Powers Boothe, noted knock-around actor.
(Apologies for not posting this earlier, but it took a while for the NYT to post their obit, and none of the other sites that had obits posted were ones I wanted to link to.)
Archive for the ‘Movies’ Category
Obit watch: May 15, 2017.
Monday, May 15th, 2017Obit watch: April 27, 2017.
Thursday, April 27th, 2017Jonathan Demme passed away yesterday. Which is a damn shame, because I wanted to ask him why he thought it was a good idea to remake “Charade” and “The Manchurian Candidate”.
But I suppose I have to give him a pass for those. “The Silence of the Lambs” is a faithful adaptation of the book, and a great movie it its own right.
And not that he ever needed it, but he would have earned a lifetime pass from me for “Stop Making Sense”.
Come to think of it, “Swimming To Cambodia” was a swell movie, too.
And I actually saw “Swing Shift” when it was in theaters, but I was unaware of the whole editing controversy, and really don’t remember the movie well at this distance. It might be worth a re-watch, but I think I want to see “Melvin and Howard” and “Handle With Care”/”Citizens Band” first.
Obit watch: April 7, 2017.
Friday, April 7th, 2017Don Rickles: NYT. LAT. AV Club.
Joe Harris passed away on March 26th, though the NYT didn’t get around to reporting it until a week later. Mr. Harris was a commercial illustrator who is credited with creating the original Trix rabbit. Later on, he joined Total TeleVison, a company that produced Saturday morning cartoons. There he created Underdog.
Yeah, the animation may not have been great, but it did have one of the best cartoon theme songs ever.
Question for the huddled, wretched masses yearning to breathe free: what are some of the other great cartoon theme songs? Off the top of my head, I love the themes for “SuperChicken” and “George of the Jungle” (I have been known to quote the “SuperChicken” theme at work.) Oddly enough, I also have fond memories of the “Hong Kong Phooey” theme (and when are we going to get a live action “Hong Kong Phooey” movie?). Am I just a sucker for good theme songs wrapped around bad animation?
Obit watch: April 5, 2017.
Wednesday, April 5th, 2017Radley Metzger, film director. (“The Opening of Misty Beethoven”, “Camille 2000″)
I realize this is a little obscure, even by my standards. But I’d actually heard of Radley Metzger by way of Roger Ebert’s memorable review of “Camille 2000″. (I believe this is reprinted in I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie, a book every film buff should have.)
True crime notes.
Monday, March 20th, 2017I don’t want to seem like I’m making light of this story: it’s awful, and I hope the victims are able to achieve some level of peace.
But when you see a headline like
Vegas jury convicts War Machine of 29 counts
on the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network’s website, it gets your attention.
“War Machine”, in this case, is Jonathan Paul Koppenhaver.
The jury deadlocked on attempted murder charges, but found him guilty of the other crimes. It isn’t clear to me if those include the eight counts of “domestic battery” that his lawyer conceded to.
And I hope he does every damn day of it.
In other words, he beat the shit out of them both. But he apparently reserved special attention for her.
…
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On what I hope is at least a slightly less depressing note, here’s something I stumbled across in my reading over the weekend, but haven’t had time to dig into in depth: Taylorology. This apparently started out as a zine in the old pre-Internet/”Factsheet Five” days, but eventually migrated online.
What’s it all about? Quoting the introduction:
The Taylor murder is one of those great unsolved Hollywood mysteries that everyone seems to have a theory about; some of those theories may even have an element of truth to them. Bruce Long, who runs Taylorology, has collected a great deal of archival material related to the Taylor case. And he’s a man after my own heart: he mentions in the biographical information on his site that he first became interested in the case when he was nine.
When I have some spare time (mumble years from now, the way things are going) I’d like to dig deeper into this site. One thing I can give Mr. Long credit for: he’s steered me away from purchasing one of the more famous books on the case. (Actually, I stumbled across Taylorology by reading another book on the case that references the website. Apologies for being elliptical, but I may do a brief review of the second book in the near future.)
Welles. Welles Welles Welles. Welles.
Wednesday, March 15th, 2017I do want to see this, even though I don’t have Netflix (and won’t pay for it just for this). I have a pretty strong suspicion that this is…not going to be good. But hey, Welles! (What I’m really hoping for is a Criterion package like they did for “F Is For Fake”.)
(And can someone explain to me why I keep confusing “The Other Side of the Wind” with The Wind Done Gone?)
Other unrelated stuff:
By way of Lawrence, follow-up on Captain Bill Dowling and his funeral. (Previously.)
From the WP: a summary of the players in the “Fat Leonard” scandal, including the eight recent indictments.
Edited to add: One other minor follow-up that I forgot to add: the NYT obit for Mother Divine. I don’t think it adds much over the WP obit, but I did want to note it for the historical record.
Obit watch: March 7, 2017.
Tuesday, March 7th, 2017Robert Osborne, the Turner Classic Movies guy. I wish I had more to say about him, but I rarely have cable and thus rarely watch TCM.
Dr. Thomas Starzl, noted surgeon. Among other accomplishments, he did the first liver transplants and pioneered the use of anti-rejection drugs.
From the arts beat.
Monday, February 27th, 2017Two stories that I think are noteworthy.
I was not aware, until Lawrence forwarded me this Vulture article, that the NYT had fired theater critic Charles Isherwood. And “fired”, apparently, does not mean “laid off because we’re cutting back on arts coverage”. but instead means “here are some boxes, pack your s–t, security will escort you out the door”. I’m having a hard time remembering the last firing I heard about at the paper of record that was supposedly “for cause”. Technically, they didn’t even fire Jayson Blair (he resigned first).
This hasn’t gotten a whole lot of coverage: the only other story Google turned up was from Forbes, and I’m not linking to it because it doesn’t say much. It sounds like the paper is saying he was too close to (and exchanged “improper” emails with) some prominent theater producers, while the pro-Isherwood side seems to be spinning those emails as perfectly reasonable, and sees the problem as Isherwood not getting along with others at the paper (especially Ben Brantley, the other (and senior) critic).
This came across a mailing list I’m on over the weekend, and I found it interesting as well: the search for “Porgy and Bess”, the 1959 film version directed by Otto Preminger. It has a great cast: Dorothy Dandridge, Sidney Poitier, and Sammy Davis Jr., but prints are extremely rare. There was one known to be in the hands of a private collector (who died last year: his widow still has it) and one owned by the “National Audiovisual Institute of Finland” who loaned out their copy for two NYC screenings in 2007.
Why is it so hard to find? Reply hazy and faded (the 70mm prints have all apparently turned pinkish, but there are supposedly some good 35mm prints), but some people suggest that Ira Gershwin and his wife hated the movie and used a contractual clause to have most of the prints destroyed. Other people dispute this theory. But the main problem seems to be: nobody wants to pay for a home video restoration.
Which is a damn shame, in my humble opnion. I’ve never seen a productuon of “Porgy and Bess”, but I’d like to. And I’d purchase a good quality DVD or blu-ray release, especially if it came with decent extras. This sounds like a job for the Criterion Collection.
(At least one person on that same mailing list claims this whole article is “frankly, nonsense” and asserts he saw a good print “just a few years ago in New York”. I wonder if he saw one of the 2007 Finnish print screenings.)
I’ll leave you with this still, which for some reason I find oddly charming:
The guy on the right is Otto Preminger. I’m sure you all know who the guy on the left is.
Obit watch: February 27, 2017.
Monday, February 27th, 2017Judge Joseph A. Wapner, of the Los Angeles Coun6y Superior Court. NYT.
Of course, he’s better known to those of us in the older set as the first judge of “The People’s Court”.
For the record: Bill Paxton. A/V Club.
Obit watch: February 23, 2017.
Thursday, February 23rd, 2017Noted Japanese film director Seijun Suzuki.
Haven’t watched Tokyo Drifter yet (do have it) but Mike the Musicologist and I watched Branded to Kill a while back. I think that would definitely fall in my top ten strange movies list…
Obit watch: February 8, 2017.
Wednesday, February 8th, 2017Professor Irwin Corey, “the world’s foremost authority”, has passed away. He was 102.
Obit watch: January 28, 2017.
Saturday, January 28th, 2017Since the A/V Club hit one of his most famous scenes, I’ll hit the other:
(I’d kind of like to see the Hurt/Egoyan “Krapp’s Last Tape”, but it looks like you can only get that in the “Beckett On Film” set, which is pricy but contains some other stuff I’d like to see as well.)
Barbara Hale, who knocked around movies and TV a bit before she settled into her most famous role. LAT. NYT.
That role, by the way, was “Della Street”, Perry Mason’s secretary during the Raymond Burr run from the beginning of the TV series in 1957 all the way through the last TV movie in 1993. (I make the distinction because: while I personally don’t remember this and it didn’t last very long, there was an attempt to revive Mason in the 1970s, with Monte Markham in the titular role. Ms. Hale was not involved with that. She was, however, involved with “The Perry Mason Mysteries” which were made after Burr’s death and didn’t involve Perry Mason at all.)
Noted: she was also the wife of Dean Martin’s character in “Airport”.
Obit watch: January 27, 2017.
Friday, January 27th, 2017…
…
Serdar Argic, call your office, please.
I remember liking that show. Doesn’t look like it has ever had a DVD release, and I can’t tell if it streaming anywhere. But the opening is on YouTube.
Remember when TV shows had openings? And theme music?
Notes on film: Hidden Figures
Tuesday, January 24th, 2017The Oscar nominations are out. Once again this year, I have seen exactly one of the nominated films. And I didn’t get around to seeing it until this past Sunday, and mostly because my mother wanted to see it.
I’m going to put in a jump and talk about “Hidden Figures” a bit. Before the jump, a couple of notes:
A) As I’ve said before, my father worked for NASA during some of the same period covered by “Hidden Figures”. Specifically, he worked at what is now known as the Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. Some of what I’m going to say is filtered in part through my mother’s experience. (I wasn’t born for much of the time my dad worked for NASA, and am too young to remember the rest of his time there.)
B) There may be some things here that could be considered as spoilers, which is why I’m inserting the jump. The movie itself is based on historical fact that you can look up, so I’m not sure how much of what I’m about to say is really “spoilers”. (John Glenn orbited the Earth and returned safely. If that’s a spoiler for you, well, welcome to our planet, I hope you enjoy your stay here.)
Obit watch: January 15, 2017.
Sunday, January 15th, 2017Tommy Allsup, guitarist, producer, and historical footnote.
As a guitarist, he was touring as a part of Buddy Holly’s band in February of 1959. This is the same tour that Ritchie Valens and J.P. Richardson were on…
Mr. Allsup flipped a coin to see whether he or Valens would get a seat on the plane. He lost and took a bus to the next stop on the tour.
Holly, Valens, the Big Bopper (J. P. Richardson) and the pilot, Roger Peterson, died when the plane crashed in the Iowa countryside. Their deaths were recalled as “the day the music died” in Don McLean’s 1971 hit song, “American Pie.”
For the record: William Peter “The Exorcist” Blatty. NYT. WP.
Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. I’m torn about this. On the one hand, I hate to see nearly 150 years of history flushed down the drain, and I’m sad for the circus population that’s going to lose their jobs (and possibly, for some of them, homes). I’m also sad that this decision appears to have some roots in the organized campaigns by various “animal welfare” organizations. (Remember, when you see those sad animals on TV and Sarah McLachlan in the backgrond: that money’s going to pay Ringling’s legal fees.)
On the other hand…the last time I went to a Ringling Circus was over 30 years ago, before my first attempt at college. And what I remember most about it from that time was that I found it kind of sad and depressing. It isn’t that I’m some sort of crypto-animal-rights activist; it just felt like there was something sad and wrong about the whole thing. I guess I’m sad for the people, and sad for the lost history, but I’m not so sad for the institution itself. (And as the article notes, Feld Entertainment has a bunch of other stuff going on, much of which appears to contain the phrase “…On Ice!” so they’ll probably do okay for a while longer.)