cinema history class: allan kupfer spaghetti western tribute month

 By tradition, the first session of the year consists of Spaghetti Westerns (or some movies connected in some way to them). This year, Keith decided to open with Spaghetti Westerns, but made his choices based on his memories of his long-time friend, Allan Kupfer, who passed away late last year.

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The selections puzzled me at first; it would be hard to argue that these are the best Spaghetti Westerns, and I would be surprised to learn that they were Allan's favorites. Keith explained to me that he wasn't trying to show Allan's favorites. Rather, he chose movies that he thinks of in connection with Allan, given the many conversations they had on the topic and their abortive attempt to write a book about Spaghetti Westerns.

I feel kind of bad about the first movie, Comin' At Ya! (which Keith presented in 3-D). The image seemed off, which hampered my appreciation of the film. Only afterwards, when we were discussing it, did it come to light that I was probably wearing them backwaards. And there was a lot of humor that I missed. The 3-D effects were used a lot, often for comedic effect (for example, in one scene where a gunslinger is playing with a yo-yo). But somehow I didn't recognize the humorous intent and just got annoyed by a lot of it. Which was my loss.

Other than that, this session inluded a good deal of humor mixed in with the cruelty that marks so many Spaghetti Westerns. At times, especially during The Grand Duel (which starred a notably aging Lee Van Cleef), I was reminded of Keith having told us about how the Spaghetti Western genre had come to embrace comedy.

On the other hand, these were serious entries in the genre, even if none of them reached the heights of the Leone- or Corbucci-directed classics. Notably, Ringo: The Face of Revenge seemed like an attempt to reproduce the magic of Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. It even reproduced the plot element of enemies having to work together because each one had half of a map. But, while it tried to be an epic, it fell short. It was a good movie in its own right, but it suffered for inviting comparisons to an obviously superior production.

The Trailers:

Comin' At Ya!

The Grand Duel

Fast Hand is Still My Name

Ringo: The Face of Revenge

tuli, rip

I hate to write obituaries for our cats. And it's especially painful when the cat dies young. Very young.

We got Tuli for Asher last summer after Eighteen died. He was born last April, so he was only about ten months old when he passed. Based on our conversation with the vet, Tuli probably had a heart attack in his sleep, and passed away without suffering. So at least there's that.

Tuli was a charmer. He was always curious about whoever came through the door, and I don't recall anyone being immune to his charms. Alla, the lay who comes to clean once a week would tell me about how Tuli was her little buddy, following her around the house as she went about her cleaning. And, as much as he kept himself busty with his cat activities, he always made sure to do them in a room where he could be near his people, keeping an eye on them and making sure to be a part of the pack.

But he gave his most ardent devotion to Asher. He had his special chair in Asher's room, where he would sit for hours watching Asher sleep, or do stuff on his computer.

We will miss Tuli. 

stoopidstats 2024: baseball's cumulative win totals

 Before I start, a couple housekeeping items:

1) This post is very late. There are various reasons for this that I'm not going to get into.
2) When presenting information of this sort, it would be good form for me to make my file accessible to the reader. I have been trying to figure out how to do that, but I have not been successful yet. Sorry. If anyone wants to see my data file, please contact me and I can email it.

That having been said, here are the relevant changes in terms of wins/losses and games over .500.

New Wins Plateaus

Several franchises, locations, states and nicknames reached new win plateaus in 2024. These are summarized below:

Ranks

The Philadelphia Phillies had 95 wins in 2024, as compared to the Boston Red Sox' 81. On the strength of that, Philadelphia moved up to the fourth-highest ranking location and Boston moved down to fifth. 

Meanwhile, the Cleveland Guardians, in their third year since changing their nickname from "Indians" to "Guardians," won 92 games. "Guardians" as a nickname is now moving up the ranks, passing nicknames that have been long out of use. It gained 15 places in the rankings in 2024.

These changes are summarized below:

Since there is no longer a franchise called the Indians, "Indians" is likely to get passed by "Dodgers" and "Braves" over the next couple of years.

2024 was, apparently, The Athletics' last year in Oakland. They're slated to play in West Sacramento for three years before moving to Las Vegas. While in West Sacramento, they will simply be The Athletics without indicating any location. Not counting the Negro Leagues, the only other time a team franchise did not have a location in front of its name was in 1877, when the team that had (from 1874-1876) been the Hartford Dark Blues became known as the Hartfords of Brooklyn. No other franchise has used the nickname "Hartfords of Brooklyn," though it does remind of "Angels of Anaheim" of recent memory. The Athletics will be the first Major League franchise in Nevada. So it'll be fun watching Nevada climb the ranks.

A Final Note

For something like this, it's necessary to have one source of truth. Mine is Baseball Reference. In their ongoing effort to get things right, they often revise information. What I noticed this year was that a lot of historical information regarding teams' nicknames. I won't try to provide a list of changes. But one example is the franchise now known as the Minnesota Twins. They played in Washington from 1901 through 1960. Until recently, BR indicated that they had been The Senators that whole time. Now, it shows them as having been The Nationals for most of the span. There are other changes, but that seems to be the biggest. 

cinema history class: birthday tribute to mrs. z.

 

Keith and Christina spent a lot of Sunday evenings watching movies with Christina's parents. And then, after the dad died, they watched a lot of movies with Mrs. Z. In honor of Mrs. Z., who passed away in early 2024, Keith showed us four of her favorite movies.

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Note: There mya be spoilers.

In some ways, this session reminded me of a "Bring Your Own Movie Month," since these were four very different movies, of different genres, with little to tie them together. I'll note, of course, that Keith never grilled Mrs. Z. about what her favorite movies were. Rather, he was going by what movies Mrs. Z. would request he bring for their Sunday night get-togethers.

Laura, starring Gene Tierney, was definitely my favorite of these. I'm always down for a good film noir, and this was definitely a good one. It had the sharp dialogue that the genre is famous for, and it kept me guessing the whole time. It was also a special treat to see Vincent Price (before he was famous) as a leading man. I really enjoy seeing him when he's not camping it up. Of course, one drawback for me is that, whenever I see the name "Dana Andrews" in the credits, I can't help but hear Richard O'Brien singing "Dana Andrews said prunes / Gave him the runs [pronounced runes] / And passing them used lots of skill." But I suppose that's not anything to hold against the movie.

I also really enjoyed Horror of the Zombies (AKA The Ghost Galleon), which was the third in the Blind Dead series. In it, some modern-day models find themselves aboard an old galleon carrying the corpses of the Knights Templar. The setup is convoluted, but it's still a good story with some good scares. It was a low budget film, but the producers did a good job of keeping it from feeling cheap -- for the most part, anyway. It does a good job of building suspense slowly. So, like a lobster in a boiling pot, you hardly realize how you've been sucked in. And you don't even see the zombies until more than an hour into the movie. I have to wonder if some of the inspiration for this movie was the Bermuda Triangle lore that was popular around that time. It also bears noting that this movie had a great ending.

I had a harder time getting into Dracula Has Risen from the Grave and The Pyjama Girl Case. Admittedly, they're both good movies. Dracula, especially. It was Christopher Lee's last portrayal of Dracula, and he does a good job with it. But I've found myself a bit burned out on Dracula movies.  Going into Pyjama, I was expecting a giallo. And while it had giallo elements, it didn't really stay true to the form. Having said that, I'll note that it featured a 100% giallo ending. Still, hard for me to get into.

The trailers:

Dracula has Risen from the Grave:

Horror of the Zombies:

The Pyjama Girl Case:

Laura:

cinema history class: the ghoul is in school

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Note: There may be spoilers

I was looking forward to this session, primarily for I Was a Teenage Werewolf. Though I'd never seen it, I'd heard about it many times. Not that I knew anything about the plot other than what can be gleaned from the title. Rather, I knew of its existence, and I knew that it starred Michael Landon, whose name I knew because of Little House on the Prairie and Bonanza.

I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting from the film—I suppose maybe I was expecting something campy or comedic, like Teen Wolf (a lightweight 1985 film starring Michael J. Fox as a teenaged werewolf in American suburbia. But I didn't get what I expect. I Was a Teenage Werewolf was much more straightforward. It was played much more seriously, and seemed very typical of 1950's sci-fi drive-in fare.

The followup (both in the class and in AIP's catalogue) was I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, a similarly low-budget sci-fi drive-in film. I thought it was a better film, though I thought the pathos of the titular monster talking in a very normal voice to Dr. Frankenstein (yes, the scientist was a Dr. Frankenstein, and the script described his connection to the European scientist who created the original monster). The existence of the alligator pond connected to the doctor's home didn't really make any sense, and the plot was helped along early by the most amazing coincidence. Still and all, it was a solid entertaining film. How to Make a Monster was too much of a gimmick to really be enjoyable, though I'll admit that it was a great way for the studio to recycle shit from the two I Was a Teenage... movies. It just felt cheap.

The odd man out for this session was the closer, Werewolf in a Girls' Dormitory. While the other three films were connected to each other, WiaGD was an Italian production that just didn't manage to impress me. It was slow-moving and there was nothing to latch onto.