the Wild (2007). Beautiful performances and great cinematography add up to a film that resonated long after we saw it. If Sean Penn intended for us to see the main guy as a hero, I don’t know if he entirely succeeded. But I definitely understand the need to break free of the constraints society puts upon us.
Maybe It’s Love (1935) A b-level comedy from the ’30s that plays like a Busby Berkeley musical without the music. Gloria Stuart, 62 years before she went on the Titanic, is the center of attention here — but the main interest in this film lies with leading man Ross Alexander. Alexander had a short-lived career at Warner Bros., making due in various happy-go-lucky “best friend” roles before taking his own life at 29. Like Ramon Novarro, he came across as very likable and very gay onscreen — and watching him in this silly fluff makes me wonder what would have become of him had he lived in a more forgiving time.
13 Going On 30 (2004) Another piece of fluff, but Jennifer Garner was so appealing that I almost didn’t care about the movie’s numerous period inaccuracies (a twelve year-old girl in 1987 loving Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”? C’mon!). Many are still waiting for the vehicle that will make Garner an A-list star.
Two Bunnies #4
A new edition of Two Bunnies and a Duck has been posted. Kinda gross, but a lot of humor is based on grossness, doncha think?
By the way, we just completed almost a full day of planting and removing different vegetation from our yard. I have just one gardening observation: Ruellia sucks. Don’t plant unless you like things that spread like weeds and leave dozens of densely packed stalks in the ground when you try removing them.
Nothing Like a Dane
A sampling of songs from the lovely, ethereal-sounding Danish singer Birgit Lystager, recently linked on Martin Klasch. Though I first read about Ms. Lystager years ago on the Musical Taste site, I haven’t actually heard much of her singing (accurately described as a mix of Astrud Gilberto and Karen Carpenter) until today. Her Scandinavian version of “Pretty World” from 1970 is pretty fantastic.
Hulu Party
It always happens — instead of doing something productive, I waste away the day on something silly. In today’s case, I visited Fox and NBC-Universal’s Hulu.com to find out if it lives up to the hype. Although I didn’t look into the movies (something about sitting on the computer for two solid hours makes my butt hurt), they do have a decent selection of old and new TV shows. The shows are presented with a nicely designed, iTunes-like interface, unedited and with a few brief sponsored ads where the commercial breaks should go. Image quality was pretty good but it ran jerkily (maybe that’s due to my weak web browser). I watched Bewitched’s second season Halloween episode, with a little girl who looked awfully familiar until the credits revealed she was a pre-Brady Bunch Maureen McCormick. How fun. When they add some more cool older shows, I will have to waste yet another day there.
Weekly Mishmash: March 9-15
You know, it’s been four weeks since the Weekly Mishmash has started, and there hasn’t been a single comment on anything in them. Do you like these? Are they lame? I’m getting lonely!
An Affair to Remember (1957). A so-called romantic classic that has eluded me until now. Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr are great together, and the early shipboard scenes have an undeniable sparkle. Then it gets awfully treacly with a simpering old biddy, a multiracial kiddie choir and Kerr flaunting her “nobody could love a cripple so I’ll sit here and be a perfect lady” schtick. Barf.
Good Night, and Good Luck (2005). This, on the other hand, was excellent. I loved the cast from David Strathairn on down and the ’50s settings appeared nicely authentic considering the film’s low budget. George Clooney builds a sense of mounting tensions as it goes along, and it seemed somewhat obvious to me that he was drawing parallels between McCarthy-era hysteria and today’s political climate.
Michael Largo — Final Exits: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of How We Die. A compendium of bite-sized examples of how people died throughout history. Entertaining enough to forgive the book’s slapdash design (heavy on the clip art) and several mistakes. For example, it states that the woman with the famous “I Told You I Was Sick” tombstone was buried in Littleton, Colorado — when she’s really located in Key West, Florida. I know this because I saw it last October!
Mama Steps Out (1937). How happy am I that Turner Classic Movies is back in the groove? Last week I was excited to find a half-day of Guy Kibbee movies on the schedule (apparently I wasn’t the only one), and so this B-level comedy which pairs Kibbee with the wonderful Alice Brady got added to the TiVo playlist. This was produced by MGM, scripted by Anita Loos, and has a strangely gorgeous and young Dennis Morgan in the supporting cast, so how bad can it be? Well, as much as I dug Guy and Alice doing their thing, the director forgot to tell the cast to dial this stagey romp down for film. The plot (mostly about an “ugly American” family adjusting to European culture) is fun and very screwball, but it plays much too shrill for my comfort level. I’ll have to check out a good ‘n gritty old Warner Bros. feature for my next Guy fix.
Twilight Samurai (2002). A Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award nominee, this is less a typical samurai film than a probing family drama which deals with distinctively Japanese themes that might seem alienating to an English-speaking audience. The film unfolds slowly with a dialogue-heavy script at first, but eventually it wound up being a semi-rewarding experience. Well acted.
Book Review: Jackie Ormes
I love it when a book exposes me to an event or person that I’d previously known nothing of. This happened recently when a friend sent along an email linking to an article on Jackie Ormes: The First African American Woman Cartoonist. This book grew out of author Nancy Goldstein’s interest in a doll modeled after one of Ormes’ comic characters. What emerged from that little pique is this multifaceted portrait of a vivacious lady who channeled the excitement of mid-20th century politics and social issues into her own jazzy drawings.
Actually, cartooning made up only part of Ormes’ life story — between 1937 and 1956, she had a hand in four different comic strips in between stints as a reporter, community volunteer and social hostess on the Chicago scene. Her best-remembered comic was Patty Jo ‘n’ Ginger, a single panel weekly which ran in the black-oriented Pittsburgh Courier in 1945-56. It starred Patty Jo, a smart-mouthed little girl whose beyond-her-years wisecracks often startled her mute yet smartly dressed older sister Ginger (the fashionable Ormes modeled Ginger after herself). Although the strip looked innocuous enough on the surface, Ormes used the Patty Jo character to caustically speak on current issues ranging from segregation to the HUAC Communist witch hunts to Dior’s “New Look” fashions. Around the same time, Ormes also drew a full color romantic saga titled Torchy In Heartbeats, a series notable for its independent Afro-American herioine and Orme’s lush drawing style (a distinct improvement over Patty Jo ‘n’ Ginger’s cute but often stilted compositions). Goldstein also devotes a chapter to the highly collectible doll based on Patty Jo.
The book itself is a nice and thorough summary of Ormes’ life and career. My only complaint is that Goldstein’s text often detours into unnecessarily long passages giving context to the times she lived in. On the other hand, I did enjoy her paragraphs describing the often obscure topics covered in each Patty Jo ‘n’ Ginger panel. Ormes’ comics are presented in the best possible way, despite many of them only surviving on grungy microfilm reels. All in all, with this book I was left with the impression of getting to know a fascinating lady who lived in a fascinating era.
Jackie Ormes: The First African American Woman Cartoonist is published by The University of Michigan Press. Buy it at Amazon.com here.
Mmmm … Chromey
Awesome! The music video for Justice’s “DVNO” might as well be a love letter to ’80s motion graphics. With all the animated neon lights and chrome surfaces on display, one can see the influence of stuff like the widely beloved HBO Feature Presentation intro, the Cannon Films logo, and … all of this demo reel.
