Miscellaneous: Heading For The Future

OK, this is bit unnerving.

I had read with sadness the obituaries of the late actor Ian Richardson. (Not enough of them mentioned his turn as the evil Mr. Book in Dark City, but never mind.) Much attention was rightly paid to Mr. Richardson’s personification of the scheming Tory politician Francis “F.U.” Urquhart in the three House of Cards series. I hadn’t seen the original show in some time, so I checked with Netflix to see if it was on DVD.

It was, along with another option: Watch Now.

I’d heard that Netflix was introducing a streaming video feature, but this was the first time that a title I’d looked up was instantly available. One brief installation interlude later and there was Ian Richardson in all his malevolent glory, only minutes after I’d thought of watching him.

Factor in the Rhapsody subscription I recently ordered that turns my PC into a jukebox – love that New Wave channel! – and I may never work again. This could be very, very bad.

Miscellaneous: She Said What?

The March 2007, thick-as-a-phone-book issue of InStyle magazine brings us this conversation overheard backstage at the American Music Awards.

Beyoncé: It’s so nice to see you! You look lovely.

Ashlee Simpson: Thank you!

They hug.

Ashlee Simpson: Hey, honey, how are you?

Beyoncé: I’m happy everything went well. Now I can relax and sit in the audience. Where’s Jessica?

Ashlee Simpson: She’s at home in her pajamas.

A STAGEHAND passes with a cart carrying a large set piece.

Stagehand: Ladies, you need to move!

Beyoncé: Oh, oh! Things are getting a bit chaotic back here now.

And ... that’s it.

I used to think these candid celebrity moments were made up, like the letters in Penthouse magazine. (Twins. Riiight.) Or the cutesy items in the New York Times Metropolitan Diary. But the stagehand sold me. This diva-to-diva exchange actually occurred, and I for one am glad that InStyle has preserved it for the ages.

Miscellaneous: Shutterbug

Black has been my mood of late, and that’s not conducive to blogging. My own opinions bore me. The internet itself is pissing me off. My buddy closes, and all that comes out of my mouth is bile. Maybe I should watch Man of the Century again.

But I don’t want to trouble you folks with my woes. They’ll pass soon enough.



Instead, I strolled down to the Seattle Art Museum’s newly opened Olympic Sculpture Park and snapped a few photos. Enjoy.

Million Dollar Movie: Man of the Century (1999)

Not the old cinema showcase on WOR Channel 9 in New York City. Although that would be worth writing about. (Here’s the title sequence. Tell me that’s not the classiest intro you’ve ever seen. No wonder I fell for the movies and hard.)

No, this is the first in an occasional series on movies that make me feel like a million bucks whenever I watch them. Maybe not the greatest films ever made, but the ones that are guaranteed to chase away the blues.

We’d had an odd couple of days when I noticed that Man of the Century was on cable, so we watched it for the fourth time. Eighty minutes later, the clouds had lifted.

The movie doesn’t have a plot so much as a premise. Johnny Twennies (played by Gibson Frazier, who co-wrote the script with director Adam Abraham) lives in contemporary New York as if the 1920s never ended. His clothes, his language, and his deportment may be decades out of date, but not out of style.

This isn’t an affectation; Johnny’s a living anachronism, and the movie never offers an explanation. There are some bits that don’t make a lick of sense, and a story about a shadowy crime boss that goes nowhere.

And I don’t care. Man of the Century is in love with New York then and now. It’s got great blasts of silliness and is always ready to stop for a musical number. Frazier has a true knack for period dialogue, and some of his lines are now Chez K staples. (“If you keep riding me, you’re gonna have to pay the fare.” “Mother, when I’m in the swim, I wanna be with goldfish!”) And the ending is sheer bliss. The first time we saw it, Rosemarie actually wept tears of joy. That hadn’t happened since the ‘Be Our Guest’ number in Beauty & The Beast.

Ultimately, the movie says something profound: you can’t choose when you live, so you might as well choose how. All that and Bobby Short, too. You can’t go wrong.

Miscellaneous: Newsstand News

The upcoming Hollywood issue of Vanity Fair includes a portfolio of contemporary stars photographed film noir-style by Annie Liebovitz. All the big names are there: Naomi Watts, Forest Whitaker, Bruce Willis, Kate Winslet. And those are just the W’s.

It’s on sale later this week, but right now you can check out a video feature based on these gorgeous photos called Killers Kill, Dead Men Die, which comes complete with sorta-cheesy hardboiled voiceover.

As Bill Crider notes, I mentioned the video yesterday on the noir fiction list Rara Avis but didn’t get around to posting it here. Sometimes being lazy pays off. Thanks to Bill’s post I can now also link to the B-roll, which offers a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the photo shoot. And there’s no voiceover.

Elsewhere, the New York Post reports that Premiere magazine may be shuttered. If it happens, it should be considered a mercy killing.

When Premiere, uh, premiered, it was the, um, premier film rag in the U.S. Intelligent coverage of a broad range of movies. Once a month I’d hike up to the video store, buy a copy, and spend the rest of the day devouring it. For years I held on to the collectible lobby cards that used to come in each issue.

But over time Premiere became smaller, both physically and in terms of scope. I still have a subscription, but only because the magazine is so cheap; the latest renewal come-on I received in the mail offers three years for a mere twenty-two bucks. I’d already decided not to renew it. I flip through each issue in about ten minutes, mainly to read critic Glenn Kenny, and then toss it into the recycling bin. The sad truth is Premiere hasn’t mattered in ages. I’m not even going to lament that there’s no serious mass-market print magazine about cinema in the U.S., because there’s no need for one. Not with such in-depth writing on movies available online, much of it recapped on a regular basis through GreenCine Daily.

Still, I miss those lobby cards.

Miscellaneous: Left Coast Crime Report

I can’t remember the last time I attended any sort of convention. Occasionally I tag along when Rosemarie goes to the annual NCURA wingding in Washington, D.C. Research administrators are animals. I still have a scar from the 2003 get-together, and remain banned from the Watergate Hotel thanks to what I’d categorize as a silly misunderstanding.

So I’m no expert, but I thought this year’s Left Coast Crime was smartly put together. A strong mix of guests and panels, an attentive hotel staff. Here’s a quick recap of my LCC.

Two bits of sage advice from toastmaster Gary Phillips: Always get your money, and never sell to a snitch.

A panel about politics in mystery seemed appropriate considering that one guest of honor was the late Dennis Lynds. I was surprised to hear the thriller described as a “right-wing genre.” Why? Because the characters are often allied with government or military agencies? What’s right-wing about a corporate conspiracy? Alas, time ran out before I could learn more. I blame the Trilateral Commission.

Thriller novelists weighed in on recent movies at another panel. Guest of honor Gayle Lynds is a fan of Casino Royale and was disappointed by the critical reaction to The Good Shepherd, while Mike Lawson praised Syriana and Munich. I was hoping someone would credit Eric Roth with writing both Shepherd and Munich. I guess that someone is me.

The most fun panel was on swearing. It was led by three of the Killer Year gang, with other members of the class there in force. All of them kept it reasonably clean.

Good times were had at Saturday’s discussion of noir featuring Megan Abbott, in which it was revealed that even practitioners of the form aren’t sure of its definition, and a surprisingly funny session about true crime chaired by David Corbett. It was also nice to put faces to names I knew from the web, like January magazine guru Jeff Pierce.

Having gotten my feet wet, though, I have to admit: I still don’t get the whole convention thing.

Let me stress that my reservations are no reflection on this particular conference. And I understand why authors go. It’s a chance to catch up with contemporaries and meet fans.

What I mean is I personally don’t get it. This is partly because I didn’t have the full convention experience. I wasn’t staying in the hotel, and thanks to other obligations I left early every day. But it’s mainly because I’m not much of a joiner. I’m a loner, Dottie. A rebel.

I can’t simply wander up to writers and start talking. I don’t want to intrude. I already know what the end result is going to be – a brief chat about the weather or the Super Bowl, maybe a request for the name of a good local bar. And it’s not a social phobia; on the way home yesterday I stopped by the very bar I would have recommended and fell easily into conversation with total strangers. It’s just that as a reader, I don’t have any expectation of a relationship with an author beyond the words he or she placed on the page.

Again, that’s just me. I’m such a bad fan that I may be the first person in the history of these events to leave without a single signed book. Not one. Simply never occurred to me. This is every signing I’ve ever been to:

Me: Hi, love your books.

Famous Author: Thanks! What’s your name?

Me: (mumbling) Um, Vince.

Famous Author: Frank, you said?

Me: (beat) Yeah, that’ll work.

Eventually, I just stopped going. (That must kill J.A. Konrath. All his carefully laid plans actually working against the purchase of a book. I’ll shatter his illusions further. When a clerk starts a conversation with me about whatever title I’m holding, it almost guarantees I won’t buy it. Years of self-preservation instincts forged on the streets of New York kick in: “Why are you talking to me? Who sent you?”)

Don’t get me wrong – signed books mean a lot to me. I’ve got a whole shelf of them in my library. Perhaps my most prized possession is a copy of the seminal baseball book Ball Four personally inscribed to me by Jim Bouton after a profile of him I wrote ran in a business magazine. In some respects, that book set me on the path I’m on now.

But I want each of those books to have a story. And “I went to a place where the author was signing books and he signed this one for me” isn’t a story no matter how well I tell it.

I probably just went in to my first con experience unprepared. (Friday kicked off with a panel called “LCC 101,” but I missed it.) I’d love to hear from authors and fans about how they run the convention gauntlet. Feel free to leave pointers. I plan on getting to Bouchercon one of these years, and I want to do it right.

Update: Shame-Faced

Believe it or not, there are signs of life at the spin-off blog. For that you can thank Rosemarie, recently back from traveling with Gulliver.

TV: Title Fight

The missus is reading the classics of world literature and I’m screwing around on YouTube, where I stumbled on the title sequence from the short-lived ABC series The Renegades. I can’t believe how long it is. But when a group of ethnically-mixed former gang members decides to work on the side of the law, I suppose you should take the time to introduce them.



Here’s what scares me. The show ran for one month in 1983. It’s never been in syndication or on video. So I only saw the episode in which the Renegades go undercover as a punk band once. And yet I still remember the group’s name (Blank Distress) and their song (“You’re Gonna Get What’s Coming”). I can’t believe there’s a synapse in my brain devoted solely to that.

Miscellaneous: Conventional Thinking

This year’s Left Coast Crime is being held within walking distance of Chez K. (OK, it’s kind of a long walk, but I could use the exercise.) That’s where I’ll be for the next few days. Look for the guy in the New York Mets cap; that’ll be me. I’ll try to post reports from the floor.

Movie: Little Children (2006)

I’ve wanted to see Todd Field’s film, based on a novel by Election author Tom Perrotta, for weeks. But it was booked into the one theater in Seattle that I refuse to patronize. Originally one of the Keith-Albee-Orpheum Vaudeville Houses for Undernourished Children, the theater has seats so small that whenever I go there both of my knees lock. I hoped a few Oscar nods would nudge the movie into a place with legroom.

The nominations came in – for actress Kate Winslet, supporting actor Jackie Earle Haley, and the script by Field and Perrotta – the movie was sprung, and I couldn’t be happier. It’s a terrific piece of work, easily one of the best films of the year. Great performances and sharp observations about life in the suburbs. The movie has plenty of chances to veer into melodrama but never slips. I was particularly bowled over by the script, which uses an omniscient third person multiple viewpoint voiceover. It’s a novelistic technique that shouldn’t work but somehow does.

TV: American Idol

I’m taking a pass on this season. Blame buyer’s remorse for my Taylor Hicks vote. But I couldn’t avoid hearing about the Seattle auditions, which apparently featured the worst performances in AI’s history. No less an authority than Entertainment Weekly said that the show’s trip to the Emerald City “sometimes crossed the line into outright cruelty.” So how does Washington State respond?

With an American Idol instant lottery game.

I wish the site featured the radio spot, in which the game’s rules are sung in the style of somehow who auditioned for the show here.

Miscellaneous: Links

The New York Times on Noir City 5. Next year. I swear.

Booze news: Murray Stenson, who’s poured me many a cocktail at the Zig Zag Café, has been named one of America’s 10 best bartenders by Playboy. (The article is safe for work, but I can’t vouch for the ads.) Murray’s Liberal, singled out in the piece, truly is heaven in a glass. And Audrey Saunders of the Pegu Club, where I bend an elbow when visiting New York, also made the grade. Stick with me, kids. I’ll take you to all the best places.

Movie: Awakening of the Beast (1969)

Last Zé do Caixão post, I swear. (The earlier ones are here and here.) There aren’t any more José Mojica Marins movies readily available.

By the time of Awakening of the Beast, as my friend Tony Kay points out in a comment below, Marins’ character Coffin Joe had become a huge figure in Brazilian pop culture. So we don’t get a typical Coffin Joe movie, with Marins, the grindhouse Cecil B. DeMille, offering up one shocking and prurient image after another and then justifying them with some bogus religious message.

Oh, no. We’re in for something darker and much more disturbing.

What we get is half meta-movie, with Marins appearing on camera as himself and defending his work, and half docudrama about the perils of drug abuse. Which, in Marins’ hands, plays like an episode of Dragnet directed by the Marquis de Sade. Every conceivable sexual fetish is on display. Orgies end in tragedy. Donkeys are abused. Chamber pots are filled.

The action wraps up when a psychiatrist inflicts Coffin Joe on four subjects in an LSD experiment that clearly has not been vetted by any institutional review board. The acid trip scenes, of course, are in lurid color. That’s when things start to get really weird.

I kept tuning in to IFC’s mini-Marins festival because unlike most of the underground cinema I read about when I was a budding film buff, his movies are genuinely unsettling. I’m not sure to what end, though. His talent certainly improves with each film. He shares David Lynch’s facility for crafting the imagery of dreams but not his interest in recreating their logic. Awakening’s reflexive nature calls to mind Orson Welles’ F for Fake with none of that movie’s playfulness. And his films aren’t conventional horror flicks with plots and characters. I don’t know what the hell they are, other than primitive, powerful and unforgettable. I just wish I, you know, liked them.

Marins, at 78, has recently wrapped a new Coffin Joe movie. I’m sure it will prove to be difficult to see. That won’t stop me from trying.

Movies: Noir City 5

Great article on Eddie Muller and the fifth Noir City Film Festival, kicking off tomorrow in San Francisco. I vow to get to it one of these years.

The line-up includes salutes to tough guy Charles McGraw and screenwriter William Bowers, a man equally at home on the mean streets and the open range. Just the other day I watched his terrific underrated western The Sheepman, with Glenn Ford.

The Bowers tribute includes a screening of 1951’s Cry Danger, which stars Dick Powell and Rhonda Fleming. The film also features a fantastic unheralded turn by character actor Richard Erdman. Erdman plays a one-legged ex-Marine marinating in booze and jovial cynicism. (“Occasionally, I always drink too much.”) He perfectly captures the post-war feeling of disaffection from society that would lead to biker gangs, beatniks, and ultimately the entire counterculture. Fifty-some years later, his performance still feels jarringly new.

Now 81 years old, Erdman will be in attendance at Saturday’s screening doing a Q&A. What I wouldn’t give to be there.

Miscellaneous: Links

From Reason: the politics of zombies. And reaction, mostly negative, to a list of the ten best business novels.

Miscellaneous: First Impressions

The New Yorker on Rich Little’s selection as the headliner at the upcoming White House Correspondents Dinner. The official line is that Little is not a safe choice in the wake of last year’s controversial Stephen Colbert appearance, but it’s clear that writer Jeffrey Goldberg ain’t buying it.

The piece seems a touch mean-spirited to me, but then Little doesn’t do himself any favors. When you’re asked to name your favorite young comedian, do not say “Robin Williams.” And never follow up your own jokes with the observation that they’re funny. Particularly when they’re not.

After reading the article, I then spent twenty minutes exploring Little’s website and listening to some of his 163 impressions. If he didn’t identify the person beforehand (always with the same phrase, “Well, this is ... INSERT NAME HERE”), I’m not sure I could tell you who he was doing. I doubt there’s much call for imitations of Edgar Buchanan, Jack Hawkins and Stewart Granger these days, but considering the age of some of the members of the Senate he’ll be performing in front of, his act will probably play like gangbusters. He may even get requests. (“And now, for Senator Robert Byrd, here’s ... Hugh Herbert!”) I will say that Little’s Rod Steiger is still damn good.

As for those naysayers who claimed that Colbert bombed last year: twelve months later people are still talking about his appearance. He must have done something right.

Movies: Golden Boy

A few quick thoughts on this morning’s Academy Award nominations.

It’s always nice to see some dark horses score, and this year quite a few did: Ryan Gosling (who in a just world would have been acknowledged several years ago for his performance in The Believer), Jackie Earle Haley, Paul Greengrass.

I saw Letters from Iwo Jima over the weekend, and it’s Best Picture inclusion doesn’t surprise me. It’s a solidly crafted, traditional war movie. Then every few minutes, the realization hit me anew: this is about the Japanese, fighting the Americans. Forging that level of identification is an amazing accomplishment.

I have no idea who the Best Picture favorite is. Going in, I assumed it would be The Departed, and it still may be. But with Leo getting the nod for Blood Diamond and no nomination for Jack, I’m not sure. When in doubt, I always go with the Jack Warner Gambit: saturation in the major categories. The only movie up for picture, director, script and lead performance is The Queen.

Marty vs. Clint is the new Manning vs. Brady. And we all know how that turned out this year.

Six nods for Pan’s Labyrinth. Amazing.

Once again, the writers show their stuff. They gave Borat its only recognition and are the sole above-the-line branch to single out Children of Men and Pan’s Labyrinth.

Also worth noting: two of the writers who worked with Steve Coogan on the various Alan Partridge series are represented, Peter Baynham (Borat) and Patrick Marber (Notes on a Scandal).

I love that the cinematographers vote solely to honor their craft. Their nominees: The Black Dahlia, Children of Men, The Illusionist, Pan’s Labyrinth and The Prestige.

The best performance I saw this year was sadly snubbed, and that’s Michael Sheen as Tony Blair in The Queen. On degree of difficulty alone he deserved a nod: playing not just a well-known public figure but a currently serving world leader. As miraculous as Helen Mirren is in the title role, the movie is in many respects a two-hander. Without Sheen, it wouldn’t work nearly as well as it does.

Finally, it’s great to see Mark Wahlberg get some love for his work in The Departed. I’ve been parroting his dialogue for months. He warrants the nod just for the way he delivers the line of the year, written by William Monahan, when a guy he’s berating asks who he is: “I’m the guy who does his job. You must be the other guy.”

Movie: This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse (1966)

So I watched that other Coffin Joe movie. In the interest of thoroughness, I offer some follow-up:

Wow. OK. Jesus.

Again with the long-winded introduction. Then a title sequence, the hand-drawn letters squirming as if they’re trying to escape the frame. A card appears, informing us that the movie begins where At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul left off. The closing sequence from that film begins to play.

Me: How is he going to do this? Joe was obviously dead at the end of the last movie.

Character onscreen, subtitled, pointing at Joe: He’s still alive!

Rosemarie: That’s how.

The success of Midnight meant that José Mojica Marins had more money in this go-round. He was able to shoot outdoors, during the day. He also has a hunchback for a sidekick. Way too much yammering about the “immortality of blood” as Joe tries to find the perfect woman to give birth to his child.

But it’s worth sitting through for the journey to hell described below. It’s genuinely disturbing, a vision of the underworld that’s depraved but informed by a religious sensibility. (Coffin Joe, you will not be surprised to learn, repents at the end of this movie before dying. Again. I wonder how he comes back in the next installment.) The unabashed luridness of the sequence calls to mind what I’d heard about the old tent revival shows: they concentrated so much on damnation that you were more concerned about not going to hell than reaching heaven. Same difference, I suppose.

Coffin Joe’s jaunt to Hades is on YouTube, natch, but it’s not subtitled, so odds are you won’t be able to understand the screams of the tormented. And I’m not linking to it, because I think it’s better appreciated in context. So here’s the video for the Squirrel Nut Zippers’ “Hell.” I don’t want to be a tease.



Next week, Coffin Joe returns in Awakening of the Beast!

Miscellaneous: Why I Don’t Blog About Sports Often

Me, approximately three months ago, speaking to my brother, whose lovely wife is from the Indianapolis area:

“Sorry, dude. Not only are the Colts not going to the Super Bowl, they’re not even going to the AFC title game.”

Miscellaneous: Spreadin’ The Good News

Some familiar faces are among the 2007 Edgar Award nominees. Bill Crider received a nod in the Best Short Story category for the down-n-dirty “Cranked,” featured in the anthology Damn Near Dead. And Contemporary Nomad Olen Steinhauer made the Best Novel short list with Liberation Movements. Congratulations to both on their well-deserved honors. I was also happy to see Massimo Carlotto’s The Goodbye Kiss singled out in the Best Paperback Original category. I’m fairly certain that my rave review in Mystery*File put him over the top.

What else have I accomplished recently? Glad you asked. I’m pleased to announce that yours truly is now a footnote in Wikipedia. I will be remembered for all eternity as one of sixteen people who observed that the young actress Gage Golightly looks a bit like Drew Barrymore. Factor in my recent citation in an Australian academic text and it’s clear that my plan to become a world-renowned expert on popular culture is proceeding incrementally apace.

Movie: The Descent (U.S., 2006)

Here’s how scary Neil Marshall’s movie is. It held me rapt even though the scenario – bad doings on a spelunking trip – would never happen to me. The only way I’d end up deep in a cave is if something far worse occurred on the surface. Say, an atomic holocaust unleashing rampaging hordes of zombified bears. In which case, better to make the movie about that. (You don’t want to be near me during a film about terrors I actually might encounter, like cannibals in the subway.)

The sense of claustrophobia that Marshall creates would have been even more intense in the dark, so I’m sorry I missed The Descent in theaters. But I’m happy to have seen it in its original form. The U.S. theatrical release cut the final ninety seconds – a single, beautifully executed closing shot – in order to end the movie on a more hopeful note. What babies we are.

Movie: At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul (1963)

In college, as in prison, you want to land a job in the library. I spent most of my years in the Microfilm Department poring over film reference books I couldn’t afford, like the horror volume of the Overlook Film Encyclopedia.

In particular I read and reread the entries on the movies of José Mojica Marins and his character Zé do Caixão, or Coffin Joe. Joe, played by Marins, is an undertaker who scorns both religion and the supernatural. He’s taken self-interest to its logical endpoint: he does whatever he wants to whomever he wants, and his neighbors live in fear of him. (An interview with Marins is available here.)

At the time the films were almost impossible to see outside of Marins’ native Brazil. Their obscure status, combined with author Phil Hardy’s meticulous descriptions of every act of mayhem and sacrilege, made them loom large in my mind. These films, I thought, were like the ones that occasionally turned up in horror novels, where simply watching a few frames could ... drive men mad.

Some of Marins’ movies were eventually distributed on video. I didn’t seek them out; I suppose I didn’t really want to see them. I knew they couldn’t live up to the unholy spectacles I imagined them to be.

Last Friday, as we were about to settle in and watch a DVD, I noticed that IFC was only minutes away from showing Coffin Joe’s debut At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul as part of its Grindhouse series. I’d never heard of a Marins film airing on TV before. I wasn’t about to miss my chance.

There’s no plot. After not one but two Ed Wood-style introductions delivered straight to the camera, Joe begins humiliating and murdering people. He horsewhips a guy, sics a tarantula on his wife, and uses the crown of thorns from a bust of Christ as a weapon. He also proves that my mother was right: you can take someone’s eyes out by imitating the Three Stooges.

The film looks like it was shot on the sets for a Brazilian kids’ show after hours. One of Joe’s victims has pennants hanging in his room. I wanted them explained – “This one’s for the Sao Paulo Rams, and that one is for Lucifer” – but before that could happen Joe knocked the man unconscious, dragged him into the bathtub and drowned him. Joe’s a busy man with a lot of folks to kill.

Midnight is not a good movie. It’s actually kind of boring. But after a while it began exerting a peculiar fascination. Unlike many horror films, it has the courage of its convictions: Marins is determined to shatter as many taboos as possible. The low production values only enhance the movie’s power. When Joe is haunted by a vision of his dead victims carrying him in an open casket, Marins simply shows the scene in negative. The result is genuinely disturbing, as are a number of other bargain-basement effects.

This Friday, January 19, at midnight Eastern, IFC is showing the second Coffin Joe film, This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse. (I’ll say this for Marins: the man knew from a good title.) According to The Psychotronic Video Guide by Michael Weldon, a reference book I can afford, the sequel is “Marins’s ultimate movie,” including a full-color sequence set in an ice-cold Hell with moving body parts embedded in the walls. This is followed next week by Awakening of the Beast, which is part documentary about the drug culture of the 1960s and part Coffin Joe schlockfest.

Based on my experience with Midnight, I can’t recommend these movies. But you know I’m going to be watching them.

Miscellaneous: No Business Like Snow Business

It snowed in Seattle again last night. Not a whole lot, just enough to throw the town into a tizzy. I’ve lived here for years, and days like this force me to admit I don’t understand this place. How can a city surrounded by mountains and peopled by skiers lose its collective head whenever the white stuff hits the ground? Winters back east have warped my expectations. In Boston, snow plows are on the streets around the clock. Even in August.

The adverse conditions haven’t affected me much, although I did scrap my plans to stop by Seattle Mystery Books and meet Charlie Huston. Today, that lunchtime jaunt would consume the entire afternoon.

What annoys me is that Seattleites don’t even take routine precautions like, say, clearing off their sidewalks. We got a light dusting on Saturday, sufficient to cover the slick patches that lingered from the midweek snow. I discovered one while strolling up to the supermarket. My Doc Martens were no help. Ass, meet pavement. Icy, rock hard pavement. My only thought as my second foot slid out from under me was, Man, I haven’t fallen down in years.

Since then, I have been liberally self-medicating with ibuprofen and Irish whiskey. At least my mishap didn’t ruin the weekend. We’d already been to see Pan’s Labyrinth. (Quick take: get thee to a theater at once.) And my pain had subsided enough by Monday so that we could see Notes on a Scandal. (Quick take: great nasty fun. Comparisons to Patricia Highsmith are apt.)

You’d think a quieting blanket of white would facilitate my getting some work done. But the snow didn’t keep the valiant crew renovating the apartment upstairs from their appointed rounds. No, they’re here, prying the hardwood floors up one board at a time. Good thing I’ve got plenty of that whiskey on hand.

Movie: Crank (2006)

How does Bill Crider always know my viewing habits in advance? Am I under surveillance, or simply that predictable?

In this non-stop action movie, a professional killer with the indisputably great name Chev Chelios* awakens to discover that he has been injected with a lethal fast-acting poison. The only way to stave off its effect is adrenaline, and lots of it. This circumstance thus paves the way for drug abuse, public lovemaking and multiple car chases.

In other words, it’s Speed with Jason Statham in the role of the bus. It’s A.D.D.O.A. The movie is shot like a video game and edited with a machete. It’s completely ridiculous, deeply implausible, and thoroughly disreputable. And as such, I enjoyed the hell out of it. Extra points for the ending and an excellent ironic soundtrack.

* I would pledge to christen my firstborn Chev Chelios Keenan regardless of gender, but I’m already committed to Ernst Stavro Keenan.

Book: Chourmo, by Jean-Claude Izzo (1996, U.S. 2006)

I’ve had the second volume in Izzo’s Marseilles Trilogy on hand for a while now. I’ve been anticipating it since I finished the first installment, Total Chaos, several months ago. But I didn’t want to read it right away. There are some books you keep in a kind of glass case, to be used in the event of an emergency. For when you need to be inspired, when you want something to savor.

And savor Chourmo I did. The voice Izzo has created for his protagonist Fabio Montale – again beautifully translated by Howard Curtis – is singular. Rich, evocative, eternally alive to the pleasures of music, food, life. Izzo’s work bears parallels to that of George Pelecanos, but where Pelecanos’ books possess a reserve, a coolness that’s distinctly American, Izzo’s are charged with passion. His descriptions of Marseilles, “the first city of the Third World,” are so vivid that I feel as if I could find my way around its streets in the dark.

I’m not entirely certain that I followed the plot, which embroils gangsters, crooked cops and Islamic fundamentalists in Montale’s search for his missing nephew. And I didn’t care. Chourmo – the title comes from a French word meaning rowers in a galley, people “trying to get out ... together” – is primarily a tribute to a vanishing way of life, what Montale calls “the art of living, Marseilles style:”

Those were the days when people still knew how to talk to each other, when they still had things to say to each other. Of course, it made you thirsty. And it took time. But time didn’t matter. Nobody was in a hurry. Everything could wait a few more minutes. Those days were no better and no worse than now. But it was a time when you could share your joys and your sorrows. You didn’t hold back. You could even tell people you were poor. You were never alone ... And whatever problems kept you awake at night vanished in a haze of pastis.

Miscellaneous: Links

I’d always heard about Club 33, the secret and exclusive restaurant hidden away at Disneyland. Now, via Nikki Finke, comes a website that takes you behind the scenes.

Two smart guys, Craig Mazin and John Rogers, weigh in on what all the changes in media really mean.

The Onion A.V. Club on the genius of one of my favorite albums, Elvis Costello’s King of America.

Movie: Idiocracy (2006)

Mike Judge’s satire met a bizarre fate last year. Numerous delays in its release date, followed by a truncated theatrical run in a half-dozen markets with no promotion of any kind. Yesterday’s home video debut – slated for right after the holidays, when nobody’s paying much attention – was my first chance to see the movie. I jumped on it at once. If Idiocracy turns out to be another cult smash like Judge’s last movie, the justly-revered Office Space, I want in on the ground floor.

Judge had me at the premise. A soldier scientifically proven to be the most average man in the U.S. Army (Luke Wilson) is drafted to be the guinea pig in a short-term hibernation experiment. He awakens in 2505 to discover that society has become so dumbed-down that he is the smartest person on Earth. By, like, a lot. In Judge’s future, justice is meted out by monster trucks, the President is an ultimate fighting champ/porn star, and a doctor renders his diagnosis of Wilson’s character thusly: “Your shit’s all retarded.”

At least one critic has called Idiocracy “easily the most potent political film of the year, and the most stirring defense of traditional values since Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France.” I wouldn’t go that far. Considering that Burke’s scathing indictment of the abstract foundations of the Revolution was later used to condemn any form of socialist government, I think it’s fair to suggest that Burke’s shit was all retarded, too.

Idiocracy’s skimpy plot makes Office Space look like Chinatown. But its vision of tomorrow – this dystopia brought to you by NASCAR – is every bit as meticulously conceived and terrifying as the one in Children of Men; if anything it’s more plausible. I laughed myself stupid, which only makes me part of the problem.

Miscellaneous: Shutterbug



Another of my new year’s resolutions is to take more photographs. My first subject: the suitably Brontësque skies over Seattle as a storm rolls in. More here.

Movie: Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006)

Bill Crider expects my reaction to this movie to turn up here. And I’m not about to let Bill down.

1. I liked it. Quite a bit.

2. Bill described it as ‘goofy.’ I’ll second that.

3. The movie is jam-packed with characters, and Will Ferrell and co-writer/director Adam McKay are willing to let each of them have their moment in the sun. Everybody gets a chance to be funny.

4. For all the comic actors on display, it’s Gary Cole who walks off with the movie as Ricky’s ne’er-do-well dad Reese. His performance is just an angstrom away from being completely straight, which only amps up the hilarity.

5. Elvis Costello does a cameo! How could I speak ill of it?

6. I will never look at Days of Thunder the same way again. And John C. Reilly is in both.

Miscellaneous: Links

Forget the botched Tony Romo snap that sent the Seahawks deeper into the playoffs. The best thing I saw during a weekend of football? Bruce Campbell as Old Spice pitchman.

Movie City News asks: creepiest trailer ever? I’m gonna go ahead and say yes.

Book: Dead Horse, by Walter Satterthwait (2006)

It’s always nice to have the first novel of the year be a winner. But it’s hard to go wrong with Walter Satterthwait, whose Phil Beaumont/Jane Turner books are an unalloyed treat.

Dead Horse is about Raoul Whitfield, the Black Mask veteran who was the highest-paid mystery writer of the late 1920s. His second wife, Emily, was a socialite who made their lavish life on the desert ranch of the title possible. Then Emily committed suicide – or so it would appear. The question of what really happened to her that night is only one of the mysteries raised in Walter’s evocative book.

My experience with Whitfield is limited to his 1930 novel Green Ice. I’d been told that it and Paul Cain’s Fast One were the most hard-boiled books ever published. I still haven’t tracked the Cain down, but I did dig up a copy of Green Ice. Hard-boiled it is, so much so that parts of it are indigestible. But Walter’s book has me ready to take another crack at it.

A.I. Bezzerides, RIP

What a remarkable 98 years the man had. He wrote the novels Long Haul (filmed as They Drive by Night) and Thieves’ Market (which became Thieves’ Highway). He penned the screenplays for On Dangerous Ground and the great Kiss Me Deadly. And in his spare time he created TV’s The Big Valley. Two documentaries were made about him in 2005. I’d be happy to see either one.

Miscellaneous: Vamping

Oh, hi. Didn’t see you there.

Apparently I’m in the midst of a blogging sabbatical. Thinking about whether the ol’ Internet homestead needs a new coat of paint or maybe more substantial changes.

In the interim, I can relay the following:

Mystery*File is back, now in easy-to-use blog form!

Children of Men opens in more theaters this weekend. Go see it.

I had my first Chicago-style hot dog yesterday. Why aren’t sport peppers served with everything from breakfast cereal to ice cream?

The Good Stuff: Life

Normally I don’t go in for New Year’s Resolutions. Imagine my surprise to discover that I made three of them on January 1, 2006. Let’s see how I did. Timpani!

1. Spend less time in the blogosphere.

Done. I also scaled back my posting here, believe it or not. Only post when you’ve got something to say, that’s my motto.

2. Broaden my reading range.

Done again. I’ve even got the spin-off blog to prove it. Granted, I haven’t updated it much lately, but that will change.

3. Order more obscure cocktails in bars.

Here I exceeded even my wildest expectations. In 2006 I became a regular at the Zig Zag Café, a bar specializing in obscure cocktails and convivial atmosphere. I’ve had conversations with offbeat characters from all over the world, received peerless recommendations on where to drink in Manhattan, and sampled libations like the Seelbach, favored by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the Corpse Reviver #2.

My resolutions for 2007? Same again.

2006 was a groundwork year. I laid the foundations for several projects that, with any luck, will come to fruition in the coming months. It’s going to take a lot more hard work, though, and I’m looking forward to it. I have to confess I’m always happy when the holidays end. I’m eager to roll up my sleeves and dive back into the fray.

With that, I give you a favorite memory from the year now ending.

It’s October. We’re in New York. Rosemarie and I head to Rockefeller Center. Look, here’s a picture. We get there to discover that the Fire Department is conducting an event, with equipment and personnel all over the plaza. Rosemarie notices that copies of the FDNY Calendar are on sale, filled with photos of buff, shirtless firefighters. Rosemarie thinks this will make the perfect gift for our gracious, generous hosts Barry and Buzz.

“Trust me,” she says. “They’ll get a kick out of it.”

After buying the calendar, she sees a long table behind which sit a dozen good-looking men. The models, autographing copies of the calendar. “I’ll get them to sign it,” Rosemarie says. “That makes it even better.”

Fine, I say. I’m going to go look at fire trucks.

I do that for a while, but Rosemarie’s still not finished. I cross the concourse to wait for her. After a few minutes she finally hoves into view, beet-red and giggling like a schoolgirl as she makes her way along the table chatting with the firefighters. After a few more minutes, she finally finishes and tracks me down.

Me: They didn’t sign it to Barry and Buzz, did they?

Rosemarie: No. We’re getting them wine.

Naturally, the calendar can’t hang in her office. She’s a professional, after all. So as I sit at my desk beneath the gleaming chest of Michael from Marine Unit One (“Thanks for your beautiful smile!”), I wish you a few such unexpected moments in 2007. Thanks for stopping by this year. Come on back.

The Good Stuff: Movies

Updated 12/31/06!

Standard provisos apply. There are plenty of year-end films I haven’t seen yet – yes, Pan’s Labyrinth, Children of Men and Letters from Iwo Jima, I mean you – and I’m not stopping at ten.

The best movie of 2006? Easy. Jean-Pierre Melville’s French Resistance drama Army of Shadows was made in 1969 but never played in the U.S. until this year, so it counts. Alone among the movies I saw it had me holding my breath, afraid I would break its spell. It takes the title going away. It reopens at New York's Film Forum on Friday and will be playing around the country into early 2007.

You want the best new movie of 2006? Fine. Fabien Bielinsky’s El Aura bewitched me when I saw it and haunts me still. A heist film, a character study, a brilliantly directed exploration of isolation mental and physical, self-imposed and otherwise. It’s one of a kind.

That’s what I loved. I saw plenty more that I enjoyed the hell out of. Here are the ones that truly popped, in the order I saw them, with minimal commentary.

Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story. In some circles this is regarded as a 2005 release. Just in case, I’m including it here.

Brick. Hammett in high school.

The Proposition. A tough-minded Australian western, featuring the best performance by flies.

A Prairie Home Companion. Maybe it is minor Altman, but it’s perfectly in tune.

Lady Vengeance. Chilling in its elegance.

Invincible. My orphan pick. A sports movie that nails every note. And I don’t even like the Philadelphia Eagles. But it speaks to the working-class Northeast football fan in me. It helps that the crazy dreamer’s name is Vince. And hey, Elizabeth Banks is in it!

Hollywoodland. The flip side of Invincible. Achieving your dreams is no guarantee of happiness. My faith in Ben Affleck is vindicated.

The Queen. The best written movie of 2006 is also the most politically astute, and moves like a thriller.

Slither. Delivering the gruesome goods counts for something around here. And hey, Elizabeth Banks is in it!

Borat. For the naked wrestling alone.

Casino Royale. Because the degree of difficulty involved was enormous.

Volver. Almodovar. Can he do any wrong?

Children of Men. Added 12/31/06. Alfonso Cuarón’s dystopian vision is packed with sociopolitical ideas I haven’t yet processed. But taken purely as an action film, filled with extended, unbroken scenes of chaos and motion, it deserves a place on this list.

The film story of 2006 has to be the continuing changes in the way movies, particularly smaller ones, are distributed. I saw El Aura, my #2 choice, on TV because it debuted on IFC On Demand at the same time it opened in New York. Steven Soderbergh’s intriguing Bubble hit theaters and home video on the same day. The adaptation of David Mamet’s play Edmond, as dark and demanding a film as I saw this year, might as well have gone straight to DVD for the limited release it received. Technology makes these movies more accessible – you could be watching El Aura right now instead of reading this – but the downside is the audience doesn’t know they exist. And I doubt the advent of the downloadable premiere, which you know is coming, will change things.

The Good Stuff: Books

In the order read, with minimal commentary.

The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril, by Paul Malmont. Nothing topped it for pure escapism.

Hit Parade, by Lawrence Block.

King Dork, by Frank Portman. My lone foray into YA fiction yielded the best-plotted mystery of the year. (Aside: is there really this much oral sex in contemporary high schools? Because ... damn. When I was in high school, oral sex was like the Loch Ness monster. We all wanted to believe in it, and there was a rich body of anecdotal evidence, but not much in the way of hard data. Go ahead, snicker at ‘hard.’ Juveniles.)

The Night Gardener, by George Pelecanos.

The Devil’s Guide to Hollywood, by Joe Eszterhas. A non-fiction selection. Weirdly, crazily inspiring. I’m still agitating for that Jade Special Edition DVD.

The Zero, by Jess Walter. A divisive book, and my personal favorite.

Death’s Dark Abyss, by Massimo Carlotto. A 2004 title receiving its first U.S. publication courtesy of Europa Editions. I pause here to acknowledge the overall fine work of Europa and Hard Case Crime this year.

World War Z, by Max Brooks. Man alive, do I hate zombies.

A Dangerous Man, by Charlie Huston.

Ask The Parrot, by Richard Stark (aka Donald E. Westlake). The last book I read in 2006 was also one of the finest.

What do you know, ten on the nose. Don’t worry. It won’t happen again.

The Good Stuff: TV

Believe it or not, I don’t watch much TV. I thought this year might be different. I’d sample some new shows, catch up with touted ones like Battlestar Galactica on DVD. Never happened. (Update: 2007 is another story.)

Most of what I liked is held over from last year. I’ve talked about The Wire enough, so I’ll simply say that season four is a staggering accomplishment. The Christmas party episode of The Office, directed by Harold Ramis, may have been that series’ finest hour. Right now the most complete universe on television is the bizarre parallel one that can be entered through the vortex of The Colbert Report. Just look at 2006’s final show, scattered across the website, in which the fake “Stephen Colbert” squared off against actual band the Decembrists in a guitar duel that ultimately involved Peter Frampton, Cheap Trick’s Rick Nielsen, New York governor-elect Eliot Spitzer and Dr. Henry Kissinger. Blasphemy alert: Colbert is now funnier and more consistent than its progenitor The Daily Show.

Other, newer highlights:

Broken Trail. This AMC western directed by Walter Hill was one of the best movies I saw this year on any screen large or small.

When The Levees Broke. Spike Lee’s mammoth, indispensable HBO documentary on Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.

The Thick of It. The hilarious send-up of office politics and actual politics debuted on BBC America.

30 Rock. Because Alec Baldwin kills in every scene. Because Tracy Morgan’s perfect storm of narcissism and ADD still produces pearls or wisdom. (“Live every week like it’s Shark Week.”) Because of the supporting cast, namely Kenny the intern. Because Tina Fey is secretly using the show to explore the extra pressures faced by women in positions of authority. Because I can watch episodes for free online. But mainly because of Baldwin.

The Good Stuff: Music

It’s that time of year, when a man feels compelled to draft best-of lists, for a week ...

The ground rules are simple: I don’t limit myself to ten, and only 2006 titles are eligible. Which makes it difficult, considering that most of what I read, watch and listen to tends to be older. But what better way to ring in the new than by ringing in the new?

I’m starting with music because I have almost nothing to say. 2006 was the year I made a concerted effort to turn myself into a full-fledged jazzbo, so I leaned heavily on vintage stuff in an effort to, ahem, plug the holes in a spotty education. My musical highlight was at long last visiting New York’s legendary Village Vanguard to hear the Brad Mehldau trio. Look, here’s a picture.

I can recommend three excellent albums from this year if that iTunes gift card is burning a hole in your pocket:

1. Elvis Costello Live With The Metropole Orkest, My Flame Burns Blue. Which is basically a jazz record.

2. Sondre Lerche & The Faces Down Quartet, Duper Sessions. Jazz-inflected pop. Whaddaya know about that?

3. KT Tunstall, Eye to the Telescope. No jazz. This just rocks.

Miscellaneous: ‘Tis The Season

First, some last-minute on the road to the in-laws shopping help. Slate provides a slideshow of the finest gifts available at drug stores. Don’t say your Uncle Vince never did anything for you.

Next, to set the mood, I give you the only Christmas song worth a damn.



To quote the only Christmas movie worth a damn, “Isn’t that a lovely Noel? It’s been swell.”

Music: I Got Your Yule Log Right Here

Chez K. “The Christmas Waltz” plays in the background.

Me: I never liked that phrase “you and yours.” I think it sounds kinda dismissive.

Rosemarie: That’s because you’re from Queens.

Later. “Here Comes Santa Claus” is playing.

Rosemarie: I always hated that “Hang your stockings and say your prayers, ‘cause Santa Claus comes tonight.” Yeah, say your prayers ‘cause he’s going to kill you in your sleep.

Me: That’s because you’re from Queens.

Rosemarie: No. It’s from a much deeper place.

Miscellaneous: Links

Earlier this week I read George Packer’s fascinating New Yorker article on using anthropology to combat insurgency in Iraq and beyond. It includes a startling new use for the movie Fight Club. I was all set to write a post about it, but Jim Emerson handles the heavy lifting for me.

Chapter One of Eddie Muller’s Grindhouse is up at GreenCine.

MSN revives Moments out of Time, which used to be a year-end Film Comment staple. It’s assembled by FC veterans Richard T. Jameson and Kathleen Murphy, who now coincidentally write for the Queen Anne News, the paper that covers my Seattle neighborhood.

Music: It’s A Sugar Date

The Chez K philosophy is a simple one: treat every day like a low-key holiday. So when the genuine article rolls around, we don’t make much fuss. Our yuletide soundtrack is close to what we usually listen to. Christmas With The Rat Pack has been getting a workout. I want those bells to ring-a-ding-ding.

My favorite song is Frank and Dean’s version of “Marshmallow World,” recorded for Dino’s 1967 Christmas special. (Regis Philbin and Craig Ferguson recreated this duet on The Late Late Show last Christmas. I’ve already emailed Craig asking him to rerun it.) The boys did the song live; you can hear the audience reacting to their hijinks. And the sound has been driving me mad. What’s so funny? What are they laughing at?

Now, at last, I know. Behold a genuine Christmas miracle, courtesy of YouTube. Consider it an early gift from me to you.

TV: Ghost of Christmas Specials Past

Matt at Scrubbles.net asks about neglected holiday specials. Hard to believe any are left, considering that this month ABC Family has blown the dust off lesser Rankin-Bass offerings like Nestor, The Long-Eared Christmas Donkey and The Leprechauns’ Christmas Gold. I know I must have seen the Family Circus show Matt describes, but I can’t remember a thing about it.

I do, however, remember two other such programs. The Bear Who Slept Through Christmas featured the voices of Tom Smothers, Barbara Feldon and Arte Johnson. It was set in a parallel ursine universe, complete with airlines and catchy jingles (“Fly Bear Air to your lair!”). Said universe shuts down entirely for hibernation, but one bear wants to stay up and experience Christmas. He struggles not to fall asleep, meets Santa, and is ultimately given to a little girl as a present even though he’s, you know, alive. I wonder if Stephen Colbert has seen it. The soundtrack includes “Where Can I Find Christmas?,” a song so sappy it could bring a tear to the eye of Vladimir Putin, who would only deny the tear’s existence after dousing it with radioactive polonium. If I sing the opening line in a pathetic voice, Rosemarie is guaranteed to well up and then smack me.

The other is an all-mime version of the O. Henry story “Gift of the Magi.” I’m 90% sure it starred Shields & Yarnell, but I can’t find a record of it anywhere. Maybe it only aired in New York.

Music: Jingle Bell Rawk!

I’ve always thought of Trans-Siberian Orchestra as music to synchronize your Christmas lights to. But this New York Times article set me straight. The brains of the outfit is a product of Flushing, Queens, like Rosemarie. And the core of the group are members of ‘80s metal band Savatage. Behold the video for their biggest hit, “Hall of the Mountain King.” It plays like a Tenacious D NyQuil dream. Awesome!

Miscellaneous: King of the Silver Screen

Stephen King names his ten best movies of 2006 in Entertainment Weekly. I love King’s column: the odds of any other writer for a mass-market magazine singling out the old-school ‘70s-style urban action flick Waist Deep for year-end honors are mighty slim. I missed Waist Deep in theaters, but I’ll make a point of watching it now. King knows whereof he speaks when it comes to pulp.

Still, I can’t get behind his central thesis that it’s harder to go out to movies with all the media options now available. I know it’s true, but I can’t get behind it. The whole "let’s binge on an entire TV season in a single weekend pausing only to order Chinese and attend to biological urges" thing eludes me. But apparently only me; in the same EW issue, no less a celestial being than Oprah Winfrey claims that on a recent Saturday she never took her pj’s off and consumed 13 episodes of Grey’s Anatomy in one sitting.

Don’t get me wrong. I use technology to my advantage. I powered through the fourth season of The Wire on my schedule via On Demand. But I move at my own erratic – read: slow – pace. If I tried to compress all of Battlestar Galactica Season Two into a long weekend I’d go to bed the way I did every Halloween of my childhood, having gorged on candy: feeling kind of shaky and not a little bit greasy.

Plus there are some movies that have to be seen on the big screen if you have any interest in them. I’m sure Waist Deep will play just fine in the living room at Chez K. But King admits he was too busy watching Jericho on his computer to check out Clint Eastwood’s WWII epic Flags of Our Fathers. When he catches up with Flags, which I liked, on video – or if he goes to see the companion film Letters from Iwo Jima, now garnering huge acclaim – he’s going to be kicking himself no matter how big his home theater is.

Miscellaneous: My Holiday Gift-Giving Guide

Because I’m not just some blogger. I’m a lifestyle consultant.

No links to extravagant purchases like the Dolce & Gabbana Razr or a full-size replica of the Lost in Space robot (hat tip to Ken Levine). Instead, two affordable items guaranteed to play big at the most wonderful time of the year.

Candles are a standby gift. Why not bring them into the new millennium with LED candles? Long-lasting battery-powered flames that flicker like the genuine article. Not only can you blow them out, you can blow them on, too. They came in handy during last night’s storm, the Northwest equivalent of a nor’easter. (Update: they’re already sold out at ThinkGeek, but they’re available at plenty of other locations.)

Next, the new Deluxe Edition DVD of Patrick Swayze’s Road House. I’m a late convert to this movie’s charms, which are manifold. Gratuitous sex, gratuitous violence, gratuitous monster trucks, gratuitous mullets. (When are mullets not gratuitous?) Now this celebration of all that was right about Reagan-era America finally receives the video treatment it deserves. Comes complete with feature on real-life bouncers called “What Would Dalton Do?” and commentary track by longtime fans Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier that pinpoints every homoerotic nuance. Trust me, it can’t miss.

Miscellaneous: Links

As award season approaches, Variety asks prominent critics to consider what Oscar got right, got wrong, and overlooked in the past 20 years. Genre movies, as always, hold up best. I’m just saying.

Speaking of awards contenders, many have wondered what Queen Elizabeth II would make of The Queen. Now we know.

Great news: GreenCine Daily will be serializing Eddie Muller’s out-of-print book Grindhouse.

Word usage conundrum of the day: Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League says that Jimmy Carter’s controversial new book on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict propagates a “shameless, shameful canard.” Is it possible to be both? After consulting a dictionary, I think it might be.

Peter Boyle, R.I.P.

When a much-loved actor passes away, it’s funny the first thing you think of. Sometimes it’s not the obvious high points, which in Peter Boyle’s career are numerous. His long run on Everybody Loves Raymond, his legendary performances in Young Frankenstein and Joe.

Sometimes it’s not even your personal favorites. Like Boyle’s work as the crafty campaign manager in The Candidate. Or the double-dealing bartender in The Friends of Eddie Coyle, the kind of guy who’d feel right at home in The Departed. Or his Chief Orman in Honeymoon in Vegas. (To this day, whenever I hear the score from South Pacific, I mime putting a phone to my ear at the line “Bali H’ai will call you” in tribute to Boyle.) Or his dual turns as cabbies in The Shadow and Taxi Driver. Or his Emmy-winning appearance as morose psychic Clyde Bruckman on The X-Files, delivering what may be my favorite line from the show to Agent Mulder: “You know, there are worse ways to go, but I can’t think of a more undignified one than autoerotic asphyxiation.”

No, sometimes what occurs to you is an offbeat tidbit that seems to capture an individual’s personality. And in Boyle’s case, it’s from a 2003 New York Times article on the madness of owning a car in Manhattan.

“I consider using my car unnecessarily as one of the great joys of my life,” said Peter Boyle, the actor ... Mr. Boyle starts most days with a stroll to the bank for a roll of quarters (he considers it unsportsmanlike to use a garage when he is out and about). He takes his Mercedes station wagon everywhere, even to Elaine’s, which is only a block or two away from his home. “Being dedicated to your car here is a test of patience and cunning,” he said. “And there’s better radio reception than in the house.”

That says it all, really. He will be missed.

Miscellaneous: Link

Wired magazine asked notable SF, fantasy and horror writers to come up with six word short stories as Ernest Hemingway did. This feature proves once again that Alan Moore is a genius. Read the results in the photo versions in the lower right corner to experience the full effect of the graphics.

Miscellaneous: Grab Bag

I thought I had an entire post prompted by Sarah Weinman’s question: whither noir? Specifically, is there any truth to a critic’s charge that many contemporary writers are “knowingly catering to a minority audience of crime buffs”?

It was going to be a thing of beauty, this post, a heartbreaking elegy for the generalist that would use this website as an example. Then I thought about it for three seconds and realized how self-serving it would be. Instead, I’ll make the one small point that has some merit. Sarah’s post springs in part from Tribe’s interview with Christa Faust. Swing by my links page and you’ll see all three of these fine bloggers there. Meaning that if there is “a minority audience of crime buffs,” I’m probably in the thick of it.

So to buttress my generalist bona fides, some quick takes:

Volver. Almodovar’s latest suffers only in comparison with his extraordinary recent run – All About My Mother, Talk to Her, Bad Education. It’s a bit self-conscious at times in its return to his older style, but still completely captivating. It’s like an entire rainy day afternoon of Joan Crawford movies rolled into one film. I trust all those Penelope Cruz naysayers are queuing up for crow.

Déjà Vu. The second hour isn’t as good as the first. But it’s packed with giddy moments and high-grade hokum. The car chase in which the present pursues the past is the reason why I go to the movies.

And, to burnish my crime buff credentials:

Hose Monkey. Author Tony Spinosa is actually Reed Farrel Coleman, creator of the award-winning Moe Prager series. The focus of this book is Joe Serpe, a one-time NYPD detective disgraced in a corruption scandal. He’s drawn into a murder investigation with the unlikeliest of partners: his former Internal Affairs nemesis, now dealing with demons of his own. A solid mystery made memorable by rich Long Island atmosphere and a great dynamic between the two lead characters.

Miscellaneous: Birthday Girl

Friday was Rosemarie’s birthday. Part of the gala celebration was ceding control of the TV to her.

We began the week with Wordplay, the winning documentary about crossword creators and fanatics. By the end of the movie Rosemarie, who tackles Saturday’s New York Times puzzle in ink, had jumped out of her seat and was shouting answers at the screen. She has now made it her goal to enter the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament at least once. Considering that her last such goal was to appear as a contestant on Jeopardy!, Stamford here we come.

She also wanted to revisit one of her favorite films, 1933’s Design for Living. Bohemian artists and longtime pals Fredric March and Gary Cooper both fall for Miriam Hopkins. The problem is that Hopkins falls for both of them. Ernst Lubitsch directs, with Noel Coward’s play adapted by Ben Hecht. That’s quite the writing combination, one graceful and sophisticated, the other brash and voluble, both of them as witty as all get-out. I’d draw a parallel, but modesty forbids.

For once, the birthday was not the signature event of Rosemarie’s week, or even her Friday. She delivered her presentation How Not To Do It: Scientific Misconduct in the Cinema, to her largest audience to date. Based on a paper she prepared for the Society of Research Administrators International, it uses movies to illustrate ethical dilemmas faced by scientists in matters like animal testing (Deep Blue Sea), human trials (Extreme Measures), and reporting conclusions (Hollow Man). Not many academic lectures refer to both the German Expressionist classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Diane Ladd’s performance in Carnosaur.

What kills me is that in her presentation, Rosemarie has to set up film clips. I wanted to be the first one in this marriage to do that. Damn.

Sort-Of Related: The Wonga Coup, by Adam Roberts (2006)/The Dogs of War (1981)

There’s art imitating life. And there’s going through the looking glass.

In his book Roberts, a correspondent for The Economist, recounts the fascinating tale of an attempted coup in the West African nation of Equatorial Guinea in March 2004. It reads like a real-life version of a Ross Thomas novel. You’ve got mercenaries with names like Nosher, Captain Pig and Victor Dracula. Shadowy arms dealers. Cannibalistic dictators. Mystery men signing checks. And figures from various intelligence services who may or may not approve of what’s going on. Even the charmless son of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher gets caught up in the action.

But the strangest aspect of the story is how it’s a pop culture hall of mirrors. The coup’s mastermind, former SAS officer Simon Mann, was inspired by the derring-do of a fellow mercenary whose exploits were fictionalized in the movie The Wild Geese. Mann briefly left professional soldiering for the film business, serving as actor and technical advisor on Bloody Sunday. When he set out to overthrow Equatorial Guinea’s government, his blueprint was the 1974 Frederick Forsyth novel The Dogs of War, a near-documentary account of a previous coup attempt in the country – which, Roberts discovers, Forsyth had a hand in organizing and financing. When Mann runs short of capital, he allegedly receives support from another novelist, Jeffrey Archer, who in 1980 wrote his own story of overthrowing an African government. Meanwhile, Mann’s failed effort has already been turned into a BBC film, with Roberts as consultant. Is that clear to everyone?

The 1981 movie version of The Dogs of War has been parked on my DVR for months. Roberts’ excellent book finally prompted me to watch it. It’s smartly made but not exactly fleet of foot. There’s a memorable scene in which Christopher Walken, playing a mercenary masquerading as a nature photographer, reels off the scientific names of several species of bird. You haven’t heard Latin until you’ve heard it from Christopher Walken.

Miscellaneous: Who Reviews The Reviewers?

I may have a point here. Bear with me.

My morning media routine starts with the New York Times. Today that meant Manohla Dargis’ rave review of the new David Lynch movie Inland Empire. Ms. Dargis describes it as:

one of the few films I’ve seen this year that deserves to be called art. Dark as pitch, as noir, as hate, by turns beautiful and ugly, funny and horrifying, the film is also as cracked as Mad magazine, though generally more difficult to parse.

Next, to the internet. At Movie City News, David Poland ran an email from screenwriter Larry Gross that calls the Dargis review “‘important’ film criticism” comparable to Pauline Kael’s landmark essay on Bonnie & Clyde, which “helped that film find a place for itself in the minds and hearts of the mass audience.” Poland himself also weighs in:

I was also struck by the sense that this piece was one of (Dargis’) most significant at the NYT. It’s not that it is her best writing or that the film is the most complex she’s written about. It’s that the review reaches well past traditional reviewing and speaks in a very interesting way to how we watch movies and how we should be watching movies.

MCN then followed up with a longer piece by Gross. The ever-reliable GreenCine Daily augmented the discussion by collecting other reactions to the movie and the review. Inland Empire, and specifically Dargis’ take on it, are the talk of the film blogging world.

Then I swung by another daily stop, Andrew Sullivan’s blog. As a rule, I don’t read political sites. I disappear down enough rabbit holes as it is. I read Sullivan because he’s a blogging pioneer, and because I find his point of view fascinating. A gay, Catholic, conservative Republican who turned against President Bush, he’s chronicled his struggle to hold true to his philosophy in a party that seems to have no use for him.

Sullivan also linked to Dargis’ review, under the headline “Poseur Alert.” He gives a hat tip to National Review columnist John Podhoretz. The title of his post on Dargis?

The Most Pretentious Piece of Writing in All of Recorded History

Rabbit hole entered. A Technorati search revealed that both echo chambers are working. Right-wing blogs pick up Podhoretz’s dig, while left-wingers mock earlier attempts at film criticism by Podhoretz and friends.

That’s the summary. Whew.

My point – and as I said, I may have one – is that the film community has declared Dargis’ review a significant event while those who view life through the prism of politics dismiss it as self-indulgent.

But ‘twas ever thus. Whenever an avant-garde work is praised, people will scoff. And to be honest, the section of Dargis’ review excerpted by Sullivan does make the movie sound like a tough sit. All that hooey about mirrors and entrances and exits.

Still, this seems like more than a knee-jerk response. There’s an undercurrent of judgment, a sense that there’s something unseemly about displaying such passion in print. “Doesn’t Manohla know that we’ve moved past that? She should save her enthusiasms for her blog.”

Here’s what I think. You can’t call a review pretentious unless you’ve seen the work in question. The word does mean making unjustified or excessive claims, after all. Manohla Dargis can get carried away with herself; she’s written reviews where I don’t know what the hell she’s talking about. But this isn’t one of them. This is her making a pitch for a movie that clearly moved her, and one that might get overlooked not only because of the crush of year-end titles but because of its odd release pattern. (Lynch is distributing Inland Empire himself. Its Oscar campaign consists of him sitting on various Los Angeles street corners with a cow.)

But ultimately, the review doesn’t matter to me. It’s for a David Lynch movie. I would have seen it anyway.

Movies: The Gambler and The Lady (1952)/Heat Wave (1954)

Onward into the Hammer Film Noir Collection I go. Here’s installment one.

This DVD serves up quite the double bill; Leonard Maltin’s Classic Movie Guide describes one film as “tepid” and the other as “tame.” Sadly, I can’t entirely disagree. The movies are primarily of interest to genre completists who want to see familiar noir tropes played out against unfamiliar English locales. Still, the collision of twisted psychology and the stiff-upper-lip mentality of our cousins across the pond yields a few interesting moments.

Heat Wave, also known as The House Across The Lake, also known as the tame one, answers the question “What would a film noir from the director of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang be like?” Ken Hughes even adapted it from his own novel. The story is the classic set-up of loner (here a visiting American novelist suffering from writer’s block), scheming dame, and wealthy husband. But Hughes adds the wrinkle of the loner and the husband meeting first and becoming friends, with the husband even giving tacit approval to his own cuckolding. The hubby is played by Sid James, a staple of the Carry On series who delivers solid performances in several U.K. noirs. The rest of the movie plays out exactly as you’d expect, with the husband’s murder almost an afterthought.

Hammer often imported American actors for their crime dramas, either those on the downswing of their careers or recognizable faces who never hit the big time. The Gambler and The Lady – that would be the tepid one – features one of the latter in Dane Clark. He’s a Yank who fled the States after a manslaughter beef. His obsession with joining high society has him taking etiquette lessons, but the poor sap doesn’t realize that the British upper crust is every bit as treacherous as the gangsters he left behind. The movie’s slow to get started and somewhat obvious once it does, but the story’s an interesting one. Plus the object of Clark’s affections is played by Naomi Chance, an appealing actress reminiscent of Kate Winslet. I haven’t seen anything else she’s been in, but one of her credits stands out: a 1964 television adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s The Caves of Steel, written by Doctor Who guru Terry Nation and starring Peter Cushing as Lije Bailey. According to Wikipedia, it no longer exists.

Miscellaneous: Links

Via Bill Crider, we have the ten hottest alien babes of TV and film. And from GreenCine Daily comes the 50 greatest commercials of the ‘80s. That should keep you busy for a while.

Miscellaneous: Any Bonds Today?

It takes more than box office for a movie to become a genuine phenomenon. I learned Casino Royale reached that stage from my regular perch in Seattle’s finest bar. Not because three people marched in and ordered Vesper cocktails, but because I discovered such people have been coming in since the movie opened. Seattle’s best barmen were ready with the drink’s history, while I pitched in by clearing up some confusion regarding the earlier, allegedly comic version of Casino Royale. I do what I can to make myself useful.

The 007 fervor won’t die down. Writers Javier Grillo-Marxuach and Lee Goldberg are just the latest to have listed their Bond favorites; Lee’s gone so far as to rank the title songs.

I’m not prepared to do likewise. Beyond a handful of generalizations, rating the Bond movies is such fine work that it requires the use of an electron microscope. Herewith, however, are those generalizations.

Connery is tops. (I am prepared, on the strength of Casino Royale alone, to grant Daniel Craig the #2 slot.) From Russia With Love is a notch better than Goldfinger. The thing everybody loves about You Only Live Twice – the volcano hideout – is the reason I don’t care for the movie. Diamonds Are Forever is the kinkiest Bond film. I really should watch it again.

Yes, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is a damned good movie.

The Spy Who Loved Me is Roger Moore’s best. The nuclear sabotage at the circus plot in Octopussy may be my favorite 007 storyline (Frederick Forsyth told a similar yarn in The Fourth Protocol, which became a movie starring ... Pierce Brosnan), but I can never remember how it ties in with the movie’s actual villain Louis Jourdan. A View To A Kill has the dumbest title and the highest inverse theme song/movie quality ratio.

Timothy Dalton makes a very underrated 007, and The Living Daylights is perhaps the most underrated Bond film. But I don’t like his second outing, Licence to Kill, at all.

Brosnan was a fine Bond, but he’s even better when he riffs on the character in other movies like The Tailor of Panama and The Matador.

As for the theme songs, I’m with Lee. There are the obvious winners (including k.d. lang’s “Surrender” from Tomorrow Never Dies), and then there’s the rest. I’d rather talk up the parody Bond songs. The runner-up is Weird Al Yankovic’s theme from Spy Hard, complete with mock title sequence.

But the champ is Robbie Williams’ “Man For All Seasons” from Johnny English. “So charismatic/With an automatic/Never prematurely shooting his load.” Noel Coward couldn’t top that.

Miscellaneous: Link

All the year-end Oscar hopefuls in the pipeline, and what movie am I most excited about? Hot Fuzz, the latest from the Shaun of the Dead team. It even has Timothy Dalton in it. Here’s the trailer.

TV: The Wire

Great interview in Slate with the show’s creator David Simon. It lays out what’s in store for the fifth and final season. Here’s my favorite quote:

On THE WIRE, we were trying to explore this stuff you don’t see – the dope on the table, all that has been done to death. Sometimes the real poetry of police work is a couple of detectives with their feet on a desk in the backroom looking at ballistics.

That’s the essence of the show: avoiding obligatory scenes, digging drama out of the everyday. I also love how Simon praises HBO’s other series while admitting that he doesn’t watch them. It confirms my long-held suspicion that The Wire works as well as it does because it’s made by people who don’t know or care about TV conventions. I can’t believe Simon conned HBO out of five complete seasons.

Miscellaneous: YouTube Treasure of the Day

My prayers have been answered. Some kind soul has finally uploaded the video for Saga’s “Wind Him Up.” Why have I been searching for it for lo these many months?

1. I actually like the song. I was always a sucker for prog-rock keyboards.

2. The video is unintentionally hilarious. It’s got everything. Cheap tuxedos, a Camaro, and a degenerate gambler who’s hooked on ... roulette. Those are the worst kind.

3. The last shot. It’s why this video has haunted my brain for 20 years. It’s so stupendously literal-minded that I can’t think of it without laughing. Watch and you’ll see.