Trawling Through The Thrift Stores

 Happy Thursday, everyone!  The baseball playoffs are almost here (hooray for my hometown White Sox, the first team to clinch their division), it's getting cooler, the Bears might move to Arlington Heights and I have some new fun stuff to show off.  Let's get to it.  We have a woman hiding her past, a Catholic school in turmoil over chocolate bar sales, Burt Lancaster with birdies and kung-fu in 18th century France.  It's a weird week..

______________________________

I don't buy that much into the auteur theory of directors.  Frankly, film is one of the most collaborative of arts and to attribute the majority of the praise for a films style and focus to the director is reductive and more than a little insulting to everyone who works so hard on a film.  (I quite like Kevin Smith's take on this; he obviously has a very distinctive style that could be considered auteurish but he simply refuses to use the "A film by" credit, one of the reasons for which he has never been admitted into the Directors Guild of America.  The case against possessive credits and why the Writers Guild of America is against such a thing if the director isn't also the writer is laid out well here.)

Another director with a very distinctive style that could be considered an auteur is Samuel Fuller.  A genre director that worked mostly outside of the studio system, he made weird, unconventional movies that tackled themes that few studio films would do in the pre-New Hollywood era.  A case in point, this old Criterion I found of the movie The Naked Kiss (1964).

Constance Towers stars as Kelly, a small-town prostitute who ends up in yet another small town to peddle her wares.  Almost run out of town by the local sheriff, she decides to settle down, hide her parstand get a job as a nurse at a local children's hospital.  What could have been a movie purely a nice person trying to hide a shameful past becomes more of a waking nightmare as she learns more horrifying things about this town.  (I feel like Stephen King might have things to say about all this, but I can't see that he's written about it.)  This is a great, weird movie that goes places you're absolutely not expecting and ends in a weird moment of....maybe hope?

If you check this out and like it, also check Fuller's Shock Corridor (1963), the absolute better movie about someone getting themselves committed to a mental institution under false pretenses, in this case to solve a murder.

The Naked Kiss is streaming on Criterion, HBOMax, Amazon Prime, Kanopy, Tubi, Plex and IMDb TV.  Whew.  You have no excuse to not being able to find. it.

Shock Corridor is also on Criterion and HBOMax as well as IndieFlix and Flix Fling.

______________________________

Hey, a blast from the past!  I've never read the sequel but I quite liked The Chocolate War, an excellent movie about going to an all-guys Catholic high school (like the one I went to) and all the terrors therein.  (Look, full credit to a lot of the people who worked there but my school had terrinble underpinings ox extreme whitness and misogyny thyat became more and more obvious as they went coed and their attendance became more diverse).  RObert COmier passed away in 2000 and I would love to see his take on how Catholic education has evolved since Chocolate War was published.  

Frankly, I also grabbed this just for the title.

______________________________

Interestingly, I've never seen this biopic of Robert Stroud.  Stroud was a murderer who was incarcerated at Leavenworth in Kansas before being transferred to Alcatraz and became known as the Birdman because he became a self-taught ornithologist.  It's apparently a pretty soft biopic of someone his fellow prisoners thought was far more sinister than portrayed here but frankly the reunion of Burt Lancaster and John Frankenheimer after The Train (an amazing movie about Resistance fighters hijacking a train of stolen Nazi art) is very attractive.

Birdman of Alcatraz is streaming on Kanopy and on PlutoTV with ads.

______________________________

Usually I save this last position for schlock but forget it, this is art with schlock trappings and it's a film that it's really fun to mention to people and have them go, "Huh?"  Based on a real legend about a monster in the country of pre-Revolution France, the King has sent a nobleman and his faithful Mohawk companion to investigate the tales and kill the monster if need be.   And then the movie gets weird.  There's kung fu!  Feral family members with knife weapons!  The best use of the slo-mo fighting cliche we're all sick of!  A weird level of eroticism!  So much mud and rain!   I love this movie so much and I was very, VERY happy to run across this hardcore three-disc Canadian DVD set.  (The US DVD is worthless.)  And if you only know Mark Dacascos, said Mohawk companion, from hosting the US version of Iron Chef you really need to check this out because he has amazing fight moves.

(Fair warning, there's toplessness in this trailer.)

Brotherhood of the Wolf (Le Pacte des loups) is sadly not streaming on any current US package, but you can buy and rent it everywhere and it's absolutely my recommendation of the week.

A Dozen Books That You Can Be Excited To Talk About

 Reading is a solitary pleasure, and then there's the book club. Nothing wrong with either of those, but there's a kind of book which may not enrapture the reader, and might not make (or have made) a sensation that would motivate a group to gather at a coffee shop to devote an hour just to Chapters Three and Four, and yet, it's a discussable book. If you find someone else who's read it recently, it's fun to go over your favorite parts. And if you're with someone who read it long ago and has forgotten it, it can be enjoyable to refresh your friend's memories. Also, if you are a serious fan, you have someone in whose hands you may be able to push a copy of the beloved tome. "Just start reading it! You'll see!" Each front cover below represents a book which can be described as "discussable."

 

 

 

Bowling Lefty -- Garbo

 

One day during the winter of 1995-1996, I suffered a dramatic elbow injury on the right side. After surgery and physical therapy, I regained use of my hand and arm, but I could no longer bowl right-handed. I decided to learn to use my left hand, and took my bowling ball down to the local pro shop to have the finger holes filled in and the ball re-drilled lefty. The shop was amazingly convenient to me, as at the time I lived three blocks away.

 

 

 It's a very old-school storefront place. As small as it is, it has a short practice lane in it so I could try out the re-drilled ball. 

 

 

 

"A lot of people find that they can change their approach when they switch hands," said the pro shop guy. "The old way gets set in your mind and it's hard to change once you do the approach a certain way."

"I see what you mean," I said, hefting the swirling blue bowling ball and giving it a few swings along my left side. 

I didn't share my personal bowling history with the pro shop guy, but I'd always carried a fair amount of stress around getting a bowling ball down the lane. My very practical mom had a Correct Method for everything including bowling. She was short and stocky and she flung the ball forward almost like pitching a softball toward a troublesome batter she was hoping to clock"accidentally." In short, Mom used the Fred Flintstone whammo!! style, where sheer force was supposed to scatter the pins which would then roll away from sheer fright. 

But as a teenager I was the tall Betty Spaghetti type, without a lot of upper-body strength. I needed to do more of a swoop and bend in order to lay the ball on the lane. I was truly incapable of propelling a twelve-pound sphere like a cannonball. And it wasn't my style, personality-wise. I've always preferred to sneak up on the pins when they aren't looking, tossing a casual spinner that doesn't look like it's doing anything, then suddenly whirls up behind the head pin, creating total havoc in Pinville.

I never won any trophies during my last years as a league bowler, but not only did I knock down more pins as a lefty, but I did it with a lot less stress. I could move from stance, into a fairly graceful approach and delivery, and because I'd changed the whole pattern, I didn't get a glitch when I could feel my mom's long-ago dismay that I was doing bowling wrong. 

Over the last ten years, I've only bowled publicly at children's birthday parties or as part of a group when someone was visiting from out of town, and in these pandemic days, I don't know if there's bowling, masked or otherwise, and even if there was, not sure I'd go. An age thing as much as a virus thing; the last time my spouse and I bowled, we both had our own versions of a backache, and that was New England candlestick bowling with the small fingertip bowling balls.

But I do still bowl -- in the living room. Ah, the joys of Wii Bowling! A six-ounce plasti cremote instead of a ball that weighs 14 or 16 pounds, no weekly dues, and the scores are only in the Nintendo system and not a matter of public record. And what a spin I can put, bowling lefty, on that virtual bowling ball!

Next week: A return to the series on Greta Garbo's movies

Garbo

 

‘Corn In The Fields . . .’

 by whiteray

We return this week to autumnal songs and find one on The Band’s second album, a 1969 self-titled release. 

That’s perhaps not correct: If the word “autumnal” refers only to the season, then we find one track on that long-adored album. If it refers to songs filled with elegy and reverie, we find at least four more. This week, I’ll offer the season-specific tune, and next week, I’ll push my definition of “autumnal” and choose another from The Band. 

My maternal grandfather was a farmer all his working life. Married in 1915, he and my grandmother had three daughters by the mid-1920s and worked a small farm south of the rural Minnesota town of Wabasso. They lost that farm during the Depression but managed to buy another one not far away, two miles east of a town called Lamberton. And there they stayed for more than thirty years, finally selling the farm and moving into town in 1972. 

There is a long history of farming unions in the U.S., a history I know mostly through my grandfather’s opinions. During the mid-1960s, when the news on television showed members of the relatively young National Farm Organization (NFO) dumping truckloads of milk rather than sell it for a price seen as too low, my grandfather shook his head. That wasn’t the way to go, he said. The NFO was too radical. 

For years – and I have no idea how long – Grampa had been a member of the Farm Bureau, a movement started in the early Twentieth Century as a lobbying organization for farmers. It was a far less radical organization than the NFO. It’s good to recall, though, that in the mid-1960s, when I was a little sprout spending a portion of my summer vacations on the farm, Grampa was in his seventies, and the too-radical members of the NFO would likely have been four or five decades younger. In its time, the ideas of the Farm Bureau may have been seen as radical; I don’t know. And the actions of the members of the NFO may have been reasonable for the mid-1960s. 

My grandfather was a quiet man. I’m sure he had many opinions that he shared with his contemporaries. I recall two he shared with me: If you’re gonna buy farm machinery, go with John Deere. (And one of my favorite baseball caps is a John Deere cap in glorious green and yellow.) And the Farm Bureau was the way for farmers to go. 

So. when I hear the first chords and then the lyrics of The Band’s  “King Harvest (Has Surely Come),” I think about two things. First, I think about the advance of autumn – what with the “scarecrow and a yellow moon” and the carnival on the edge of town. 

And then I think about my grandfather. Written by Robbie Robertson, the group’s ode to farm workers and their struggles (set in some mythical portion, I think, of the early Twentieth Century when the narrator works “for the union, ’cause she’s so good to me”), doesn’t quite match with my grandfather’s life; he owned his farm and didn’t have a boss man, as the song’s narrator does. 

But I hear the narrator’s struggles, and I hear portions of what life likely was like for my grandfather and his family. So even if it’s not a perfect match, “King Harvest (Has Surely Come)” sets me in a bittersweet autumn, and I think about my grandfather who lost one farm and then held another for the rest of his working life: 

Corn in the fields
Listen to the rice when the wind blows ’cross the water
King Harvest has surely come

I work for the union
‘Cause she's so good to me
And I’m bound to come out on top
That’s where she said I should be
I will hear every word the boss may say
For he’s the one who hands me down my pay
Looks like this time I'm gonna get to stay
I'm a union man, now, all the way

The smell of the leaves
From the magnolia trees in the meadow
King Harvest has surely come

Dry summer, then comes fall
Which I depend on most of all
Hey, rainmaker, can’t you hear the call?
Please let these crops grow tall
Long enough I've been up on Skid Row
And it’s plain to see, I’ve nothing to show
I'm glad to pay those union dues
Just don’t judge me by my shoes

Scarecrow and a yellow moon
Pretty soon a carnival on the edge of town
King Harvest has surely come

Last year, this time, wasn’t no joke
My whole barn went up in smoke
Our horse Jethro, well, he went mad
I can’t ever remember things bein’ that bad
Then here come a man with a paper and a pen
Tellin’ us our hard times are about to end
And then, if they don’t give us what we like
He said, “men, that’s when you gotta go on strike”

Corn in the fields
Listen to the rice when the wind blows ’cross the water
King Harvest has surely come

Florida, Oddly Enough

It's Sunday and like many of you I wish for one more day at home, to read, organize, daydream, and entertain myself. I'll be finishing Noam Chomsky's, Who Rules the World? this week on audiobook, and I will need to listen a few times to really digest the sad sad truth of what he's telling us about this subject. Even so,  I'm sticking with my own advice, when I'm able, of doing little things that make me happy. I'm being aware of the world's troubles, and daily trying to do whatever good things I can on its behalf, yet not letting the state of things fill me with despair.  So, I am mending and organizing today, grading tonight, and I might, at some point, have a chilled glass of Crystal Skull vodka that Chuck gave me for my birthday. Today, I've been listening to this wonderful-auditory-journey-through-time-of-a-cd-set: Richard Thompson 1000 years of Popular Music. He really does perform his favorite songs of the past 1000 years. He has a voice that has always been able to harken me hither, thither, and yon, since his Fairport Convention days. You might be surprised to learn the set includes a 3 part madrigal from the 1500's and a Brtiney Spears song. It also includes a DVD which I haven't yet seen. This set is this year's mother's day gift from my son, Marlin, with whom I share a very similar taste in music. He has shared so much good music with me over the years, things I wouldn't have heard without his sharing. I've saved all the cd burns he's made over the years for various road trips.  If you like Richard Thompson, you may enjoy his offerings on this unique musical journey through time.

This week I received a book I ordered for Mike and I to read this winter, but I may need to dip into it before winter break arrives: George Myerson's collection of selected passages from literature that describe moments of happiness. 

Altogether I'm making a pretty good dent in the prevailing mood of existential dread.  

Several friends regularly post about their daily activities on social media, describing their thoughts and feelings while performing these, and I enjoy them. Often, in novels and in music, it's the description of the mundane, worded in a certain light, that pleases me the most. For years, I'd reread the beginning of Little Women to pull myself out of a despairing mood.  We really do need to watch our moods, take them apart and look closely at them, without believing everything they are telling us. I can be happy with a good porch sweeping.

 I'll drink a toast to your finished laundry, today, friends. And your clean counters.

Leaving you with a Sunday song about regrets, by Richard Thompson:

Salford Sunday

Hoping happiness breaks in this week -- for you!

~Dorothy Dolores 

Art in Literature: Macbeth - Esther

I always say the two most important things I learned at school were how to touch type & Shakespeare. Even here, today, I’m combining them both…

My favourite play then & now is William Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Unsurprisingly there is much made of the various themes in Macbeth, such as guilt, ambition, free will versus fate & frankly how suggestible this guy is when confronted by three (four, actually I suppose) strong women, but it’s worth remembering it’s also about change. It’s about not accepting the status quo & where you are. It’s about upward mobility. It’s about greed. & look what happens.

& yet, Macbeth’s story is a tragedy rather than a fable because in the end he is human. So human. He does rather well for himself as a soldier but it’s not enough. Even when he’s (spoiler alert) made king, he’s dissatisfied, realising too late that the end does not justify the means. With his enabling wife & his superstitious nature he gives up on good sense & ultimately he’s ruined.

I strongly associate the play with this time of year – the change of season into autumn, the onset of Hallowe’en, the change in weather, the change in colours, the darkening days & the nights drawing in. That it’s set in Scotland feels like no coincidence.

The interpretation of the supernatural elements of Macbeth, the treatment of mental health as a subject, the roles of women & the breaking down of traditional masculine/feminine traits – indeed explicitly questioning them - all still have relevance today. 

For an artist, it’s too generous with the imagery – drama, overwrought characters, witches, ghosts, gore, blood, weaponry, walking forests, death, tragedy, spells, desire, love, several deadly sins, glamour, not to mention blasted heaths. Fair or foul, Macbeth has got the lot.

Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth (1889), John Singer Sargent (1856-1925)

It’s the quintessential portrait of perhaps the most famous female character in theatre, let alone Shakespeare. Here, Lady Macbeth exhibits the power & steeliness required to do what she has done & will do, yet she has reservations. She knows that once this crown is placed on her head, there really is no going back. Her ill-gotten gains are about to become be her undoing. If anything, Sargent’s portrayal of such a striking actress adds to the Macbeth legend. His work is always masterful, assured & impressive. Since its creation, surely countless actors have used this representation as their template for the role.

Lady Macbeth Seizing the Daggers (1812), Henry Fuseli (1741-1825)

“Infirm of purpose! Give me the daggers…” translates as, “Oh for heaven’s sake, give me THOSE,” whilst her husband has a wobble about what he’s just done. You can sense her frustration in Fuseli’s depiction. Fuseli made a number of paintings for Macbeth, this with an ethereal quality – possibly it’s an unfinished work or sketch for a larger canvas. 

Herbert Beerbohm Tree (1852-1917) as Macbeth in “Macbeth” by William Shakespeare, Charles A. Buchel (1872-1950)

This is another interpretation of Macbeth after committing murder. A more complete piece, he is captured experiencing a bewildered horror at his own actions, almost as if he can’t believe it. “I am afraid to think what I have done…” 

The Spectrum Appearance of Banquo at Macbeth’s Feast (?), Gustave Doré (1832-1883)

I love this version of Banquo’s Ghost – a properly vaporous presence, rightly annoyed at the damned imposition of being murdered, despite being a true friend & faithful subject. The audacity! He stares down his former friend in judgement & shakes his gory locks for all he’s worth in contempt.

Lady Macbeth (date unknown), Alfred Stevens (1823-1906)

This is where it all goes belly-up for the Lady herself. No matter what she does, she can’t get rid of that stain…

The Three Witches of Macbeth (c. 1767-1768), John Runciman (1744-1768/9)

These wonderful heads may seem wispy & phantasmagorical but the features resemble those of real people. The expressions seem believable & the image blurs the lines between the supernatural & the physical world. Were the weird sisters truly magical or were they simply armed with knowledge or talents that others could not fully understand? Within that question lies the reason so many women through history were burned alive.

The Apparition of the Kings (1856), Théodore Chassériau (1819-1856)

Not only is Macbeth plagued by the ghost of Banquo but of his illustrious forebears, appointed by God to be King. He on the other hand has no business being King. Haunting is about to be the least of his worries. 

Charles John Kean as Macbeth (1840), Richard James Lane (1800-1872) & Sir Henry Irving as Macbeth (after 1875), Harry Furniss (1854-1925)

Of course being “the Scottish play” & being stuffed full of drama allows all sorts of liberties by various productions, actors & costume designers. Here are a couple of the more ridiculous examples that I’ve come across. I’ve seen some terrible Macbeths but really…

 

Wardrobe Sketch with notes. Banquo’s Ghost (?), Hodges C. Walter (Cyril Walter) (1909-2004)

The costume of Banquo’s Ghost would necessarily have to be a bit of a state. I was once on a backstage tour at the Royal Shakespeare Company, where the guide described fake blood as being sugar-based. She said that if an actor had to be in a scene before being “killed” & then appear after (or during) the death, it had to be something that would wash out again for the following night’s show. I wonder if that’s a problem with Banquo. He’s murdered in Act Three, Scene Two & returns as a ghost in Act Three, Scene Three. Is there enough time to change? This drawing suggests a separate garment altogether is required.

Lady Macbeth for cover illustration of Macbeth (2019), Abigail Larson (1988)

Abigail Larson’s Lady Macbeth has all the pout, arrogance & swagger that have abandoned Sargent’s. Here she is confident, malevolent of purpose & ready for action. 

The Macbeths (2001), Antony Sher (1949-)

Antony Sher’s Macbeth is a passionate & emotional rendering of a couple’s mutual obsession. A self-portrait with a portrait of his Lady Macbeth (Harriet Walter), the image focuses on the angst, desperation & infatuation in their relationship. It’s almost abstract & certainly Expressionistic & captures the heart of the play. This is a haunting image of two powerful performances.

Portents, Pasts and Unsavory Deals - September 24 - Friday Video Distractions with Mike Norton

 

     Another week down, September having less than a week's breath remaining.

     Among the items I've been enjoying this week were Sunday's episode of Evil (Paramount+), which I will continue to recommend, and Thursday's season three debut for Doom Patrol (HBO Max). That latter centers on some of the most deeply-damaged characters in any series I can think of. A distinctly inhuman menagerie to general appearance, yet all the more charmingly, deeply human and sympathetic for it, even at their (justifiably) crankiest.
     This new season kicked off with a trio of episodes, and, as I'd hoped, has brought more of the dark whimsy of season one back with it. It also took some of the time it lost during last season's COVID-truncated run to bring us a conclusion to that storyline before positioning us for a new story arc -- which in typical Doom Patrol fashion seems mostly to be other people's old business. I don't know how close the wrap to Dorothy's story arc this was to the original plan, but they seemed to get it to a tidy pivoting point, more fully clearing the decks for new-to-them business. In these three episodes we get to see something of the Brotherhood of Evil, see that the villains get stuck with their own mission-centered raw deals, too, and meet the Dead Boy Detectives in time to deal with a rescue mission to the afterlife.
     The sheer, sprawling, timelessness for the main characters - an odd benefit of their specific damages - makes for a sympathetic resonance in me, with the necessarily arrested childhood elements that are part of still being a comics fan in my sixties. Something in this allows me the illusion of sharing their storybook character immortality, and there's a nostalgic warmth and comfort in that.
     Also, over on Hulu, Mondays have been bringing me new episodes of the engaging, post-apocalyptic Y: The Last Man, and Tuesdays another installment of the often charming misfit mystery Only Murders in the Building, each of which I'd talked about in earlier installments. (Doom Patrol was part of last week's entry, and Only Murders back near the beginning of the month.)
   Arriving today on Netflix is a new supernatural series from Mike (Haunting of Hill House) Flanagan, focused on an isolated, island community that experiences a series of miraculous events and troubling omens following the return of a disgraced young man (Zach Gilford) and the arrival of a young priest (Hamish Linklater). It's Midnight Mass

     This is a seven-episode LIMITED series, and has received mostly strongly positive reviews. Wanting to keep it as fresh an experience as I can, I haven't dived into the full reviews. It's one of many items to practically be on my doorstep this month before I knew they were coming, which has its advantages. There's too much I'm aware of that I haven't gotten around to as it is.
      Adding some notes: I've watched it all, and can strongly recommend it. I don't want to liken it to any specific novel, movie or miniseries because I don't want to give it away. It struck me as something executed by a skilled craftsman who is a sharp-eyed fan of the best efforts Stephen King ever managed. (To clarify, this isn't a King story.) Certainly, depending on one's turn of mind, one could see much of it coming, but I rode with the characters and the story and my attention was held. Themes of religion, addiction, and redemption.
     One of the benefits of watching most of these things solo is that I don't have to run the risk of having a viewing companion who's trying to make a competition of it -- whether it's to try to get me to race to predict what's coming, or intent on not letting the story surprise them. I've known some of those people, and they are no joy in those circumstances. But I digress. As mentioned above, I recommend it.
     It's one of an odd flood of items - old and new - that have recently been coming my way that have strong Catholic themes, emphasizing the beliefs and rituals. That's something I was brought up in, so despite being decades-distant to me now, it still walks that line between striking me as completely pedestrian (the rituals are deeply-chiseled), and reminding me how lunatic and morbid the details are to an outsider -- to anyone who wasn't brought up in it from such an early age to have never seen it in its full conceptual horrors, with fresh, critical eyes.
     Arriving on Netflix next Wednesday is another supernatural horror item, No One Gets Out Alive (2021  R  1h 25m), that I'm more on the fence about -- which is largely to say I'll need to be in the right mood for it.

     Based at least conceptually on the Adam Nevill 2014 novel of the same name (which was a very UK-centric affair, and a significantly different main character), the film centers on Ambar, a young woman who after years of caring for her terminally-ill mother in Mexico, comes illegally to the United States (specifically Cleveland) to try for a new life. Lining up under-the-table work in a garment factory, she rents a room in a near-derelict boarding house. There she soon begins to learn there are threatening secrets. Her precarious legal status and lack of resources make the situation all the more dire, as who is there to call on?
    Coming to HBO Max and theaters here in the U.S. next Friday, October 1st, is the Sopranos prequel film, The Many Saints of Newark

     Set during the teenage years of Anthony Soprano (here played by the late James Gandolfini's son, Michael), it brings those formative years to life. We get to meet some characters who were gone and elevated to the level of legends by the era of The Sopranos, and otherwise see the younger versions of characters we got to know so well during the course of that show's six seasons. Watching and listening for signature elements in many of the characters will be part of the fun. I'm in the midst of my first, full rewatch of the series, which I'd originally taken in as it rolled out, season to season, on HBO. One thing I've been reminded of during this so far is how while it's thick with interesting characters, many with sympathetic elements, truly likeable ones are like hen's teeth. As with many a good character in a novel, these aren't people one would sanely want in one's real life.
     I didn't rush to add comments here, despite watching this Friday, in large part because I'm still processing it, and I'm likely going to have to watch it at least one more time to do real justice to the details. I'm early in season three of my first, full rewatch of The Sopranos since the series aired and I was following it season-to-season. The series' occasional flashbacks to Tony's childhood, along with the many, scattered references as characters talk about events and people in the old days, are all popping out more during this rewatch. A full appreciation of this prequel will include paying attention to those details, and seeing how much of it turns out to be self-serving mythology by those who survived that era.
     The performances are often fun, as we see actors playing decades-younger versions of the characters we met in the series. That first (and so far only) time through the movie was spent just trying to take it in as its own story, not doing a rigorous compare and contrast to the mythology presented in the series, and not pausing to note the specific actors' portrayals.
     In the 2020/2021 fashion of these HBO-Max simultaneous streaming and theatrical releases, it'll be available here for 31 days -- in this case, neatly, for exactly the month of October. After that, it'll disappear, to go through a pay per view/digital and physical sale period, before finally cycling back to HBO. I'll almost certainly watch it at least a second time before it leaves. I may let it percolate in memory a bit first, though, while continuing my rewatch of the series, and maybe doing an IMDB-dive into the casting to refresh myself and pin down more of the actor-to-role associations. Early nods go to Vera Farmiga as Livia Soprano, Jon Bernthal as Johnny Soprano, and and Michael Gandolfini as the teen-aged Tony, the actor playing a younger version of the character his late father did in the series. I've since read that Michael hadn't watched the series until he was preparing for the role, and that it was an "intense" process for him. Director Alan Taylor did reshoots of any scene where he caught any whiff of the young Gandalfini playing it too close to his father's version, as they wanted to be careful to convey that this is Tony at a much younger age, and so far less formed and focused.
      In general, everyone portraying a (later-)established character did a credible job of hitting identifying traits, but I was rolling with the story that first time through, deliberately avoiding being critical.
     The scenes involving the Newark riots of 1967 stirred some memories, as my mother and I were caught in a similar scene in a different (more Southerly) part of New Jersey around the same time. We had been living in Levittown, PA since summer of '66, but as my father was serving in the Navy the main grocery shopping was done over at McGuire AFB/Fort Dix in NJ (the price differences were extreme enough to make it worthwhile, especially when gas was so damned inexpensive), and the route we took through New Jersey wasn't as straight the shot then as it would be now. We went through some more urban areas, which normally wasn't a problem, but that wasn't a normal time. A woman in her early 30s and a six year-old kid got a pass, but there were some tense moments. We were not the right shade to be at that time and place. 
     Reaching back for an odd item I'd missed back in the day, only recently reading anything about it,

we find Arnold (1973). A horror comedy of the overly-elaborate revenge sort, the core plot is that a dying millionaire (dead before the opening credits) plotted an elaborate revenge on all of the people in his life, realizing they were only there hoping to claim his fortune. Through some unexplained loophole, despite leaving behind a widow, arrangements were made for his corpse to be married to his mistress, combining his funeral and posthumous wedding in a single ceremony. She is given control of his fortune (minus a few holdings) so long as she stays in some proximity to his corpse for the rest of her life. The deceased has planned everything meticulously, including having made elaborate recordings - some of them to be delivered at particular times to certain people, and others to be played so his corpse can seem to have conversations with particular people. Ultimately it's a souffle of stupidity, unable to support itself, but simply refusing to fall. Maybe it's more of a drunken juggernaut.  Here's the trailer. I honestly don't recall ever even seeing that, though apparently it was heavily advertised in some markets.

     It may help to remember this was an era where elaborately contrived revenge films with comedic turns had more traction, even just among several Vincent Price films, The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971), Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972) and Theater of Blood (1973) -- any one of which is a far better suggestion than Arnold.
     Arnold's mostly interesting for the people involved.
     First, this was produced in part by Bing Crosby Productions, which just strikes me as a strange connection. The cast includes Stella Stevens, Roddy McDowell, Elsa Lanchester, Farley Granger, Victor Buono, John McGiver, Bernard ("Dr. Bombay") Fox, and Jamie Farr as the man-servant Dybbi, complete with heavy, dark makeup, a Sikh's turban,  eye-patch, white suit, and one of those badly done hook hands involving an overlong sleeve. All in all it looks as if it was shot by people used to making television.
     Almost mercifully, no one officially carries the film. It's never been issued on disc, and the one time it was issued on tape was in the mid-80s. However, here's a fuzzy copy on YouTube should you want to push through it.

      Not quite the type of thing I've been ending these pieces with recently, but it'll do. My week's running away from me again, and I'm less spry by the day.
     Take care, and we'll meet back here next week for the start of October.  - Mike

Trawling Through The Thrift Stores with Joseph Finn

 Happy Thursday, everyone!  As fall (semi) officially starts today (really, it starts in the Northern Hemisphere on September 1st), it's gloomy as hell here in Chicago.  Baseball is winding down, football is winding up and we're only a few weeks away from basketball and hockey.  But enough of sports, let's get into my finds!  Weird wine, Superman in the real world, Jackie Chan gets Canadian and David Bowie's best movie!

_________________________________________

I'm an absolute sucker for the well-crafted short story.  Gimme a Harlan Ellison or a Mike Resnick or Joyce Carol Oates or a Connie Willis...but a lot of the time I go back to Ray Bradbury.  Now this novel is not short stories, but a weirdly constructed novel that feels like short stories that have been strung together for a narrative.  It shouldn't work at all but totally does, the tale of Douglas Spaulding as he navigates a world he's inhabiting with his own imagination.  Bradbury has been gone for 9 years now and I don't think he's had the best record in adaptations, which is a shame, so let's enjoy Rachel Bloom's tribute to him (one of the things that got her a lot of attention and both led to Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and also got her a Hugo nomination for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form).  Oh, and incredibly NSFW.

_________________________________________

Absolute confession: there's an HBO show on right now of Scenes From A Marriage, their take on an Ingmar Bergman movie.  For some weird reason, I confused it with Fanny & Alexander, his TV mini-series that he also adapted as a feature film,  I've never seen either except for one scene and frankly, this one scene from Fanny makes me think I really need to buckle down and watch the whole thing.  But first, check this box set presentation out.  I mean, seriously, the Criterion graphic design people know their brand.

So let's look at that one scene I've seen, which is so amazing.

I don't even know the context and I don't care.

_________________________________________

For quite a while, DC comics did what they called Elseworlds, a series of what-if comics that put their established characters into new situations.  What if Batman had emerged in late-19th century Gotham?  What if Superman had landed in the Ukraine instead of Kansas and was raised as the Soviet Superman (Superman: Red Son, a book that's absolutely worth your time).  But this...this is something special.  This is the story of Clark Kent, normal kid of normal parents in Kansas who had a terrible sense of humor and named him Clark at birth.

And then he wakes up one night on a solo camping trip...and he's floating.  He's a teenager with the powers of Superman in a world where Superman is a fictional character, and has to figure out where he's going with this.  Does he declare himself to the world?  Stay hidden and worry about shadowy government forces?  Just take his powers out for a spin once in a while?

I so love this book.  I for years owned issues 1, 2 and 4 and for some reason had never picked up the 3rd section.  1 is him as a teenager, 2 is him as a young adult working as a features writer at a Village Voice type place, 4 is him as an older adult; but finally picking up this whole collection, I see how 3, which is about the birth of his children, just absolutely seals the whole deal.  I don't tend to do the whole praising people on Twitter thing, but finally reading the whole story I had to seek out Kurt Busiek and tell him how much I appreciated this great work about a man who is both that, man and Superman.

Also, this series has the love of his love being a Lois who gets set up with him on a stupid joke and I'm 100% sure this happens to people named Lois and Clark all the time.

_________________________________________

I thought I might feature this, since The Queen's Gambit did so well at the Emmys this week, and I didn't realize how this is a Superman parallel.  After all, Clark is absolutely the ultimate Man Who Fell To Earth.  But this is about a different type of alien, one who isn't here to save our world but here to save his own.  It is, if nothing else, a perfect use of David Bowie's...androgny?  Alienness?  Just plain beauty?

Walter Tevis wrote five novels in his lifetime, almost all of which have been adapted so far.  The Hustler, Color Of Money, and The Man Who Fell Who Fell To Earth have been made into very good films.  The Queen's Gambit was a very successful miniseries from last year.  So far unadapted have been The Steps of the Sun (which I've never read) and Mockingbird, which is one of the finest geniak dystopian novels I've ever run across.  I think he was a fantastic novelist and apparently an actual pool shark and I hope we get that Mockingbird miniseries someday.

_________________________________________

SCHLOCK TIME!  I found a collection of the USA-era Jackie Chan and hoooooooooooo yeah I'm here for this.  Gimme that movie that he made in Vancouver and it's supposedly set in the Bronx even though you can clearly see the Vancouver mountains.  Also, how he berates a street gang and shames them into being better people.  God, I love a good goofy Chan movie.

You know what?  That trailer is boring.  Check this fight scene out.