cinema history class: coffy (1973)

   

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL.

Session: Black Vampires Matter (Week 4)
Movie: Coffy (1973)
Directed by Jack Hill

Plot:

Seeking to avenge her sister, who has descended into drug addiction, Coffy goes after the drug traffickers and those who aid and abet them. Horror ensues.

Reaction and Other Folderol:

Straight and to the point. Coffy doesn't complicate itself with subplots and confusing intrigue. And it doesn't offer much in the way of surprises. You know what's happening. You know what's going to happen. And it's fun to watch it all play out -- in all its graphically violent detail.

I was thinking that it wasn't particularly groundbreaking, but Joe noted (and gave it extra points for) the fact that it was groundbreaking when it came out fifty years ago. The level of violence -- a man being dragged behind a car, a man being run over on the highway, multiple stabbings and some graphic shotgun shootings -- represented an upping of the ante.

But in some cases that violence was played as much for laughs as shock. The car-dragging scene I mentioned above, with its series of obstacles for the victim to hit seemed like a comedy. And that sense of fun made this a really fun movie to watch. That, and Pam Grier's charisma.

Ratings

Me: 8

Bob-O: 9

Christina: 9.75

Dave: 9.5

Ethan: 7

Joe: 9.8

Sharon's reaction to the trailer: "So she's the OG strong independent woman."

Cats: The closest thing to cats is a game of human Frogger.

cinema history class: blackenstein (1973)

  

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL.

Session: Black Vampires Matter (Week 3)
Movie: Blackenstein (1973)
Directed by William A. Levey

Plot:

Dr. Stein attempts experimental surgery on Eddie, a quadriplegic Viet Nam vet. But things don't go as planned. Horror ensues.

Reaction and Other Folderol:

Of the three blaxploitation films Keith has shown us so far, this was the least blaxploitationy. The monster himself is black, and woman he loves is black. But their blackness isn't really fundamental to the story. They just happen to be black. By contrast, Blacula and Sugar Hill both incorporated a lot of overt exaggerated black culture, and had plot elements focusing on a righteous black avenger serving justice to racist whites. In Blackenstein, there's really no revenge issue, and the black culture aspect is limited to a short nightclub scene. And, I guess, the title. On that score, it should be noted that somewhere along the line they added the subtitle, "The Black Frankenstein" for those who didn't quite catch the subtle implication from the main title.

Blackenstein plays more like a bad 1950s scifi flick than horror. Which, I guess makes sense, since the whole Frankenstein character is kind of a blend of horror and science fiction. But this is executed particularly badly. The acting is bland and boring, and the characters aren't really interesting. And the whole story is told in a very clumsy manner.

I was also kind of annoyed about the mismatch of Dr. Walker (a physics PhD) assisting Dr. Stein (an MD, and possibly -- I'm speculating here -- a biology PhD). Walker mentions her PhD very early on, and I was thinking that that meant it would be useful for the plot. But, sadly, it wasn't. There's no reason that she couldn't have said "my PhD in biology" or simply "my PhD." Adding "in physics" was, scriptwise, an unforced error.

All that said, there were some things to enjoy. The ending was creative, and I don;t recall seeing the like before. And I did like that talking dog joke from the nightclub scene. But things like that weren't enough to save this thing.

Ratings

Me: 3.5

Bob-O: 4.5

Christina: 4.3

Dave: 8

Ethan: 3

Sharon's reaction to the trailer: "That looks awful! It makes me not want to see it."

Cats: No cats. Plenty of dog action though, if you're into that kind of thing.

cinema history class: sugar hill (1974)

 

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL.

Session: Black Vampires Matter (Week 2)
Movie: Sugar Hill (1974)
Directed by Paul Maslansky

Plot:

After the mob kills her man, Sugar Hill makes a deal with a voodoo priestess and a zombie king. Horror ensues.

Reaction and Other Folderol:

There was a definite comic book feel to this. In fact, at many points I felt as if I were watching a full-length segment of Creepshow.  As such it was a lot of fun to watch. You knew that the murderers would get their just desserts. It was just a matter of watching to see how it would happen. And seeing how creative the deaths could be.

And, to some degree, the movie is just an excuse to show creative deaths. But it's done so well, that it's really fun to watch. A big part of the credit goes to Don Pedro Colley who played the zombie king and stole every scene he was in. And Zara "Mother Jefferson" Culley was great as the Voodoo Priestess. But the fact is the whole cast was very good. 

There were some racial elements that I found particularly interesting.

The titular character, played by Marki Bey is supposed to be a strong black heroine. But Bey herself looks very white for much of the film. If you showed me what she looked like in this movie without giving me any context (other than her appearance) and made me guess her race, I would have guessed white before black. Wikipedia doesn't have much useful information, so I can't say for certain. But I'm guessing she's of mixed ancestry. Interestingly, she is made to look blacker in the scenes where she shows her righteous anger.

I also found it interesting that the racist white woman's fate was to spend eternity as the bride of the black zombie king. It was a very well-done bit of ironic justice. 

Ratings

Me: 9.5

Bob-O: 9

Christina: 9.3

Dave: 9.4

Ethan: 8

Joe 10

Sharon's reaction to the trailer: "Man, they sure did a good job of making the eyes look creepy."

Cats: Yes! There was a cat! And he played a pivotal role in the climactic scene! Very yay!

crawling from the wreckage (in book form)

I didn't really know what to think or what to expect when I first noticed talk on the Rockpile Facebook group of a book devoted to the band. I think I dismissed the talk as a nice idea that would never come to fruition. But later -- I don't know for sure how much later, as it's been so long -- Rikard Bengtsson and Ulf Bjore have proven me wrong.

As threads about the book heated up, I was facing two decisions.

The first decision was, sadly, easy to make. Do I want to contribute to the book. Yes, I desperately wanted to. Rockpile is among my favorite bands, and I enjoy writing. I love writing. So it seemed like a great thing to want to be a part of. Bud Rockpile broke up when I was 15 years old, when I was just starting to become a music fan. I've seen both Dave Edmunds and Nick Lowe in concert several times and at different stages in their post-Rockpile career. But I never got to experience a Rockpile concert, and have no contemporary memories of the group. Maybe I could have pitched something about being a fan only after the fact. But I decided against trying.

The second decision was harder to make. Would I buy the book? While I'm a huge Rockpile fan, I'm not much of a collector of articles and writings about musicians that I like. I have some, to be sure. Mixed in with my life's accumulation of assorted stuff are magazines I never threw out with interviews of musicians that matter to me -- and that includes Rockpile as a group and -- I think -- each of the four members. I also have some books about musicians. But I don't buy them in some effort to collect. I buy them because they are books I want to read. Would I want to read a book about Rockpile written as a pastiche of articles and memories by assorted fans? I honestly wasn't sure. Ever practical, Blair formulated my decision as a question I could answer. "What," she asked me, "are you more likely to regret? Buying the book and thinking it's not worth it? Or missing out?"

Fear of missing out won the day. It helped that there was plenty of emphasis on the fact that this would be a limited print run of 600. Bengtsson was very clear that, if and when it sold out, that was it; there would be no second printing. That, and all the posts about the progress of the book, got to me. I didn't want to look back and think that I should have bought the book.

And so I am the proud owner of copy number 360 of Crawling From the Wreckage. And the book far exceeded my expectations.

It is, to some degree, the pastiche I thought it would be, but it's more wide-ranging. There are, to be sure, the memories. There are essays by fans describing their general feelings about the band and how it evolved over time. There are other essays about specific concerts and events. But there's more. There's a nicely done essay about the history of Rockpile. And Bengtsson himself put together several pages about Rockpile's break-up. Bengtsson captured it very well with quotes and then summed it up from his view. That's paired with a more personal view of the end, written by Mats Olsson.  And one of my favorites was an item about what happened to Dave Edmunds' famed Gibson ES-335.

But in addition there are interviews with studio insiders who worked with Rockpile -- notably Aldo Bocca, and Roger Bechirian. There are also interviews with Billy Bremner and Terry Williams which was nice, since they tended to get less attention than Edmunds and Lowe.

These essays are interspersed with photos and scans of old magazine clippings, tickets and other assorted memorabilia, forming a really nice package. I can't stress enough how well the whole thing was put together.

There were, from my perspective, two big revelations in the book. The first was that Mickey Jupp could have been a member of Rockpile, and the second was that Dave Edmunds tried to reunite the group in the early 2000's. He managed to get Terry Williams and Billy Bremner to join him, but Nick Lowe demurred, explaining that he couldn't rock like that anymore.

This is not a book to sit and read cover to cover. This is something to flip through, reading each item on its own.

My gratitude to Bengtsson and Bjore for putting this book together, and to all those who contributed to it. Oh, and to Blair for her question that made me decide to buy it. If I had decided not to, I would certainly be regretting that decision now.

happy tunesday! bleed me a river

 

Here's the latest recording from Toby. And I think it's the best one yet -- partly due to Tim Patterson's rich deep vocals. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Keith and Christina Crocker for breathing life into this song when I was ready to just quit on the concept.

I'd been kicking the idea around for over a dozen years. I envisioned it as a spaghetti western in song form. I had the title, the first verse and some bits and pieces of the rest. But somehow I couldn't quite finish it. In those years I began working on a screenplay with the title (yeah, I gotta finish it), and wrote another song based on a line in that embryonic script. But I couldn't finish this song.

I showed the lyrics (and some to another unfinished song) to the Crockers with the suggestion that maybe they could help me write the rest. I actually mentioned that I was ready to give up on "Bleed Me a River," but they encouraged me to press ahead with it; they liked what I had, unfinished though it was. And one evening we got together with a guitar and some unfinished lyrics. And...we finished them.

Working with Toby, this was the first time that I asked him to hire another vocalist. In my mind's ear I heard the song being sung by Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson or Country Dick. And I think Tim Patterson did an A+ job on this. Toby also made some suggestions -- specifically, it was his idea to put this in a minor key. That, of course, forced me to start asking my social media friends to explain what it means to change something into a minor key. So it was a learning experience for me, but it may very well have opened up some doors for future creativity in my songwriting. I realized afterwards that there's a strong "Ghost Riders in the Sky" vibe going on here, which actually works well for a song of this type.

Thanks again to Toby and Tim, but especially to my coauthors, Christina and Keith.

cinema history class: blacula (1972)

  

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL.

Session: Black Vampires Matter (Week 1)
Movie: Blacula (1972)
Directed by William Crain

Plot:

A Black vampire is stalking Los Angeles, while the authorities try to track him down. Horror ensues.

Reaction and Other Folderol:

Unlike the rest of the class, I actually went into this session with high expectations. I haven't seen a lot of blaxploitation films, but I did enjoy Shaft. And having watched hundreds of movies over the years in this class, I've come to the conclusion that the films of the 1970s are the ones that speak to me the most.

And Blacula didn't disappoint. There were ways that it was a campy romp, but it was also a good serious Dracula movie. The acting, particularly by William Marshall in the titular role was outstanding. And there were a lot of clever subtle touches that just made it a great movie. The Hues Corporation, performing in a couple of bar scenes were a nice touch as well.

The plot does, unfortunately depend on one unlikely coincidence -- that one of the first people Blacula meets looks exactly like the wife he had 200 years earlier before he had been cursed to be a vampire. But it's easy enough to shrug and just accept that.

I didn't realize -- it took Keith point out -- some of the ways this film was made to appeal to its target demographic. Dracula, who appears in the prologue looks more like a southern Colonel. And police in riot gear in post-Watts Los Angeles are the aggressors, attacking Blacula and his beloved.

Blacula can't be considered one of the greats of cinema, but there's no denying that it accomplished what it set out to do, and it's a really good film. I toyed with the idea of rating it a 10, but in the end decided that I just couldn't go there with it. Nevertheless I did give it a 9.5.

Ratings

Me: 9.5

Bob-O: 7.5

Christina: 9.5

Dave: 9.2

Ethan: 8

Joe 10

Cats: No cats. Big sad

sharon enters an art show

Sharon has, for the first time since she was a little kid, entered some of her art in a show. Specifically, the Bayside Historical Society 21st Annual Winter Art Show.

Rather than write this post all sorts of detail about the entry process, I'll just cut to the chase. Sharon entered two pieces, both of which won awards.

"Rise" (first picture), an ink drawing, won "Best Drawing Award." The judge, Neill Slaughter (a professor emeritus at LIU), wrote: 

Sharon Whinston, “Rise” BEST DRAWING AWARD
There were very few drawings submitted this year, however this particular pen and ink line drawing of a bird stood out from the other drawings because it is so confidently rendered in ink, a medium that is not forgiving. Aptly titled there is a sense of action as the bird “rises” into flight. Upon close inspection there is an economic yet effective handling of hatching and line quality.

"Black Kite" (second picture), a digital piece, won an honorable mention in the digital category. Slaughter's comments about that are as follows:

Sharon Whinston, “Black Kite” (Honorable Mention) 
Despite having already been recognized for her bold confident drawing ability in “Rise” this artist is very adept at creating a digital painting within the computer as is evident from the image of the Black Kite bird. All aspects work equally well from the perspective and proportion of the bird to subtle shifts in color and value within the kite as well as the gentle modulation from warm to cool in the negative space. It’s a professional looking illustration of a Black Kite, pure and simple!  

"Black Kite" was one in a series of seven bird pictures that Sharon drew digitally. I believe she was experimenting. Eventually she had stickers printed up with them. Each sheet of stickers has all seven bird pictures. It was a huge boost when a friend of a friend asked if Sharon would autograph one of the sticker sheets so she could have it framed. Since making those seven bird drawings, Sharon has added an eighth -- someone commissioned her to digitally draw a blue jay that he could use as his online profile picture. I think of it as part of the same series, but the fact is it's much more detailed than the others. I think she got better at it. Blair and I are thinking of getting good quality prints of the whole bird series, framing them, and putting them up on the living room wall. "Rise" is, as far as I know, a one-off -- not part of a series of drawings. It's just something she drew because the mood hit her.

Sharon and I plan to go see the art show exhibit this Saturday, after we have our weekly breakfast together. Words can't begin to express how proud I am of her. She certainly has innate talent, but she has also been working very hard at it, arting every chance she gets. Blair and I are doing all we can to support her passion. But this is bittersweet for Sharon. Her biggest, proudest supporter passed away last year; it would have been great for him to know about this.