cinema history class (extracurricular edition): withfinder general

After we watched The Magnificent Obsession of Michael Reeves in our cinema history class (my review of that class is here), I found I had a renewed interest in Reeves' last film, Witchfinder General. Keith had already shown us  WG (twice, in fact), but I had never really appreciated its significance in the history of British cinema. I don't recall what rating I gave it when we saw it (and that was before this blog, so I can't go and look it up), but I doubt that it was very high. Magnificent Obsession, which was a documentary about Michael Reeves did a good job of putting WG in its historical context, and made me wish I had appreciated it more.

When discussing the documentary Keith mentioned that WG had been rereleased, all cleaned up, on Blu-Ray. And I offhandedly mentioned that it would be interesting to see it. And so, during this long break between classes, Keith invited Ethan and me for a watch. Seeing the movie in its cleaned up form with vivid color and crisp sound gave me a whole new appreciation for the film. On blu it's a pleasure to watch in a way that the 16M print isn't.

I'm not a huge Vincent Price fan, but this is possibly the best performance of his career. Instead of the ham I'm used to seeing, this was a serious Price. And I loved every hateful moment he was onscreen.

Which is noteworthy since Reeves didn't even want Price for the film; he had Donald Pleasance in mind. But he wanted AIP funding, and a casting compromise was the price he had to pay. And the working relationship between Reeves and Price was unpleasant, but Reeves managed to get a great performance out of his star -- a fact which he would eventually acknowledge in a letter he wrote to the director.

Despite the violence and gore of the movie, there are some good solid interpersonal dynamics built in that help elevate it. Of particular note is the ambivalent relationship between Hopkins and Stearne (as portrayed by Price and Robert Russell). They need each other and benefit from their working relationship, but there is little respect and no affection. Watching them snipe at each other reminded me of two curs competing to be alpha. It's hard to figure who's worse. I don't quite know how I missed that dynamic the first two times I saw the movie, but I did.

In addition, the ending is disturbing. After spending so much time on his quest, motivated by his love for Sarah, we see Marshal finally lose sight of that love and get overtaken by his thirst for revenge. And hate conquers all.

happy zmedsday!! (xcix)

 

happy tunesday! this year's gonna be our year

I was literally sitting down to compose a Tunesday post. I had given it some thought, and had decided on a song. And I had the gist of the post written in my head. Then I got a Facebook notice that Eytan Mirsky had posted in his FB page, "The Mirsky Mouse Club." It seems that another blogger has named Eytan's "This Year's Gonna Be Our Year" as the best record ever. Or at least nominated it as one of the best records ever -- I'm not quite sure, as I read the post quickly since I have to finish typing this before I head out. I really shouldn't admit all that. Pretend you didn't read any of that uncertainty.

You can read his blogpost here and decide for yourself what he said.

At the risk of disappointing people, I disagree. "This Year" is a great upbeat song. But, as great as it is, it's not even Eytan Mirsky's best. But with the new year coming, we can all hope that 2021 is better than 2020. So I'll go with it.

"Baby's Liquored Up" will have to wait until next week.

south park: a kosher contradiction

 I've been streaming a bunch of South Park because reasons.

And there's something that has me confused. In "Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo" (the show's first Christmas episode), Kyle laments his fate as a lonely Jew on Christmas. At one point, he sings, "instead of eating ham I have to eat kosher latkes.

But one episode earlier, in "Starvin' Marvin" (the show's first Thanksgiving episode), we see Kyle at a buffet with his parents and some other cast members. He is clearly cutting himself a big piece of ham.

This has me so confused...

cinema history class: yellow fever: the rise and fall of the giallo

Session: Documentaries, Week 3
Movie: Yellow Fever: The Rise and Fall of the Giallo (2016)
Directed by Calum Waddell 

As I did last year for documentary month, I am temporarily abandoning my usual format.

Giallo is a genre of lurid Italian crime movie, often seen as a an ancestor of the American slasher movie. The term, derived from the Italian word for yellow, came about because of the yellow wrappers of similar Italian slasher novels. Mario Bava, Lucio Fulci and Dario Argento are among the most notable directors of gialli.

Yellow Fever is full of interesting material and clips, and good meaty interviews. But, rather than tell a coherent story, it kind of jumps all over the place. It also devotes an outsized amount of attention on Dario Argento.* Of course, that makes sense in the context that this documentary was made for release as an extra on a Blu-ray reissue of Tenebrae, which is one of Argento's best-known films. Incidentally, we saw that one in class three and a half years ago -- I wrote about that session here. I think I would have better-appreciated this if it had either done a better job of focusing on Argento (and been billed as a documentary about him) or if it had done a better job of covering the entire genre. The halfway approach threw me off.

Bottom line? This was a documentary that was good enough to make me wish it were better.

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*Not for nothing, but he kind of looks like a half-melted wax figure.

how to secure customer loyalty in three days

 A month ago, I blogged about my frustrating experience dealing with AT&T's customer service. I'm still trying to figure out if I want to stay with AT&T or if I'm going to find a different carrier. We'll see. But another customer service experience I had, this one with Costco, put my AT&T experience in sharp relief.

In the second half of November we ordered a computer for Asher. A week or so afterwards, when the computer hadn't arrived, I started wondering. I looked up the order and found that Costco had created a UPS shipping label for it, but it never made it to the UPS shipping facility. Blair said to give it time -- The combination of COVID and the Christmas season was probably causing delays. So I waited. But I checked every day. Another week, and there was still no further sign of the computer.

Finally, we (OK, Blair -- I didn't have the stomach for what I assumed would be a long drawn out runaround) contacted Costco customer service. The representative took a few minutes to check before agreeing that the computer does appear lost. She noted that they really want people to wait fifteen business days before calling, but she can get us started on a replacement. A couple days later we got notice that the replacement computer was on its way. And within a week it arrived.

Now that's customer service.

it's zmedsday!! (xcviii)

 

happy tunesday! never kill a man twice

This week, for Tunesday, one of my own. "Never Kill a Man Twice."

Care for a bit of a shaggy dog story?

Years ago, I was trying to write a Western song. Not a modern Nashville-flavored song with C&W twang. That's not to say I don;t appreciate such things. I do. But I wanted to write something else. I never did succeed. I came kind of close with "Five Missing One." Anyway, while this was on my mind, I thought of a title -- "Bleed Me a River." I don't remember when I thought of the title, but I do remember that I was at the Tucson Botanical Garden -- a place my family and I visited at least once a year. I started writing "Bleed Me a River." I never did finish. The lyrics were quite negative. Premeditated murder for revenge. That kind of thing. Maybe I'll finish it some day.

At some point, though, I decided that the phrase could have worked well as the title of a Spaghetti Western. Remember, we're talking about a movie genre that includes titles such as Find a Place to Die, Death Rides a Horse and My Horse, My Gun, Your Widow. It didn't take long to come up with a general idea of the plotline. It actually used the half-written song as a jumping off point. So I started working on a screenplay. I described it as "a film in the tradition of Spaghetti Westerns," and got help from my friend, Keith Crocker, a film historian who has made a couple features himself.*

I never did finish the script. I'll have to get back to that. At any rate, I ran into a problem with the plot. One character had tried to kill another. He actually had left him for dead. But now, later in the film, when the man he had tried to kill is coming after him, he avoids a showdown and eschews chances to kill him. How to explain it? Perhaps there are better ways than what I came up with. I had his lover ask him about it. And he cryptically responded, "Mama always said, 'Never kill a man twice.'"

So, the script still needs revisiting, but at some point I realized that "Never Kill a Man Twice" would make a catchy song title. And the rest is history.

Come to think of it, "Never Kill a Man Twice" would have been a great title for a Spaghetti Western too.
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*And who has cast me in his next feature, but that's neither here nor there.

the end of the f***ing world as we know it...and i feel fine

I'm not sure why I started watching The End of the F***ing World on Netflix. Certainly the provocative title was part of the decision-making process. Also, I vaguely recalled seeing trailers for it a few years ago and thinking it looked like it had promise -- though I didn't actually remember what was in the trailer. And, I was kind of bored looking for something to watch.

TEotFW is not like the other serial dramas I recently bingewatched. The Sopranos, Breaking Bad and Boardwalk Empire were all "adult" shows about grownups in grownup situations. TEotFW is about teenagers being teenagers. They are extremely issue-laden -- even for teenagers, and their decision-making lacks the thoughtfulness that comes with adulthood. As with the protagonists in all my favorite shows, they're flawed. Very flawed. I wasn't sure I'd like it. Actually, I was guessing I wouldn't like it. But I was curious. And bored. And it was billed as a comedy. A good laugh is always a good thing.

In the event, the show was dark and depressing. And utterly compelling. As the first episode ended, I was wondering if it was over already? I had to find out what happened next. I'm still not sure where the comedy comes in. Though there are occasional tension-breaking comedic moments, it's not what I would call a comedy. Those comedic moments are of the type where you kind of chuckle and then say "Oh, was that one of the funny bits?" Much more British in its approach than American -- which, I guess, makes sense since it's a British show.

Few productions have such brilliantly-curated soundtracks. I kept noting how perfectly the songs complemented the story.

And, while we're at it, Alex Lawther and Jessica Barden are very well cast as James and Alyssa. Both are quite effective at portraying the teenage awkwardness that's so vital to the roles. And Lawther especially has the difficult task of portraying a dead-to-the-world blank slate at the beginning, and then slowly blooming and coming into his own. I remember seeing him in "Shut Up and Dance" which is one of the better (and more disturbing) episodes of Black Mirror. And I remember noting that he nailed that role as well.

Interestingly, the show only had two seasons of eight episodes each. The episodes are generally being between 20 and 25 minutes long, so each season is about the length of a long movie. So these are perfect for bingeing.

When I watched the trailer I learned that the show was based on a graphic novel. Since I can appreciate a good graphic novel -- my favorites are RASL, The Sculptor and Watchmen -- I was looking into buying this one. But the reviews made me think twice. If you are reading this and have read the graphic novel, please let me know what you thought of it.

negro leagues as mlb -- my task ahead

I can't say that I was surprised to learn that Major League Baseball has decided to recognize the old Negro Leagues as "major" and integrate those leagues' records into its "official" history. Anyone with any sense of how the wind blows could see it coming. My purpose here is not to opine on the merits of such a move. I don't think I can really add any extra light to the discussion. 

But, from the perspective of my StoopidStats I am looking forward to this with a mix of excitement and trepidation. As anyone who regularly reads this blog knows, I like to track offbeat baseball statistics. Decades ago I got it in my head that I wanted to see a graph showing all major league franchises and their year-by-year cumulative games over .500. At the time that I first envisioned it, the limitations of data avilability and computing power meant that putting such a chart together was beyond what I could easily do. Now, it's much easier -- a big file that's conceptually pretty simple and easily updated every year. My last post about that project was here. Since then, I came up with other ideas -- the records for most home runs in N consecutive seasons (for positive integers N) is prominent among them.

When Negro League statistics are merged into MLB history, I will have the task of updating my statistical research. That'll be the fun part, but it can't commence until and unless my sources -- baseball-reference and various downloadable databases are updated. Hopefully the updates will be controlled in such a way that my various sources stay in sync.

But there will be challenges -- some that may force an end to some of what I track. I've been working with the construct that all teams have what I will call a full name -- location nickname. For example, we have the New York Yankees, the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Texas Rangers. Some of the statistics that I track depend on that name structure. But the Negro Leagues included teams such as the "Cuban Giants" which doesn't indicate its location, and teams such as the Homestead Grays who split some seasons between Homestead Pennsylvania and Washington, DC. These will present new challenges for me. I'll not worry about that now. Afterall, I assume part of the work that the various Lords of the baseball world will undertake will involve determining which Negro Leagues and which teams will be accepted as "officially" major league. Instead of trying to pre-solve every issue that can arise, I'll see what issues do arise and worry about those.

happy zmedsday!! (xcvii)

 

happy tunesday! (the blues brothers)

The Blues Brothers (the movie) was added to the Library of Congress' National Film Registry yesterday. Congratulations to Jake and Elwood, and the whole Good Ol' Blues Brothers Boys Band from Chicago. The Library of Congress twote about it here. Let's celebrate with my favorite musical bit from the movie.

happy zmedsday!! (xcvi)

 

tunesday (david lander, rip)

 

David Lander, RIP.

David Lander, best known as Squiggy on Laverne and Shirley, passed away last week at the age of 73 after a long battle with multiple sclerosis. This song, which he performed as Squiggy (with Lenny, portrayed by Michael McKean), is among my favorites of his bits.

cinema history class: the magnificent obsession of michael reeves

Session: Documentaries, Week 2
Movie: The Magnificent Obsession of Michael Reeves (2019)
Directed byDima Ballin 

As I did last year for documentary month, I am temporarily abandoning my usual format.

Michael Reeves grew up obsessed with movies and dreamed of directing American-style epics.  He directed three movies, two of which are considered highly-influential in British cinema). Less than a year after the third, Reeves died of an accidental overdose at age 25.

We've actually seen two -- the influential two -- of the movies in class,* but I hadn't put them into context. I hadn't realized that they were from the same director, and I certainly didn't realize how influential Witchfinder General was. That, despite remembering the famous stories of how Reeves butted heads with Vincent Price. This documentary did a good job of driving the point home.

Whereas The Search for Weng Weng, which we saw in week 1, never really got us beyond viewing Weng Weng as a 2'9" object, Magnificent Obsession did a really good job of giving us a full picture of Reeves as a real person -- with talents and foibles, passions and weaknesses. It did that by featuring extensive interviews of people who knew the man -- people who worked with him and who considered him a friend.

I was particularly surprised to learn that Reeves wasn't actually into horror or violence. He was making horror movies because he felt that it was the best way to establish himself as a reliable director who's movies would make money. His goal was to make Hollywood movies. This makes it all the more poignant that he died at 25 before he could realize that dream. And a couple of the people interviewed for the movie talked about the high promise that his career had.

All that having been said, I am actually skeptical about whether he would have achieved the wider-recognized greatness that others expected of him. To Baker, who had worked with him, described their last meeting, two months before Reeves' death. Reeves had clearly had some kind of mental break. Between that and his need for medications, I think it's perfectly plausible that his best work was behind him. Of course, that is something we'll never know for sure.

Because this documentary didn't skimp on clips, and because of its emphasis on people who knew tyhe subject personally, this was much better than the prior week's documentary.

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*I wrote about The Sorcerers here. We saw Witchfinder General before I started this blog, so I didn't write about it.

one...two...three...guts!

"Quarter guts!"

That was probably my favorite call -- or maybe my favorite was "baseball, follow the queen, down." But this post is about guts. Only because I twote to a friend that I'd write a post about it. I didn't tell her that I'd write about baseball follow the queen down. This was, by the way, occasioned by my daughter's newfound interest in poker.

We're pretty much talking about the mid 1980's through the 1990's when my friends and I would get together at least once a week to play poker. Our card games were the kind of thing that would make serious players cringe. We played all sorts of crazy variants, with wild cards, cards that could become wild, or become tame in the middle of a hand. And we were loud and rambunctious. Usually it was in good fun, though I do recall one time when a Super Big Gulp went flying across the room.

We played for low stakes. Generally, a nickel ante. Five cents would buy more then than it does now, but even then it was a low ante. With a small ante like that, I could generally play for hours and end the evening up or down only a few dollars. I figured that, if I lost that was the price for an evening of entertainment. Cheaper than a movie. And if I won, all the better. Guts was the one game that would regularly have a higher ante. In the case of "quarter guts," it was twenty-five cents.

Guts was a simple game. Everyone was dealt three cards. There were no flushes or straights, so three aces was the high hand. We also never had wild cards, though I don't know why. Anyway, we would each look at our own hand, decide whether to stay in and then hold our cards in the air. The dealer would count, "One. Two. Three. Guts!" Those who were staying in would hold onto our cards. Those who were dropping would...drop. Of those who stayed, the high hand won the pot.* Everyone who stayed in and didn't win had to match the pot for the next round. We played round after round until only one person stayed in. That person won the pot and the game ended.

Now, if only one person stayed in in the first round,  the game ended pretty quickly. But if three or more people stayed in, the pot could grow -- a lot. When three people stayed in, the pot would double. When four stayed in, it would triple. Sometimes it would actually top $10, which was huge for our game. And I do recall one time when it actually topped $100. And during the earlier years, when we were still college students, that was big money.**

By the way, Vin, if you're reading this: I apologize for that stretch where, every game, I would use the bathroom, and turn that shelving unit around backwards. And I apologize for denying it was me when you called me out for it.

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*This leaves the question of what to do if the game was tied and the pot was not evenly divisible by the number of winners. I remember the first time I asked what would happen. The dealer picked one of the guys and said "Jon gets the extra nickel." That didn't sit well with me, since it was no longer a fair game, but one that gave Jon an unfair advantage. Yeah, I guess that was kind of petty of me. Anyway, I don't remember how we resolved it that first time -- or the next. I may have sat out a game. Eventually we fell into a standard rule that the extra nickel stays and gets added to the next pot.

**There was one particular guy who had less money than the rest of us. Or so it seemed. Let's call him "Goldman," after Oscar Goldman from The Six Million Dollar Man. Outside of our game, when someone had a nervous decision to make, it would be likened to "Goldman holding a pair of kings in guts with a $25 pot."

happy zmedsday!! (xcv)

 

happy tunesday: "girl of my dreams"

 

"Girl of My Dreams" was a hit for Bram Tchaikovsky's only Top 40 hit in the US. I happen to be a big Bram Tchaikovsky fan, so I'm probably much more familiar with the song than my reader is. On the surface, it sounds like just another of the many simple love songs that have made the charts over the years. But it was actually about something a little less wholesome. I blogged about that here.

It is my Tunesday song today because of a news item that's been making the rounds. It seems that Kazakhstani bodybuilder, Yuri Tolochko, has gotten married. You can read about it here.

In case you want to see, Mr. Tolochko shared a snippet of wedding video on Instagram.