TV: Frank’s, For The Memories

I’m on deadline, meaning I’ll be taking a sabbatical for the next few days. Lucky for you it’s Sinatra month on Turner Classic Movies, so you have this widget to tide you over ‘til I return.

UPDATE: Initially I embedded the widget, but it starts automatically and I hate that. So you can find it here.

The High Society number with Bing Crosby is a favorite. TCM is also airing some of Frank’s TV specials on Sunday evenings at 8PM Eastern and Pacific. I’m waiting for his 1967 show with Ella Fitzgerald and Antonio Carlos Jobim, which airs May 18.

Labels: music, TV

TV: Today’s Mitchell And Webb Moment

If you’re not watching this show, you’re missing out. I have been known to talk about the Mets this way, and will start doing the same with movies.



Miscellaneous: Links, All-Brawl Edition

As a David Mamet fan, I can’t wait to see Redbelt. In an article he wrote for the New York Times, Mamet calls it a “fight film” and discusses a few cinematic battles and battlers that left memorable impressions.

Then, in the Daily News, Mamet calls Redbelt his tribute to classic film noir and mentions a few favorites.

Interestingly, both pieces cite the original Night and the City. Which also earns a place on this list of the 20 greatest movie fight scenes. Hat tip to Bill Crider and, by extension, Walter Satterthwait.

Labels: Miscellaneous, Movies, Noir, TV

TV: Today’s Infotainment Break

There’s a real post coming up, I swear. Witty, impassioned, the whole shebang. In the meantime, here’s a clip from my new favorite show, That Mitchell and Webb Look on BBC America. It’s the kind of educational program that’s all too rare these days. Here, Dave and Rob explain how cheese is made.



Oh, yeah. I should probably say it’s NSFW.

Labels: cheese, education, TV

TV: Thoughts on the AVN Awards

Oh my God! The Adult Video News Awards are being televised on Showtime? This means they read my letters!

Wow. Always a bad sign when the women escorting the winners offstage are better dressed than the winners themselves.

I don’t know any of these people. I don’t watch porn or listen to Howard Stern. But it’s an award show, so I have to watch.

After 25 years they’re still doing jokes about “having hard days”? Bruce Vilanch is just phoning it in.

Every woman who teeters onstage hikes the bodice of her dress up, as if afraid it’s going to fall off. What are they worried about? They’re porn stars.

Ron Jeremy – hey, I do know one of these people! – just said he’s reading off cue cards. All the money in this business and they can’t afford teleprompters?

Every award has three presenters, and some categories have fifteen nominees. The adult film industry is like pee-wee soccer. Everybody gets recognition.

As always, lots of competition in Best High End All-Sex Release. In another year, any of these titles could win.

Guy in the front row! Button your shirt! Oh, sorry. Buckle your shirt.

Sweet Jesus, there’s a production number.

It’s set in the year 2011. It’s about abuses of the Patriot Act. I’m not kidding. And I’m so happy I’m watching this.

Oh, Lord, now the lead dancer is being arrested by FBI agents wearing flak jackets and gimp hoods who are taking her into custody using hula hoops.

I’ve got to admit, this number isn’t completely terrible. I’m glad they finally stopped hiring Debbie Allen.

Look at all the bored tongue kissing in the audience. Is that how you place a drink order?

Jenna Jameson is presenting an award named after her. She’s up there having a mini-meltdown, rambling about her crazy year and generally overstaying her welcome. She’s the Mickey Rooney of the AVN Awards.

So Jenna’s not retiring, but she said she’ll never spread her legs in this industry again. Clearly, there’s some nuance here that is lost on me.

This is the last year of the film category? Only video from now on. Jack Horner must be spinning in his grave.

No. Another production number. It features a drag queen and all the starlets groping one another. It’s like my senior prom is happening all over again.

Female Performer of the Year is the final category, the equivalent of Best Picture. The winner looks like she just came from a My Chemical Romance video shoot.

This must be the only awards show in television history to end with a 2257 notice. To read more about it, pick up Christa Faust’s Money Shot.

DVD: Houdini, The Movie Star

Let’s class it up a little around here, shall we? Via BoingBoing, here’s the preview for Kino Video’s upcoming 3-disc collection of Harry Houdini films. Gotta love that robot.

Labels: DVD, TV

Miscellaneous: Grab Bag

Busy, busy, busy, so here’s a bunch of stuff at once.

A Diet of Treacle, by Lawrence Block (1961/2008). Hard Case Crime has reprinted some extraordinary early novels by Lawrence Block. But Treacle, originally published as Pads Are For Passion by Sheldon Lord, is the first that seems like a paycheck gig. It’s a sordid trip through the Greenwich Village beatnik world. Block paints the scene as peopled largely by posers and venal layabouts, a characterization I have no problem with. As always in a Block book, there’s fluid prose and vivid New York atmosphere to spare. But nothing much happens until the last forty pages or so. To be fair, those forty pages are pretty damn good, but Treacle is more a curio than anything else.

And then there’s that title. I dig that it’s a riff on Lewis Carroll, who always seemed like he Got It. But as a title, man, it’s strictly from Squaresville.

Stardust (2007). Why wasn’t this a big hit? High adventure with a noble hero, a fallen star, evil princes, wicked witches, and a swishbuckling sky pirate (not a typo), all of it served up tongue-in-cheek. Loads of fun.

Let’s All Kill Constance, by Ray Bradbury (2003). In 1960 Hollywood, an unnamed writer (c’mon, it’s Ray himself) is asked by a legendary star of the silent screen to figure out who left two “Books of the Dead” for her. If James Joyce wrote a pulp detective novel after mainlining Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon, Constance would be the result. I don’t know if I completely got it, but I did enjoy it.

Larry King Live. Last night, Larry was responsible for the single dumbest hour of television I’ve ever seen. I was on a treadmill at the gym, but as fast as I ran I couldn’t escape it. Larry had tag teams of celebrities talking up their picks in the 2008 presidential election. The dictionary may not agree with me here, but I’m making a new rule I expect Larry to follow. Newspaper editorial boards, political organizations, and elected officials can “endorse” a candidate. Samwise Gamgee and Kumar can only support the individual of their choice. I have spoken.

Labels: Books, Miscellaneous, Movies, TV

Rant #1: So Long, Inside The NFL

HBO announced that it was canceling Inside the NFL after 31 years. I can understand the network’s argument; in the era of all-sports channels, Wednesday is a little late for a highlights show. Even when NFL Films provides the footage.

NFL Films, owned by the National Football League, says they’ll bring the show to a new station in the fall. I’d wager that a serious contender would be the network owned by the National Football League.

Guess what, NFL? I’m still not anteing up for your damn channel.

Rant #2: Wrong Robots, Dude

“These are not the droids you’re looking for.”

When that Star Wars line was referenced in The King of Kong, I realized I was getting tired of it. Now that Mitt Romney has said it, its usefulness is officially at an end. The moratorium begins ... nnnnnow.

TV: Weird Show Biz Story of the Day

Arrested Development’s Will Arnett is forced to give up his job on Knight Rider because of his commercial work for General Motors. And I was so looking forward to hearing KITT say, “With club sauce.” At least Val Kilmer makes an excellent replacement.

Miscellaneous: Ministry of Silly Walks Links

The AV Club has a great interview with John Cleese. But they don’t ask the question I want answered. Why is he providing election analysis for Fox News?

Labels: Rants, TV

Sports: Step Right Up and Greet Him

I don’t want to make too much of the fact that Johan Santana, two-time Cy Young award winner and one of the most dominant pitchers of this era, now wears a New York Mets uniform. I will simply acknowledge this great moment in the history of athletic competition, and humbly move on.

TV: Up and Down the Dial

Last night’s Obama/Clinton debate took place in the Kodak Theater, home of the Academy Awards, and CNN shot it like there wasn’t going to be a ceremony this year. I caught glimpses of Steven Spielberg, Pierce Brosnan, Diane Keaton, and Stevie Wonder among others. The only thing missing was a red carpet show.

When I had my wonkish fill I flipped channels and found, to my surprise, a bedridden Perry Mason (Raymond Burr) being spelled by ... Bette Davis? Turns out Perry is part of the line-up on the Retro Television Network, added to my cable service with zero fanfare. It’s so new that its website isn’t finished yet. Among the shows in the RTN rotation: The Untouchables, The Fugitive, The Rockford Files, Cannon, Hawaii Five-O, and Mission: Impossible. There are even “retromercials.” Of most interest to me is a Saturday night bad movie show hosted by, like, freaky beatniks, man.

Incidentally, Bette won the case.

Labels: baseball, TV

Sort-Of Related: Park Row (1952)/The Wire, Season Five

Park Row, Samuel Fuller’s two-fisted tribute to the glory days of the newspaper industry, has long been one of my personal white whales. It’s unable on video and seldom turns up on television, owing in part to its history as one of the first independent films. I was thrilled to see it surface on Turner Classic Movies during John Sayles’ recent stint as guest programmer – and could have kicked myself for almost forgetting to set the DVR.

Why do I love Sam Fuller? Because he has no problem opening the film with a list of more than 1700 daily newspapers, followed by the 120-point declaration DEDICATED TO AMERICAN JOURNALISM. Because when he offers adoring close ups of the statues of Horace Greeley and Benjamin Franklin that adorn the New York street of the title, you know someone will later get his ass kicked in front of them. Because he’ll wear his heart on his sleeve and give you the shirt off his back.

Sayles wasn’t kidding when he introduced the film by saying that it packs twenty years of journalism history into two months. Gene Evans, a Fuller regular who once played John D. MacDonald’s Meyer to Sam Elliott’s Travis McGee, stars as the crusading editor who gets a chance to start his own paper in 1886 Manhattan. He then singlehandedly develops banner headlines, newsstands, and linotype, all while romancing his chief competitor. It’s one damn thing after another, served up with Fuller’s customary brio and feet-firmly-planted honesty. Alas, the print quality was noticeably poor; someone needs to restore this corker sharpish.

It was strange to watch Fuller’s film in the midst of the fifth season of HBO’s The Wire, focused as it is on the inexorable demise of the daily newspaper. Series creator David Simon had a storied career with the Baltimore Sun, and he’s openly admitted that he has axes to grind. Personally I think the man responsible for the finest show in television history is entitled do what he likes, even if he is nostalgic for an era that may have been an aberration.

That said, the newsroom scenes have yet to grip me. Maybe Simon’s proximity to this world weakens the material. But the truth is the drama is simply too pallid compared to the rest of what The Wire has to offer. Cops, drug dealers and politicians are being challenged by technology and cold economics. They’re not being fundamentally altered by them, the way newspapers are. End of story. As Sam Fuller would say, thirty.

Labels: Movies, TV

Miscellaneous: Today’s Brilliant Observation

Thanks to the internet, everything is now either overrated or underrated.

Miscellaneous: How I’ve Been Spending My Time

Jekyll (2007). This six-hour contemporary take on Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic – by Steven Moffat, who according to Rosemarie is responsible for the best Doctor Who episodes – gets more ridiculous and more entertaining as it goes along. It’s a field day for actor James Nesbitt. And Denis Lawson from Local Hero – fine, Wedge Antilles to you Star Wars geeks – makes a sublime heavy.

Billion-Dollar Kiss: The Kiss That Saved Dawson’s Creek and Other Adventures in TV Writing, by Jeffrey Stepakoff (2007). Stepakoff’s career in TV spans the everybody-gets-a-deal boom years of the ‘90s and the recent rise of reality TV. His book details the many ways that industry consolidation has affected the television business, from the stunted development of most writers’ careers to the neglect of entire demographics. Interesting material to consider in the midst of a writers’ strike.

Labels: Books, Miscellaneous, TV

Lady, Make a Note of This: The Nicer Side of Reality

Because we could use a female perspective around here, welcome to the first in a series of occasional guest posts by my significant other. Take it away, Rosemarie!

I wasn’t sure how much I was going to enjoy Lifetime’s new show How to Look Good Naked, hosted by Carson Kressley, mostly because of the host himself. On Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, he was the fastest with the double entendres, trying on the style-impaired firefighter’s helmet and making jokes about hoses. Not that I mind a good hose joke, but the constant sniping got old quick.

On Naked, we get a kinder, gentler Carson with a great idea for a show. Women who don’t like their bodies because they think they’re too [skinny, fat, short, lumpy, whatever] receive advice. Not the “lose forty pounds and get a nose job” kind of advice dished out by other reality shows, but the “you’ve got great shoulders and you can conquer the world when you’re wearing the right size bra” kind of advice.

A woman who was crying because she didn’t want to look into a full-length mirror ends up posing for some strategically-draped nude glamour shots and feeling like a million bucks. I start weeping during the opening credits and don’t stop until it’s over. What can I say, empowerment gets to me. And on a personal note, that bra size thing is true.

Miss America: Reality Check is another show that doesn’t go mean. The contestants are the 52 young women who will be competing for the Miss America crown this Saturday. The show, part of the pageant’s ongoing attempt to update its image, brings in stylists and beauty consultants to help the women become the best “modern” Miss America they can be. So it’s out with the hairspray and in with the flat iron. The show’s fun, because I for one don’t mind a reality series where no contestants are voted off, fired, or have their sashes snipped by rhinestone-bedecked novelty scissors, to cite another Carson Kressley program. But 52 contestants are about 40 too many. The few singled out were the quirkiest ones – i.e., they had short hair – who were alternately praised for being themselves and reprimanded for acting oddly.

That kind of conformity is what cut short my pageant career. That and my chosen talent; apparently the judges don’t care for Zasu Pitts impersonators. My favorite talent of this year’s cadre? Miss Texas’ Character Jazz on Pointe. I have no idea what it is, but I’m rooting for her to win it all.

Labels: Posts by Rosemarie, TV

Miscellaneous: Grab Bag

Oscar nominations. They’re out, and here’s all I have to say: if “Falling Slowly” from Once doesn’t win Best Original Song, somebody’s getting a letter.

Revolutionary Road, by Richard Yates (1961). A modern classic I am only now coming to. It deserves its reputation; I was well and truly staggered. Yates’s story of stultifying suburban life and how the lies we tell ourselves can poison others blazed a trail that novelists have been following for decades.

The Colbert Report. Tuesday night’s show, with “Stephen Colbert” dipping into Stephen Colbert’s family history and a closing Gospel number, is a must-see. Colbert has always walked a high wire, but the WGA strike has removed his net. He has yet to stumble.

Miracle (2004). I don’t know how I missed this movie about the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team. I’m a sucker for inspirational sports films, it acknowledges my alma mater as a college hockey powerhouse, and I revere Kurt Russell as the acme of American manhood. A recent mention from Kung Fu Monkey corrected my oversight.

Art in the Blood, by Craig McDonald (2006). Not too long after I raved about McDonald’s debut novel Head Games it was nominated for an Edgar, due presumably to my endorsement. I can also recommend this collection of interviews with some of the leading lights of contemporary crime fiction. McDonald knows how to ask questions, and includes a wide range of writers. Lots of insight to be gained here.

Labels: Books, Miscellaneous, Movies, TV

Movie: Skidoo (1968)

I watched it. All of it. From the truncated cartoon opening to the closing credits, which are sung. Yet another item I can cross off life’s to-do list.

The history of Otto Preminger’s unwieldy combination of head movie and counterculture farce, laid out nicely in this TCM piece, is more interesting than its plot. And that’s saying something. Jackie Gleason is a reformed mobster coerced by the country’s top kingpin “God,” (played by Groucho Marx in his final performance) to go into prison and whack his onetime best friend. He’s thrown into a cell with a draft dodger (Austin Pendleton, easily the best thing in the movie) who accidentally turns him onto LSD. Meanwhile, Gleason’s daughter and wife fall in with a band of hippies. Here, watch the trailer.

Some select highlights from the Chez K running commentary:

Me: I don’t know which thought is more disturbing, Carol Channing sleeping with Frankie Avalon or Frankie Avalon sleeping with Carol Channing.

Rosemarie: Please don’t talk to me.

And when the movie was over:

Rosemarie: Honestly? Twenty minutes in I was hoping the wind would knock the cable out so I wouldn’t have to watch the rest of it.

Me: You could have just walked away.

Rosemarie: No. I couldn’t. But I can still root for an act of God.

As bad as Skidoo is – and is it bad; I’ve seen episodes of The Monkees that make more sense and do a better job of explaining the ‘60s – it at least represents an honest attempt to come to terms with the times. Which is more than I can say for 1967’s The Love-Ins, which followed Skidoo on TCM. It stars James MacArthur as the least believable hippie in film history – he still has his Dan-o hair, for Christ’s sake – and Susan Oliver, the first actress to become famous for going green. At one point Oliver takes a massive dose of LSD – again with the acid! – and does a striptease during a protracted trip based on Alice in Wonderland.

Rosemarie: They spent too much money on this. The freakouts in Skidoo were better because they looked cheaper.

Let that be a lesson to prospective filmmakers out there.

Strike Stuff: The Golden Globes

The WGA makes it difficult for the awards show to go on. Note to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association: maybe the writers don’t want to help you out because you treat them so shabbily. Only one screenplay category, for adapted and original, with a mere five slots? No recognition of TV writing at all? And yet you split the lead acting categories into comedy and drama so you can pack the hall with A-listers, and nominate seven movies for best drama just ‘cause you feel like it? You’re lucky the Guild doesn’t picket you when there isn’t a strike.

TV: The Wire

The fifth and final season starts tonight on HBO. Slate digs up a suppressed closing scene. I think they should air it.

Miscellaneous: Links

The New York Times on free web-based videogames. This is how I’ve been killing time while riding out a cold. I particularly like 5 Differences, which works as a soothing art piece as well as a game.

It took two years, but my friend Tony Kay finally finishes the tale of his autograph hound trip to Los Angeles, complete with photo gallery.

Labels: Miscellaneous, Movies, TV, WGA Strike

TV: Late Night Report

Second day back for the network shows and things have already returned to normal, in that I didn’t watch any of them. And if I’ve got the TV on tonight, I know what I’ll be watching: Skidoo. Otto Preminger’s counterculture film – Jackie Gleason as a mobster on acid, Groucho Marx playing a gangster named God, and hippies, hippies, hippies – gets a rare television screening on Turner Classic Movies at 2AM Eastern/11PM Pacific. Mark Evanier has done a sterling job of getting the word out. Don’t miss it.

Book: Luck Be A Lady, Don’t Die by Robert J. Randisi (2007)

Back in March I raved about the first of Randisi’s Rat Pack mysteries. The second entry in the series keeps the good times rolling. The Pack is back in Las Vegas for the premiere of Ocean’s 11, and once again they reach out to Eddie G, pit boss extraordinaire at the Sands casino, for help. Frank Sinatra, pining for Ava Gardner even as he cavorts with Juliet Prowse, has arranged for yet another young lovely to meet him in town. After checking into her hotel she disappears, and Mr. S wants Eddie to find her. Before he’s done Eddie will cross paths with a battery of luminaries, including Sam “MoMo” Giancana. With slick plotting and a peerless recreation of 1960 Las Vegas, the book goes down like good bourbon.

It also reminded me of another recent appreciation of Las Vegas in its mobbed-up heyday, from Bob Newhart in the HBO documentary Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project. As Newhart put it, say what you will about “the boys,” they knew how to run a gambling establishment.

Labels: Books, Movies, TV

TV: Scattered Thoughts

The things you watch when you don’t care about college football. I stumbled onto an encore broadcast of the World Magic Awards on the mystery station known as MyNetworkTV on New Year’s Night. I knew I’d leave it on when the announcer described some jet fuel to be used in a later bit of derring-do as “insanely flammable.”

Most of the performers who followed were insanely self-serious. It didn’t help that I’ve been watching Arrested Development on DVD again and enjoying Will Arnett’s genius as Gob Bluth, the insanely deluded illusionist.

Wow, that word really will modify anything. It’s insanely useful.

As awards show go the WMA has the right idea. No acceptance speeches. The winners just perform their acts. The Golden Globes people should bear that in mind.

Watching the show meant repeated exposure to a commercial for another MyNetwork show, a compendium of home videos so outrageous “we could have called it ‘Lifestyles of the Dumb and Stupid.’” Really? Who decides which is which?

The network late night hosts returned from their strike break yesterday, Letterman and Ferguson with writers and the others without. Detailed recaps of all five shows are at Variety’s Scribe Vibe blog.

I watched Letterman and recorded Leno. Dave’s best joke was his introduction of the picket sign-carrying chorus girls who accompanied him onstage as “the Eugene V. Debs.” Lots of pro-WGA material in what felt like a typical show.

The Tonight Show, on the other hand, had an air of unpredictability to it as Jay Leno shouldered the burden on his own. And did a solid job of it. Dave may have his pick of big-name guests, but Jay will get a bounce from the “now-what?” factor.

Monday’s the night I’m waiting for, when Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert begin ad-libbing their way through their shows. We could have used them before Iowa and New Hampshire.

Labels: TV

TV: The Ghost of Christmas What?

Rod Serling adapting Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol for the United Nations? Sterling Hayden as a Cold War Ebenezer Scrooge? Steve Lawrence – yes, that Steve Lawrence – as a WWI doughboy who speaks for all those slain in war? Peter Sellers as a crackpot Texan doomsday survivor? All of it scored by Henry Mancini and directed by Oscar-winner Joseph L. Mankiewicz?

The only thing odder than the fact that the above happened is that the resulting TV special only aired once. Thomas Vinciguerra on a bizarre chapter in Christmas and showbiz history.

Labels: TV

Book: Head Games, by Craig McDonald (2007)

Ever read a book and think the target audience consists of ... you? McDonald’s debut – named one of the year’s ten best crime novels by Eddie Muller in the San Francisco Chronicle – is about the intersection of pulp fiction, Hollywood and politics. Naturally, I ate it up.

Hec Lassiter is the last of the Black Mask boys, still cranking out two-fisted fiction in 1957. He’s being profiled by young poet Bud Fiske for True magazine when a real-adventure comes their way: they wind up in possession of the stolen head of Mexican general Pancho Villa, which is being sought by Yale University’s Skull & Bones Society for use in its secret ceremonies. Hec and Bud square off against intelligence agencies, ancient revolutionaries and homicidal frat boys. McDonald weaves plenty of real-life figures into the tale. Orson Welles, Marlene Dietrich, John Ford, Ernest Hemingway, Senator Prescott Bush. Even the senator’s grandson makes an appearance.

The plot moves at a hell-for-leather pace and is basically an excuse to mourn the passing of an era of American manhood and pay tribute to old-fashioned storytelling. Personally, I’ll never see Touch of Evil the same way again.

TV: Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project (2007)

The best observation in this HBO documentary about the insult comic comes from Penn Jillette:

“(Rickles) had this quality of ... pleasing the audience was the most important thing in the world. Not in his life, in the world. But he would not compromise in any way to please them. A very complicated, very important idea. In a certain sense, the definition of art.”

The documentary is a must-see for fans of old-school showbiz. John Landis, who directed, met Rickles while working as a production assistant on Kelly’s Heroes. But there’s no mention of their other collaboration: 1992’s Innocent Blood, in which a sexy French vampire preys on Pittsburgh gangsters. Rickles plays a Mob lawyer-turned-bloodsucker. Also in the cast are Anthony LaPaglia, future Oscar nominees Angela Bassett and Chazz Palminteri, and half of The Sopranos. It’s great, trashy fun.

TV: This Week’s Reason Why I Don’t Watch CNN

I went back and forth about posting this photograph. It’s outside my bailiwick, the image isn’t the best, and it’s in questionable taste to harp on a typo in the midst of sad news. But I mentioned it over at Bill Crider’s blog, and now I feel it’s my duty.

Here’s Wolf Blitzer reporting on Wednesday’s shooting incident ... in Obama, Nebraska.



It’s a fast-moving story, they’re under pressure, I get it. But I still can’t believe this went on the air. Is the network using an election season macro? Any word beginning with ‘O’ auto-completes as Obama unless it’s changed to Oprah or Orange?

Update: The photo is now also up at Leavenworth Street, a blog devoted to Nebraska state politics.

Video: Farewell, Something Weird

PopMatters (via GreenCine Daily) brings word of the impending demise of Something Weird Video. I’ve watched a lot of the company’s titles over the years and while the movies themselves may have been disappointing, the presentation never was. Keeping these oddities in the public eye is valuable work, and Something Weird did it well.

I wrote about two of SWV’s burlesque films with Bettie Page here, and their Barry Mahon double bill here.

Labels: Books, DVD, Miscellaneous, TV

Viewing Tip: Ellroy Vision

November is guest programmer month on Turner Classic Movies. Each night, the best network on television hands over the reins to various luminaries. There are some nice surprises scattered throughout the lineup – Charles Busch picking the underrated showbiz melodrama The Hard Way, Tracey Ullman opting for Kes, an early Ken Loach film, and 1959’s I’m All Right Jack – along with the occasional dud. Like Donald Trump night. With TCM’s vast library at his disposal, the Donald selects warhorses like The African Queen, Gone With The Wind, and Citizen Kane. Nice to see his talent for the thuddingly obvious isn’t limited to real estate. (“Slap some gold trim on there. People love that crap.”)

The night I’m waiting for is this Tuesday, November 13, when novelist James Ellroy takes to the air. His choices include a trio of California-set crime dramas from 1958, all of which are new to me:

Stakeout on Dope Street, the debut feature by Irvin Kershner (The Empire Strikes Back), with a cast that includes Roger Corman staple Jonathan Haze;

Murder by Contract, a hit man drama with Vince Edwards;

The Lineup, a cult favorite directed by Don Siegel.

I can unreservedly recommend Ellroy’s last pick. Armored Car Robbery is a crackerjack heist film from B-movie maestro Richard Fleischer, starring one of noir’s great tough guys Charles McGraw.

Clips from all four films can be seen at TCM’s website, along with a brief interview with Ellroy. He doesn’t tone down his act for the network’s gentlemanly host Robert Osborne. When asked why he chose Dope Street, Ellroy replies, “Because it made me want to shoot big H and crawl back into the gutter from which I emerged.” All that plus a shout-out to the czar of noir himself, Eddie Muller. The fun begins Tuesday at 8PM Eastern, 5PM Pacific.

TCM keeps up the noir theme after Ellroy’s picks end. At 1:45AM Eastern the network will be showing another Richard Fleischer gem, 1949’s Follow Me Quietly. This thriller about the hunt for a serial killer known as “The Judge” contains one of the creepiest shots I’ve ever seen in a movie. Quietly runs a mere 59 minutes, and is worth setting the DVR for.

TV: This Week’s Reason To Love 30 Rock

Jack Donaghy reading an official NBC ratings report: “Look how Greenzo is testing. They love him in every demographic. Colored people, broads, fairies, commies. Gosh, we’ve got to update these forms.”

That line was scripted. Which brings us to ...

News: Strike Stuff

Expect this to be a semi-regular feature until this mishegoss is over.

Lawsuits are all-American, but strikes still make some people uncomfortable. Tool around the web and you’ll find wags condemning the walkout, usually citing an Ayn Rand free market libertarianism often influenced by business practices in the start-up world. John Rogers handily demolishes those arguments. Make sure you read the comments, where he does it again.

Variety’s blog Scribe Vibe has far outstripped the paper’s coverage of the work stoppage. I’d link to this entry, in which several top talents weigh in on the strike from Friday evening’s Jack Oakie Celebration of Comedy in Film, even if it didn’t contain some interesting comments. I just love that the Motion Picture Academy still has an event named after Jack Oakie.

For those coming in late, screenwriter Howard Michael Gould lays it all out.

If you’ve got a minute, why not sign this petition in support of the writers? It probably won’t do any good. But it’s certainly not gonna hurt.

Labels: Noir, TV, WGA Strike

Miscellaneous: Quote of the Day

From the New Yorker excerpt of Steve Martin’s upcoming memoir:

Through the years, I have learned that there is no harm in charging oneself up with delusions between moments of valid inspiration.

Thank you, Steve.

TV: This Week’s Reasons to Love 30 Rock

The word “adverlingus.”

Jack Donaghy’s advice, “Never go with a hippie to a second location.”

Alec Baldwin in the roleplaying scene.

Labels: Miscellaneous, Quotes, TV

Miscellaneous: Interim Report

Feels like I’m letting the team down by posting infrequently. I’m still adjusting to my new schedule. I haven’t read much other than the paper lately. And I’ve watched nothing but baseball – go Mets! – and disappointing movies on DVD that I don’t care to discuss.

I did see Superbad, which is funny. I identified quite strongly with Evan (Michael Cera), a decent, good-hearted young man who can’t understand why his female classmates don’t honor those qualities by having sex with him. He’s the character in a teen movie who comes closest to the adolescent me – after Mark Ratner in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. A movie theater usher with a crush on Jennifer Jason Leigh. Welcome to my childhood.

We’ve also been making our way through a collection of trailers from Something Weird Video, loaned to us by a friend of Rosemarie’s. When describing her tastes in exploitation fare to him, she said simply, “Knockers over gore.” And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I married her. (I’m sure there’s also a 2000 election joke in that answer, but I’m too tired to figure out what it is.)

You need a little something extra for stopping by. Here’s a throwback throwdown from an early episode of Flight of the Conchords.

Labels: Miscellaneous, Movies, TV

Music: Classic Songs, My Way, by Paul Anka

Anka’s at it again, recording another album of comtemporary(ish) songs in his own style. I was a big fan of Rock Swings, his first such album. In my mind Anka’s rendition of “Eye of the Tiger” has now replaced Survivor’s as the definitive one, and yes, I am fully aware of just how small a boast that is.

The follow-up record isn’t as good, because of song choice. Foreigner and Bryan Adams simply aren’t as interesting as Nirvana and Soundgarden no matter how elaborate the arrangement.

There are some good tracks, like Anka’s take on Duran Duran’s “Ordinary World.” The highpoint is easily his version of “Mr. Brightside” by The Killers. That’s a song with enormous personal significance for me, and one that demands to be sung over a full orchestra. Anka does it proud.

TV: Entourage

Rosemarie, as last night’s season finale was beginning: “I hope Billy Walsh gets killed by Basque separatists while they’re in Cannes.”

Miscellaneous: Links

In preparation for the upcoming remake of 3:10 To Yuma, the AV Club rounds up 17 dark westerns.

This New York Times Magazine profile of Rick Rubin is long but, in the words of The Bad Plus guys, “essential reading for anyone with the faintest interest in the music industry.”

Labels: Miscellaneous, music, TV

Miscellaneous: The August Stuff-I-Didn’t-Get-To Post

Forever Cool, Dean Martin. Enough with the albums where dead singers “duet” with contemporary artists. Dino did more than enough entertaining when he was with us. Let the man rest in peace. That said, at least this album includes some of Dean’s in-studio banter and revives the movie theme “Who’s Got The Action?,” performed here with Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. Robbie Williams again shows he knows his way around a standard. And Kevin Spacey earns points for chutzpah – or something – for singing with Dino as Dino.

Stalin’s Ghost, by Martin Cruz Smith. I never miss an Arkady Renko book. In this latest outing, the good-hearted Russian detective is assigned to investigate subway sightings of the title specter only to find himself drawn into post-Soviet politics and the repercussions of Chechnya.

Ask The Dust. Colin Farrell is terrific in Robert Towne’s adaptation of the John Fante novel. The bantam rooster strut, the self-doubt expressed as hostility; I actually believed I was watching a struggling writer in 1930s Los Angeles. The movie never fully escapes its literary origins, but that’s part of what makes it interesting. Also excellent: the letters Farrell’s character receives from his mentor H. L. Mencken, read in the vinegary rasp of film critic Richard Schickel.

This Is Tom Jones. No sooner had I picked up the first disc in this series of variety shows than Tony Kay recapped ‘em all, proving great minds really do think alike. The women’s lib sketches with Anne Bancroft alone make this worth a rental. I was struck by how much the 1969 Tom Jones looked like one of those deadly clotheshorse thugs that turn up in U.K. gangster films like Get Carter and The Long Good Friday. Time-Life should have done a better job of editing the shows. It’s not nice to promise Joey Heatherton and then not deliver. Not nice at all. So here’s Joey doing her all to sell mattresses.

Labels: Books, Miscellaneous, Movies, music, TV

Miscellaneous: A Public Service Announcement

Traffic’s up at the old internet homestead lately, owing in part to an inordinate number of visitors in the last two weeks who searched the web for “Snyder” and “one day at a time.” I assume that’s because of this post about the late talk show host Tom Snyder and the website’s subhead.

I also assume that these people have arrived here in error.

Please always remember and don’t ever forget that the lovable handyman on the CBS sitcom One Day At A Time played by Pat Harrington was named Dwayne F. Schneider. I hope this helps.

As for those who got here searching on “swinger pics” ... your guess is as good as mine.

Labels: Miscellaneous, TV

Movie: Slayground (1983)

I watched this movie because I am a Donald E. Westlake/Richard Stark completist. And so you won’t have to, because it’s not good.

Stark’s Parker character, here named Stone and played by Peter Coyote, is forced to go ahead with an armored car robbery without his getaway driver of choice. The reckless replacement ends up killing a young girl. Her wealthy father hires a professional killer to track down the men responsible. And Stone hies off into England to hide out in a creepy amusement park.

Slayground errs in making the hit man a full-blown psychotic out of a horror movie. As a result, plenty of potentially engaging material – how does the assassin locate three loosely-connected thieves? – is skipped over entirely. There’s some interest in seeing the British comic actor Mel Smith in a straight role, but the amusement park stuff wears thin in a hurry.

Still, for the first twenty minutes or so I thought I’d lucked into something special. There’s a great, ice-cold opening scene (featuring Kelli Maroney of Night of the Comet and Chopping Maul) explaining what happened to Stone’s original driver. And the heist itself is the closest representation of Stark I’ve yet to see on film, a quick and brutal piece of work carried out in one of those isolated shades-of-brown towns where cash remains king.

But once Parker – sorry, Stone – tells the rookie driver to pull over after the accident to see if anyone’s hurt, I knew the good times were over. The Parker I know wouldn’t do that.

TV: My On Demand Demands

Hey, basic cable networks. You’d be having an even better summer if you took full advantage of On Demand. I missed Sunday night’s debut of TNT’s The Company, based on the novel by Robert Littell and starring VKDC favorite Michael Keaton as legendarily brilliant-but-batshit CIA officer James Jesus Angleton. No problem, I figure. I’ll just catch up with it during the week.

No dice. Part one hasn’t aired again, and there’s no sign of the miniseries at TNT On Demand. Yet all their other summer shows, like The Closer and Saving Grace, are there. The USA Network will allow you to catch up on Monk whenever you want, but not their spy caper Burn Notice. I know I have a DVR, but seriously, do I have to do everything myself?

Miscellaneous: Links

The unbelievable feel-good story of the day: the inspiration for Omar in The Wire and the main character of The Corner are getting married.

You don’t have to be a Catholic from Queens to find this Onion story hilarious. But it helps.

Labels: Miscellaneous, Movies, TV

Movie: The Simpsons Movie (2007)

“Irreverent humor throughout” is right. Why, the credits alone are packed with sassback!

The Simpsons big screen debut is loads of fun, with a suitably grand sense of scale and a spirit the harks back to the early seasons of the show. I could have used more Krusty, but at least he gets one great sight gag. The breakout star in the supporting cast: Chief Wiggum. Maybe he’ll get that spin-off after all. Does this mean President Arnold Schwarzenegger will meet Rainier Wolfcastle, as the movie shows they’re clearly not one and the same?

I am firmly a part of Generation Simpsons. Literally every day for the past fifteen years, I have made at least one reference to the show in conversation. One of Moe Szyslak’s pearls of wisdom comes up frequently (“I’m a well-wisher, in that I don’t wish you any specific harm”). More often than not it’s a throwaway line of Homer’s. Favorites include:

“Well, if we agree, then why are we arguing?”

“It teaches them while they learn.”

“You can’t go this far and not go further.”

“Everyone is stupid except for me.”

“It’s because they’re stupid. That’s why everyone does everything.”

To be fair, I had those last two thoughts before Homer put them into words, so I feel I deserve partial credit.

The Simpsons line I cite most often isn’t spoken by any of the regulars, but a guest player. Perhaps the show’s supreme guest player, who also turns up in the movie, one A. Brooks. It’s from his appearance as self-help guru Brad Goodman:

“There’s no trick to it! It’s just a simple trick!”

Something about that sentiment is as American as apple pie.

Labels: Movies, TV

On The Web: Siskel & Ebert

More than ten years’ worth of reviews from Siskel & Ebert, beginning in 1985, are now available online. Looking at a few clips reminded me how much of an impact the show had on me during my budding movie buff years. Sometimes the only thing I’d know about an independent or foreign film that wouldn’t play the hinterlands of South Florida would be what Gene and Roger said about it.

Too bad you can’t watch entire episodes. I have vivid recollections of one from June 1987, when Gene’s annoyance that Roger gave a thumbs down to Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket while praising Benji, The Hunted ate away at him throughout the telecast. He kept circling back to it, goading Roger. When they appeared on talk shows that summer, Gene continued to bring it up.

The Full Metal Jacket clip shows both critics at their best. (For the record, I’m with Gene.) Gene Siskel is a classic example of someone who shouldn’t work on television – a vinegary, balding, middle-aged man – taking to it with aplomb.

I stopped watching the show regularly after Gene’s death in 1999. I have tremendous respect for Roger Ebert as a critic and a human being, but it was his tetchy chemistry with Gene that made the program worth watching. For proof, check out the look of disbelief on Gene’s face as Roger famously gives a thumbs up to the Burt Reynolds kiddie comedy Cop and a Half. “Where’s your red suit and beard, Santa, ‘cause you just gave them a gift.”

Miscellaneous: Blow Out the Candles

When I was a kid, my least favorite days of the year were December 25 and August 3. Christmas and my birthday. Because for at least part of those days, I was the center of attention. And believe it or not, I hated being the center of attention.

But that was then, this is now, and I’m starting to warm up to the spotlight. So, for the good of my own mental health: today is my birthday. Hooray for me.

Labels: Embarrassing Personal Stories, Movies, On The Web, TV

Miscellaneous: The July Stuff-I-Didn’t-Get-To Post

Sunshine. The production team behind 28 Days Later turns their attention to science fiction. An impossibly beautiful team of astronauts heads into space to jumpstart the sun before it dies. I liked it quite a bit. And the science is accurate. Kinda.

The Bullet Trick, by Louise Welsh. An interesting structure and seedy atmosphere to burn in this novel about a cut-rate burlesque magician who gets in over his head with dirty cops and shady dames.

Mad Men. Two episodes in and I’m loving AMC’s first dramatic series, about advertising execs in 1960 New York. It illustrates in many subtle ways how the world has changed in 45 years – and how it hasn’t.

Miscellaneous: Quote of the Day

From the New York Times article on the success of Skinny Bitch, a chick-lit-style diet book that, to the surprise of some purchasers, includes several chapters of animal rights information. Says co-author Rory Freedman:

“They’re mad that they spent $14 on a book that was not what they thought, but they’re not mad that chickens are having beaks chopped off their faces? How is that possible? I can’t even wrap my mind around that.”

Oh, come on. I’ll bet some of the people who bought this book paid good money to have part of their own beaks chopped off their faces.

Miscellaneous: Raise A Glass

Tales of the Cocktail, the international culinary and cocktail event, held their annual shindig in New Orleans last month. There my usual hangout The Zig Zag Café took home prizes for Best Drinks Selection and Best Classic Cocktail Bar. That’s in the world, folks, and decided by people who know. Congratulations to Ben, Kacy, Murray (also a finalist for Bartender of the Year), and company. Drop by if you’re in Seattle and mention my name. Maybe it’ll help. Me, I mean, not you.

Labels: Books, Cocktails, Miscellaneous, Movies, TV

Passings: Ingmar Bergman, Tom Snyder

One was a signature cinematic artist of the twentieth century. The other hosted some TV. Guess which one I’m going to talk about.

Far more intelligent people than me have eulogized Bergman’s passing. A thorough overview can be found at GreenCine Daily. More importantly, Bergman’s legacy will last as long as humanity does. You could sit down with any number of his films this evening in the comfort of your own home.

But Tom Snyder’s legacy is already fading. Here’s how I know: I’m completely unfamiliar with what Tom Snyder is most famous for. I never saw a minute of The Tomorrow Show. It was before my time. When I finally caught up with Dan Aykroyd’s send-ups of Snyder years later, I had no idea who he was mocking.

I got to know Snyder from his mid-‘90s CNBC show, which I became weirdly obsessed with. Specifically the opening segment, when Tom would talk about his day. Spending the afternoon with his mother, griping about some ad he’d seen on TV. It was a fleeting moment of humanity on television, the equivalent of chatting with your neighbor over the fence. At times he could be self-involved or overbearing, but so can we all. What came through was Snyder’s desire to use the medium to connect.

He was saddled with a lot of second- and third-tier guests on that show, but evinced a genuine curiosity about them that made the interviews more interesting than whatever was on the late night line-up. He maintained the same standard when he took over the slot after David Letterman.

That show is now ably hosted by Craig Ferguson. After author Ken Bruen’s recent appearance on the program, Peter Rozovsky at Detectives Beyond Borders bemoaned that there was no venue on television for serious conversation with writers. I came to Ferguson’s defense, but Peter’s point is well-taken. A Tom Snyder interview with Ken Bruen would have been something to see.

I did encounter Tom Snyder once before his CNBC stint. He wrote the foreword to An Edge in My Voice, a collection of essays by frequent Tomorrow Show guest Harlan Ellison. It’s a book I read repeatedly in high school and college. Snyder writes:

“For years, I have written for television news programs. I think much of it has been pretty good, but if I set it down right here in front of you, few would remember a word of it. That’s because television news writing disappears rapidly. It comes on, it goes off, and it disappears. It doesn’t lie around gathering shelf dust for years and then one rainy night beckon your curiosity from the booktable ... The good pieces I wrote for television would always be a private satisfaction to me. The dumb ones – the really horrid crap I had dashed out with no thought and less preparation – those were gone and forgotten and nobody would ever know of them and thank God for that.”

There you go. A bit of Tom Snyder’s writing that wasn’t forgotten, at least not by me.

Edward Champion wrote a post about Snyder last week that features several Tomorrow Show clips. Other tributes come from Mark Evanier, Ken Levine, and Ed Gorman. And watch a Bergman film at your convenience.

Labels: Passings, TV

Book: Blackmailer, by George Axelrod (1952)

Ed Gorman has the brief on George Axelrod – “hip but accessible.” For me, he’ll always be the man who wrote one of the greatest screenplays in the history of motion pictures, the original adaptation of Richard Condon’s The Manchurian Candidate. A cult following has sprung up around his directorial debut, the savage black comedy Lord Love A Duck. I’m not in that number; the movie’s too bilious and scattershot for my taste. But it’s the rare comedy that left me feeling uneasy at the end, which is a point in its favor.

Axelrod’s interview in Patrick McGilligan’s Backstory 3 is a freewheeling marvel. He dishes on working with Marilyn Monroe and Frank Sinatra, analyzes why the movie version of his play The Seven Year Itch failed (thanks to changes dictated by the Breen Office, “the goddamn premise didn’t make any sense”), and tells how he briefly convinced Truman Capote that the film of Breakfast at Tiffany’s was going to be called Follow That Blond.

Somewhere in that illustrious career, Axelrod found time to pen a Gold Medal paperback, which Hard Case Crime has brought back into his print. Blackmailer is kind of a Gold Medal Lite, about a Manhattan editor caught up in a daft plot involving a Hollywood bombshell, a tough-guy talent agent, and a manuscript that might be the last book from a Hemingwayesque author. It’s lighter and more urbane than standard Gold Medal fare, and it works surprisingly well. Only someone truly on the inside of show business could have concocted that ending.

Blackmailer includes a passage that perfectly captures the joys to be found in B-movies, especially when compared to big-budget films that are “completely sterile from the very beginning.” Sure, B’s may be “slapped together by someone who thought if he could make a movie fast enough and cheap enough he could probably make a few dollars.” But they’re not sterile. If you’re lucky, they’ll include talented performers “acting for their own enjoyment – for personal kicks,” who might convince you that they’re actually fighting for their lives. It’s a great scene for movie buffs.

TV: Entourage

I’ve complained about the show’s greatest implausibility before – that a group of four guys from Queens doesn’t include a single Mets fan. Then, in Sunday night’s episode, Johnny Drama (Emmy nominee Kevin Dillon) turned up wearing a 1986 Lenny Dykstra throwback jersey. I have chosen to interpret this as proof that the show’s writers have acknowledged their error, and that they read this blog.

Miscellaneous: Links

Hell hath no fury like a comic whose material has been stolen.

Today’s bounty at The Obscure Store includes demonic taxicabs and prison riots over Woody Allen.

Labels: Books, TV

TV/Music: The June Stuff-I-Didn’t-Get-To Post

I didn’t get to a lot of stuff this month, so I’m breaking this post into two parts.

Flight of the Conchords. This is exactly what HBO needs after all those series that pushed the envelope: one that barely tries. To paraphrase The Limey, it’s more of a vibe than a show. I’ve watched every episode twice for the music alone. Exhibit A: The Robot Song.



Man Vs. Wild. Former British soldier Bear Grylls, equipped only with an unusually large knife and a camera crew, is dropped into the world’s most hostile environments. A glacier in Iceland, a canyon in Mexico, the English department at a small liberal arts college. I basically tune in every week to count all the ways in which I’d already be dead. Knowing the names of all the James Bond villains and the actors who played them – in order – is apparently not a survival skill. It doesn’t even impress women.

Pink Martini. After reading a rave review of this band, which does lounge music with an international flavor, I looked them up on Rhapsody. Only one of their songs, “Sympathetique,” was available. Rosemarie was kind enough to translate the chorus:

I don’t want to work
I don’t want to eat lunch
I only want to forget
And then, I smoke

Rosemarie also said, “I bought their new album. This sounds like a band we need to get to know.” As usual, she was right.

Labels: music, TV

TV/Music: Elvis ’68 Comeback Special

I can only hope that fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches taste fantastic, and that Elvis Presley enjoyed every one. Because eating them didn’t do the King any favors. Poor dining habits did more than end Elvis’s life. They went a long way toward erasing his legacy. Much of an entire generation knows only the Fat Elvis, the cartoon Elvis, the punchline Elvis.

That’s largely how I knew Elvis, too. The only one of his movies I’d seen in its entirety was Viva Las Vegas, and that was due to the presence of Ann-Margret.

Then, one night a few years ago, the restored version of the 1970 concert film Elvis: That’s The Way It Is aired on TV. “Think I’ll check out a little E,” I told Rosemarie, putting on the drawl I’d cribbed from legions of bad comics. Rosemarie said she was going to read the newspaper instead. By the second number the paper was down for good and we’d both seen the light: Elvis was one of the great showmen of all time. Not to mention a helluva singer.

And That’s The Way It Is ain’t even Elvis at his peak. For years I’d heard his ’68 Comeback Special described with religious reverence. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones had taken the stage while Elvis was off making Kissin’ Cousins and Roustabout. The ’68 special made him relevant again, and in many respects set the stage for his sad decline. I figured it was high time I checked it out.

From the first arresting close-up of Elvis launching into “Trouble” (“If you’re looking for trouble/You came to the right place”), it’s apparent you’re not watching any ordinary TV one-off. No guest stars, no awkward comedy banter. Nothing but Elvis doing what he does best – and thus reintroducing himself to the world – for a solid hour.

It’s an amazingly loose show. When there’s no strap to be found for his guitar during one of the “black leather concert” segments, Elvis stands up anyway and does a rendition of “One Night With You” that’s all the more electrifying for its ad-libbed nature. Production numbers that shouldn’t work, like the gospel medley including jazz ballet or the one that takes place in a “House of the Rising Sun”-style bordello constructed out of leftover bits of the Hee Haw set, become transcendent. (OK, the bordello number isn’t exactly transcendent. It’s still pretty awesome, though.)

By the special’s end, I’d realized three things:

1. Every Elvis impersonator I’ve ever seen sucks. They may capture the obvious – sneer, check, swivel hips, check, rhinestone-bedecked suit, check – but never come close to capturing his essence as a performer or as a man.

2. I am now one with Christian Slater in True Romance. If you’ve seen the movie, you know what I’m talking about.

3. I’d seen something more than a pop culture milestone. I’d witnessed, in a small way and almost forty years late, a bit of history.

Miscellaneous: Link

At the Mystery*File blog, Steve Lewis reviews Hollywood Troubleshooter by W. T. Ballard, which may feature the first “studio detective” to appear in fictional form.

Labels: Elvis, music, TV

TV: Tony & The Tonys

Isn’t that a clever title? I’ll bet I’m the only person who uses it, too.

Thanks to the wonder of the East Coast feed, I was able to watch both the series finale of The Sopranos and the Tony Awards without resorting to the DVR. A few words on each. I’ll insert a SPOILER warning here. But c’mon. If you didn’t watch The Sopranos last night, I’ll assume you just don’t care.

Last chance.

I liked the finale. A lot. Millions of fans didn’t. Want to have a laugh? Head over to Technorati and search for “Sopranos” and “WTF?” You’ll spend the rest of the day there.

If you want to screw with your audience – I mean well and truly upset them – you’ve got two choices. Give ‘em exactly what they want, or exactly what they don’t want. Thomas Harris went the first route in Hannibal. Fans wished there were some way Dr. Lecter and Clarice could get together and make it work. He granted their wish and forced them to consider what they had been asking for.

David Chase took Door #2. Sopranos fans were clamoring for the Russian to wander in from the Pine Barrens, for Tony to go down singing or swinging but to at least go down, goddamn it, for there to be some kind of resolution. And Chase, in a brilliantly shot and scored final scene, said to those fans, “You haven’t been paying attention at all, have you?”

Already there are two interpretations of what transpired when the screen went black, the Tony-got-whacked-and-we-don’t-see-it camp, and the life-goes-on-and-we-don’t-see-it camp. (For the record, I’m firmly in the latter. I never even considered the former.) What matters is what the dual outcomes share. We don’t see it. It’s right there in the haunting final scene with Uncle Junior, when Tony reminds him that he and his brother once ran all of North Jersey. “We did?,” the senile Uncle Junior replies. “That’s nice.” All that work. All that blood and death. Already faded from memory.

The audience may hate it now, but mark my words. In a few years’ time The Sopranos will be remembered for going out without making compromises.

As for the Tony Awards, it was a livelier telecast than in recent years. Several of the numbers have me interested in seeing the shows the next time I’m in New York. But the only nominated performer I saw (Brooks Ashmankas in Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me) didn’t win, and the divine Kiki & Herb lost, so on the whole it was a wash. The Tony audience made like an oil painting during the comedy bits. How can America get excited about the show if the crowd in Radio City can’t?

When I first saw the ad for CBS’s V iva L aughlin, I got chills. When I saw it for the tenth time approximately forty minutes later, I was over it already. It’s a musical. We get it.

Labels: TV

DVD: Arrested Development

Done.

All 53 episodes, watched in order. I’m sorry that it’s over – but on the plus side, now we get to start from the beginning again.

We marked the occasion with frozen bananas. Have one yourself and enjoy this compendium of the Bluth family chicken dances.



Miscellaneous: Your YouTube Bonus

My new favorite TV commercial. This level of honesty about how I – sorry, we use the internet almost has me ready to switch from Google.

Labels: DVD, TV

DVD: Not Just The Best Of The Larry Sanders Show

How did I spend my Memorial Day weekend? Consuming every facet of this extraordinary 4-disc set.

I’ll admit this right off the bat: The Larry Sanders Show is my all-time favorite TV series. I’ll stack it up against any comedy or drama. It helps that Larry is a perfect blend of both, an achingly funny series about a troika of characters so rich and well-defined they’d be at home in a Eugene O’Neill play. Insecure talk show host Larry (Garry Shandling), his loyal producer Artie (Rip Torn), and his talent-challenged sidekick Hank Kingsley (Jeffrey Tambor, giving full voice to the show’s most inspired creation).

Sanders is primarily remembered for the groundbreaking way it used real-life figures to comment on America’s growing obsession with show business, and those scenes draw blood to this day. Plenty of actors did the best work of their careers playing themselves. Like Illeana Douglas, worrying that boyfriend Larry will dump her if she tanks on his show. Jim Carrey’s turn on the final episode, his showmanship curdling into malignant narcissism as soon as the cameras are off, is nothing short of spellbinding. The later shows featuring Jon Stewart as Larry’s heir apparent make for particularly fascinating viewing now that Stewart has not only become this generation’s answer to Johnny Carson but has reinvented the role so completely.

For me, the show’s other true subject is work. You’re always aware of the enormous amount of effort that goes into making a standard-issue talk show that struggles in the ratings.

Aside: I always loved the episodes where something on the show would go so wrong that Artie would announce, “Tonight will be a ‘Best of Larry.’” It got to the point where I became disappointed that Jay and Dave never aired unscheduled reruns. Apparently I should have been watching The View, which had the decency to put the dysfunction front and center.

As the collection’s name implies, the episodes are cherry-picked from the show’s six seasons. Some personal favorites are missing. Artie’s drunken night in the office isn’t here, and neither is Larry’s celebrity roast. But other classics are, such as “Hank’s Sex Tape,” featuring one of the great lines of television history: “Sex is not a crime. It’s a loving act between two or more consenting adults.”

The episodes, though, are mere gravy for the special features. They’re so exhaustive that they essentially constitute a lost season of Larry, focused as they are on the divide between performer and performance, or what Garry Shandling calls “the curtain.” Shandling was intimately involved with assembling this collection; he even handwrites the introductions to his visits with the show’s guest stars. He boxes with Alec Baldwin and has breakfast with one-time paramour Sharon Stone, who played Larry’s love interest in one of the show’s strongest episodes. Their encounter quickly breaks through the playful artifice to plumb emotions with Cassavetes intensity. Shandling also reconnects with people who worked behind the scenes on the show. Protégé Judd Apatow cops to stealing Shandling’s creative method. In light of Apatow’s extraordinary success, that may be the show’s most lasting legacy.

I try to keep blanket statements to a minimum, but I already went big with the “all-time favorite” comment, so what the hell. This DVD package is the cultural high point of 2007 so far.

Labels: DVD, TV

Book: Then We Came To The End, by Joshua Ferris (2007)

Two weeks ago I said I wanted to rave about Joshua Ferris’ extraordinary novel Then We Came To The End. The fact that I’m determined to make good on that promise should tell you just how extraordinary it is.

The book, set in a struggling Chicago advertising agency in the waning days of the dot-com boom, is about work. Ferris tells the story largely in the first person plural, hence the ‘we’ of the title. Far from being a literary trick, this device illuminates the book’s essential truth: that for the eight hours a day in which “you walk around on the same bit of carpet” (to quote another brilliant examination of the modern workplace), you and your coworkers are all part of something larger. That something larger changes as people come and go, and will retain some trace of you after you’ve gone. The sad fact is none of us has any say in what part lingers. It’s about nothing less than finding the transcendent in the everyday, which sounds way too high-falutin’, so I’ll conclude thusly: Ferris’ darkly funny book is the best thing I’ve read in ages, and it knocked me on my ass.

TV: Current

Watching Al Gore on The Daily Show last night got me wondering. Is Current, his TV network, still on?

Turns out it is. According to my channel guide, here’s what’s airing in the next few hours:

International Insight
Global Scene
Random Insight
Views & Voices
Random & Riveting
Sum of the Parts
Parts of the Sum
Rebel Journalism
Citizen Journalism

Even better, every show has the identical description. News and current events. Hard to imagine SpikeTV is more popular.

Labels: Books, TV

Miscellaneous: The Grindstone Report

Been toting that barge and lifting that bail. Lately I’ve had just enough energy to collapse in front of the TV and watch baseball. Luckily the Mets are in the middle of a west coast swing. Related link: New York Times business columnist Harry Hurt III tries his hand as a vendor at Shea Stadium, where more hot dogs are consumed than any other ballpark in the league. In your face, Yankees! Make sure to watch the accompanying video.

If it’s not baseball, it’s season one of Arrested Development. The pangs of retroactive guilt I feel for not fully supporting this series when it originally ran on Fox are eased by the fact that I can take an hour and binge on three episodes in a row. The show produces a dizzying screwball high, particularly the initial 13 episodes, which are as funny as anything that has ever aired on American television.

A critic – I can’t remember who – once said of the Scottish writer/director Bill Forsyth that he was one of the few filmmakers alive to “the comic possibilities of goodness.” The same dynamic is at play on Arrested. Jason Bateman and Michael Cera, playing father and son, wring endless humor out of being the only rational people in a family full of grasping greedheads. The entire ensemble is peerless, but you’d be hard-pressed to top Will Arnett as the deluded “magician” Gob. There hasn’t been such a gloriously self-involved character since Hank Kingsley on The Larry Sanders Show. It’s only fitting, then, that Jeffrey Tambor plays Gob’s father. (I recently ordered the new Sanders collection on DVD. That’s my next big project.)

The commentary tracks on the Arrested DVDs are hilarious. They also provide a fascinating window into the process of making series TV. (David Mamet: “Features are a marathon. TV is running until you’re dead.”) Arrested never had an easy time, a fact reflected on the tracks for the 13th episode, which the cast and crew initially assumed would be their last, and the season finale, filmed while the show’s fate was in doubt. In each case, creator Mitchell Hurwitz and the writers labored to wrap up the storylines while still leaving room for the series to continue. Somehow, they pulled it off. Season two awaits. A sensible man would pace himself, but I’m diving right in.

All this means that I haven’t been to see Spider-Man 3 yet. New York magazine’s Vulture blog considers some less successful threequels. I still maintain that Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome is the best part three. Other nominations welcome.

Labels: Miscellaneous, TV

TV: Neither Freak Nor Geek

I knew when I got into this racket that the pop culture rubric was a broad one, and that I was better qualified in some areas than others. Consider television. I’ve admitted before that there are plenty of classic and current shows I’ve never seen. But lately I’ve been popping episodes of Arrested Development like Raisinettes, so I thought I could hold my own on the boob tube front.

Apparently not, according to this TV Squad article. (Hat tip to The Rap Sheet.) It lists the ten things you need to be considered a fully-fledged TV geek, and yours truly comes up woefully short. Let’s run through ‘em. Timpani!

(Only a TV geek would make that joke, right? Who else watches the Jerry Lewis Telethon?)

1. At least one TV over forty inches.

No. We only have one TV, and the dimensions of the current Chez K made a plasma screen seem like a waste of money.

2. At least one TiVo or Replay TV.

Yes. We have a DVR, mainly to pluck obscure movies off TCM in the wee small hours. It’s not full. Never has been. We also use it to record the following TV series: The Office, 30 Rock and E!’s The Soup, which crams a week’s worth of bad TV into 22 minutes.

3. At least two VCR’s.

VC-what’s? We have one. I can’t recall the last time we used it for anything. Wait, I think we served drinks off it last month.

4. A videotape filled with episodes of a show only you enjoy.

We have a tape of Blackadder’s Christmas Carol. And who doesn’t enjoy that?

5. A recliner.

Come on.

6. A TV small enough to take anywhere.

No. Besides, I never go anywhere.

7. Total Television, by Alex McNeil.

No. We do have a well-thumbed copy of The Complete Directory To Prime Time Network And Cable TV Shows, 1946-Present, by Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, although in this cast “present” means “1995.” Because sometimes you just need to know exactly how long Gavilan ran.

8. Digital cable or a satellite.

Yes. But that’s so I can watch Mets games.

9. Two or more biographies by TV personalities that shouldn’t have been written.

I can only cop to one: Backstage With The Original Hollywood Square, by Peter Marshall. But it came with a CD of zingers from the show, and I could make the case that the book needed, nay, demanded to be written.

10. ‘Television’s Greatest Hits’ CDs by Tee Vee Toons.

Nope. Never even tempted.

So that’s one point each for #2 and #8. I feel that I deserve partial credit for #7 and #9, as well as the fact that I can identify the author of this article, Paul Goebel, from his stint on the Comedy Central game show Beat The Geeks. Giving me a final score of ... what, 2.88?

Maybe I should change the subhead of this blog to Movies, Crime Fiction, Baseball, Jazz and Hard Liquor. That’s all I’m really interested in anyway.

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