Reflecting on My DECADE LONG ABANDONMENT OF MALL MOVIES

I've not been in a movie theater more than a dozen times in recent years.....like neurotic Bobby Fisher, who disdained the interjection of a squeaky chair or a cough from the balcony, I've abandoned attendance at any 'event' that is filled with slurping, chewing, texting, talking people...(and I can, of course, be one of those 'TALKERS', if the Film is less interesting than washing hubcaps).....Recently, on a dare, which I accepted.....ummmmm.....I was given the 'opportunity' to attend 'the movie of my choice'......looking over the 'offerings' at local cinema houses, I spotted, from the sidewalk: "Directed by Luca Guadagnino", who had created one of my favorite films, I AM LOVE.......Do I need to relive my teen-age frustrations? Why not? What reasons do millions of us need to attend Marvel Comics adaptations of youthful superhero fantasy fixations, romantic comedies or slaphappy excesses of complicity in terrors and delights? Then, I noticed Hugh Jackman's new 'vehicle'......immediately, recalling LIKE WATER FOR ELEPHANTS.......Yes, this one! Wait.....the Christopher Plummer 'replacement for humiliated Kevin Spacey' film!.....maybe..... In my youth, I averaged seeing about 5 movies a week! Now, it's a struggle to drive out of my driveway into the bustling World out 'there'....Well, maybe for an "Epic" in 3-D, smellorama,  even the allure of Super-Vistavision Cinerama with Masturbatory Vibrating Seating....but there is none of that...(dismissing super-hero-power fantasy films)......December is a good month for "movies"....that I usually wait a couple of years to watch....at home, for 'free'.......Wait...Wait! there are a few hundred great films in my home library that I've not seen, or have almost forgotten (and need to re-watch)......o.k. Showtime....step it up! .......I gave, with sweat on my brow, the 'free pass' away.........Whew!

 

I watched "M", that I'd not seen in many years......the exquisite new prints of the film, with cleaned-up audio, certainly arrested my attentions......I thought of 'NOW'......as the Establishment becomes fixated on outing specific 'evil' surrogates, drawing attention to the pervasiveness of the criminality that pervades Society, in general, ritual sacrifices must appease the Hoi Polloi and negate its deep-seated guilt....... Die Neue Sachlichkeit's 'realism', expressed in circles, squares, arrows and lines......Criminals are just exaggerations of Everyman's latent intentionality.......Justice is the moral atonement of the righteous......I thought of the saga of Charles Manson...I thought of Trumpworld.....about compulsion and intent......The 'frame' from the movie, that persists in my memory, is the scene in which a book store's street window display is of a massive display of cutlery, flatware and folding knives, moving to a bookstore window in which a spinning hypnosis wheel and a moving, downward-pointing arrow draw the viewers' attention to, then away from the books......

 As I was contemplating a boxed set of Cassavetes Films.....an ordinarily supercilious acquaintance, locked into festive X'mas mode, 'recommended' that I abandon what he considers my 'high-mindedness' and consider some much lighter cinematic....dare I even use this word in this context......fare.....just the fake Duchenne smile on his 'recommended' entertainment 'boxed set' is enough to make me vomit up my breakfast and look for a Criterion Edition Box of Kathryn Bigelow/Nagisa Ôshima collaboratives, all singing...all dancing....'light' entertainment.....But, since this would/did NEVER happen, I'll 'go' for the compromise of 'Terry Gilliam's Greatest Hits'! o.k. everybody happy with that? I'm still grieving the cancellation of Hannibal and tossing a metal-toed combat boot at a screenful of NBA combat sports that edged it from Primetime to yesterday's news......."Mondo" is what most folks really, really like.....more 'guilty pleasures'......

WHAT HAPPENED TO MARTIN, WHILE RAMIE WAS 'GETTING FAMOUS'?

Out of Nowhere, Swedish actor, Martin Wallström, after a string of artsy Swedish movies, hit the World's TV screens as MR. ROBOT's Tyrell Wellick....with little evidence of his Nordic lineage.....He's the new ambiguous Liv Ullman manchild.....and that's no skammen....to Rami Malek's schizoid convolutions....don't try to count the interpositing scan lines, folks.....it's all Hi-Def!

Over The Counter (1932)SOME REAL NONSENSE FROM 1932...........women are traduced from corseted repression to willing metaphoric exploitation........First 'Lady', Eleanor Roosevelt, a few years later, would provide some hope and respite to women, emerging from their man-made cocoons, in heels and lipstick, alas......still, but fodder for Hollywood's exploitative chauvinistic sexism, as men sought both 'respectable' Wives and flapper fantasy broads......one, by contract.....the other, 'over the counter'.......

OVER THE COUNTER gets my 'tackiest costume' award for 1932, incidentally...

HALLOWEEN, A.M. ...

this morning, having re-watched the 1980 film, AltERED StATES......to study its soundtrack by John Corigliano....(Red Violin & The Naked Carmen) .....a deconstructed psyche against a backdrop of architectural music......on the heels of R.D. Laing's THE DIVIDED SELF and KNOTS, Desmond Morris' THE NAKED APE and Arthur Janov's THE PRIMAL SCREAM.....whose influences show in much cinematic art that emerged from the 1970's......

THE CLOSER ONE GETS, THE MORE ONE SEES.............

Miguel Angel Bermejo Castellanos

WHAT HAPPENED TO CHRIS COLLINS & LYDIA TENAGLIA'S PLAN TO ENSCONCE TONY IN TRAVELOGUE SAINTHOOD?

Zero Point Zero is still 'in production' on a documentary film about the Life and Mind of Anthony Bourdain......... After the wonderful biopic about Ruth Bader Ginsberg.... "RBG", recently, the sails of this ship should be full of strong winds....After the proposed film's eventual commercial run at film festivals...then movie theaters....then final landing on his later home turf, CNN, still broadcasting souped up reruns of "PARTS UNKNOWN", I'll eventually ooze some tearful lamentations during my way through it, like a teen-aged girl, who...pony-tailed and bobby socked, wept for a month over a photograph of Elvis, dead on his toilet seat or Kurt Cobain, inert in a pool of his own blood.....Until the next Icon stumbles and crashes into glamorous History.....

DIGGING UP SOME INVASIVE BAMBOO ROOTS ELICITED VISUAL MEMORIES AND EMOTIONS FROM YOUTH........

The Persistance of Images......over 60 years ago, I sat in the balcony....alone.....at the Lyric Theater......indulging in the latest William Castle Perceptovision movie....as Television grew to compete with Films that were shown, for revenue, at local theaters........Ever new gimmicks arose to attract audiences to sit in movie houses...Castle offered Life Insurance policies for kids that might die during his films......then theater seats, wired for mild electrical shock......red/blue lensed glasses for 3-D thrills....."magic" coins....."punishment" polls....even Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster, in drag............Noticing this bamboo root in the leaf bag this morning, I remembered 'the tingler'.....a crawling spinal cord, with nerve extensions, that resembled a giant crustacean centipede......for a few seconds, I was 14 again, sitting in the balcony, watching Vincent Price being stalked, then strangled by a renegade spinal cord...... There is an oblique correlation with The Manchurian Candidate here, I think.......

The Louisiana Gator Boys - Blues Brothers 2000

It's worth fast-forwarded to the final ten minutes of Blues Brothers 2000....if only for the Blues Showdown.......Isaac Hayes, Steve Winwood, Eric Clapton, Koko Taylor, Paul Shaffer, B.B. King, Billy Preston, Joshua Redman, Grover Washington Jr., Travis Tritt, Jack DeJohnette, Charles Musselwhite, Lou Rawls and more great Bluesmen.....on Stage, together........   A great 'double bill' with "Roy Orbison and Friends:   A Black And White Night" and it's largesse of 'Star' Musicians....... which set the Stage for 'BB 2000'.......

DANIEL'S CALLING IT A WRAP FOR HIS BOND-AGE.... WHO'S NEXT, I WONDER?

Today is the 'official' JAMES BOND DAY.......Daniel Craig is my favorite Bond, since Sean Connery........I wonder who the 'next' James will be.....Tom Hiddleston? Michael Fassbender? Henry Cavill? Or.....breaking the over half century tradition.....will 'it' be a black man? how about a woman? Idris Elba or Cate Blanchett, perhaps? Should I sell my Omegas yet? Will the newest Bond be sporting a machine-turned platinum dialed gold Breguet with guilloche.....oh...that would mean Ben Whishaw had been promoted from "Q", cut his teeth on London Spy, and beefed up for the role, wouldn't it? THAT ain't gonna happen!.....

a few years ago, Alex McDowell's wonderfully amazing production design and Hans Zimmer's soundtrack were about all I liked about MAN OF STEEL.....some great talents, brought together for yet another violent, blow-it-up flick, formulated to feed the aggressive role-playing fantasies of American Youth Culture.....What happened to any ideas we ever had about "a kinder, gentler nation"? It seems, to me, that folks just like to see things get blown to smithereens.....

Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song - A MEMORY OCCASIONED BY THE DEATH OF MELVIN VAN PEEBLES DEATH THIS WEEK.......

I'd moved to Atlanta, shortly after Otis Redding's funeral.......partially, to escape the racism and sexism of Middle Georgia's Rightist Prejudices........In 1971, I went to the Theater, across P'tree Street from the then popular Cinerama Theater,  to see this Melvin Van Peebles' Urban Black Action Flick........So much for Atlanta being a cradle of Liberal Humanism........I was one of 3 or 4 'white' people in the audience....trying to watch the film through my dark 'Peter Fonda' sunglasses and some mighty tall 'Afro-cuts'...... After the Film,  I remember being asked by a Jimi Hendrix 'look-a-like', "Whuffo yu doin' in OUR movie house, whyte boah!"......How could I reply?  Me, dressing in  orange, turquoise and lime-green Toreador pants, and a Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club shirt......to a pissed off black racist wearing a Roberta Flack wig,  leopard-print polyester jump suit, lizard boots with chromed studs and a pound of gold-plated hipster jewels, who viewed P'tree Street at North Ave. as a demarcation zone.........Just a few blocks, South,  Atlanta's 'hippie' culture was dressed like the cast of 'HAIR'.......Wanting to engage in some peaceful inter-racial  interchange.....we....the Jimi imposter and I,  journeyed down to 14th Street, where a small army of yet another sect of Atlanta Youths with shoulder-length hair and 'face paint' were marching, with placards, deprecating the Vietnam War....   That evening, after donning a second hand Mr. Witt shirt, army surplus khaki pants and thrift store 1950's lace-up alligator shoes, Uncle Johns old Rolex watch and a Gupton-Jones Embalming School class ring, that i traded for at a pawn shop in Stonecrest,  I took my new Afro-acculturated acquaintance to The Piedmont Driving Club, where he was, summarily, asked to leave...... Go, Figure!   

High School Confidential, Beat Poetess Philippa Fallon , "High School Dr...

BEFORE THE HIPPIE BEADS.........BEATNIKS IN CONE BRAS AND VERONIKA LAKE HAIRDOS.......

 

My cooking is much like Dona Flor's, although I dress more like her sleazy husband as I combine flavors, textures, colors and composition ....or Lasse Hallström's Chocolat character...or, better....LIke Water for Chocolate's Tita, the offspring of my kitchen obsessions, unlike Babette Hersant's 'spread'...created, to open the libidinal labyrinths of isolated and repressed victims of their own slot-sized view of worldliness....reflects the general, and sometimes specific, state of mind that I'm in........ Today has been a very narrow color palate......brown, tan, orangey greenish....monochromes......I think this is a result of my clamping down, emotionally, over the interrogation of Christine Blasey Ford within the constraints of the eyes of propriety, custom and habituation.....Like Winona Ryder's character in Girl Interrupted, I know that the only way 'out' of the rut of madness and confusion, is artistic expression.......although I know, that even that is often just another masking.....a cloaking device.....an invisibility that can take any and practically every form......As crazy as this sounds, some see the Truth in it......right, Lisa?

I"m not gonna wear that pink bow....or the blue one....around my Head!

after a 'run' of dark films.......Brothers Of The Head, The Skin I Live In, Heartless, Memento, Sweeney Todd and Coraline.......a friend, noticing the stack of these DVD's, remarked "I guess you watch Penny Dreadful......." I laughed, then cringed as he withdrew a copy of Love Happens from a canvas bag. You need to watch THIS, he said, as I lowered my sanpaku eyes, glancing at a tabloid photo of Robert Pattinson, from Water For Elephants......

TO CATCH MORE DETAILS OF SEXUAL INNUENDO

During my relatively inattentive viewing of TO CATCH A THIEF, as I breakfasted in bed this morning, I noticed lots of details that I didn't remember from my last viewing of the film, many years ago...... little oddities and parallels, and out of place gritty nonpareils in this otherwise smooth creamy truffle of a movie.....Cary Grant was actually older than Jessie Royce Landis, yet Landis is treated as an "older woman", whereas Grant is presented as a 'suitable suitor' for Landis' daughter in the film, Grace Kelly.....Kelly's character makes snidely impolitic remarks regarding Brigitte Auber's 'young' character when, in fact, the actresses were practically the same age.....Double entendres abound, in typical Hitchcock style....after a high speed elusive car chase.....Kelly driving at breakneck speed (interesting parallel with her real-life death, incidentally) as Grant nervously rubs his own thighs....(erotic play in the sexually repressive 1950's)....then stopping for a 'snack'.....Kelly asking Grant if he'd prefer a leg or breast, as she offers him a box of fried chicken......I couldn't keep from making a parallel with the Cannes police department's quickly pinning a crime on a one-legged man who was innocent.....(how could a peg-legged man scramble over clay-tiled rooftops, like a cat) and the recent news events in Ferguson?)......reflecting human's quickness to blame the less desirable, while dismissing the moral morass of the beautiful and glamorous... and, I can't resist saying that I thought Edith Head's costumes, on vulgar display at the film's ball on the Cote d'Azur, didn't deserve an Academy Award, although the popular public opinion was that she had been 'cheated'......{ahem....weren't Georges Annenkov (for The Earrings of Madame de... ) and Jean Louis and Christian Dior in the mix of nominations that year?.....Kelly and Landis look like Vegas showgirls masquerading as Liberaces in technicolor "Head" drag......

Aretha Franklin - Think (feat. The Blues Brothers) - 1080p Full HD

Aretha seems to be Everywhere, lately........I love her performance in BLUES BROTHERS...........

Diva Dance from The Fifth Element.Full version.

PLANE CRASH JUNGLE SOCIOGRAMMATICS OF "BACK TO ETERNITY (1956)......(remake of "Five Came Back").. Morning 'associations' before the Java Fix, but after the melting chocolate 'special effects' chocolate lozenge....

I was just wondering 'what a 3rd "take" by a current director would "be like".' 
  Lucille Ball in the 1st Version, Anita Eckberg in the 2nd.....and (?) in a new version.......
[.(?) = Haley Atwell, Margot Robbie, Scarlet Johansson, Jennifer Lawrence or Brie Larson...ie Larson? ]
 Who would/should direct it? 
Both of the 'older' films reminded me of an amalgam of Lost Horizons....
both versions......, 
Flight Of The Phoenix, Alive, and Sands Of The Kalihari.......
All of which, like the Farrow Films....now, largely forgotten........ 
 "LANSA Flight 508", directed by Sam-Taylor Johnson?......
Starring: Kristin Stewart, and the cast of A Million Little Pieces?  
What defines 'modern Cinematics'? 
 What elements make a Film 'Important' after a half century?
  I 'tried to re-watch' Ridley Scott's 'Final Edit' of his, now 40-year old, Bladerunner, just yesterday;
 but, despite it's 'Look'.......all the gimicy slips were showing and the Film looked really 'dated'
 in it's 1940-ish rainy 'noirishness'......
When I 'found myself' making critical assessments of every other frame, and hearing it's cast.
..stumbling through the clumsy dialogue....
against the tiresome backdrop of 'then "in"' composer, Vangelis,
 I just wanted to put away my wet umbrella for a 'drip-dry' 
and take the Wonder Woman translucent plane off to parachute into some Swedish Art Film
 with dark grey subtitles, against a black/vs/white Scenario........
or just recall images of Tallulah and William Bendix, being coached by Alfred Hitchcock

 ...  Morning 'associations' before the Java Fix,

but after the melting 'special effects' chocolate lozenge..https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031314/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_37 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048975/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_5

Sorry Greg.....After the 'edit' there remained only transparent 'leader' film.......

This morning, a "friend" commented, "Reed.....you should watch some 'more wholesome' films."......."For example?", I replied.........."Like 'Heaven is for Real', for one"....she said.....[Even after noting that the film starred Kelly Reilly and Greg Kinnear, I remained suspiciously unmotivated]..........If the film had featured Eva Green, Michael Pitt and Louis Garrel, I may have considered it........"You are victimized by your own intellectual prejudices!", she retorted...."Ok, You watch This.....(handing her the challengingly huge boxed DVD set of Jacques Rivette's 'OUT 1'......)"......."and I'll watch 'The Last Temptation of Christ'......", I commiserated. "NO FAIR!", she whined......"This "OUT 1" box says that the movie is almost 800 hours long~!"..........I figured that since she thought she'd be around forever, she had time for it....whereas, I'd be dead not so long from now, with absolutely no interest in Film........

Hellstrom Chronicle (1971)Full Movie-Oscar Winning Documentary Film

Walking through my small yard, I was thinking ........there are more insects in the yard than all the humans that have ever existed on Earth........more leaves than all living mammals on Earth.........In the longer perspective,  Homo Sapiens will expire from Existence within a relatively short span........   

THE LITTLE RASCALS MEMORABILITY

A Pair of Posters to flank the Arachnophobia Poster in the House Of Creeps 'Movie Room'

THE PREMATURE DEATH OF HELEN McCRORY DREDGED MEMORIES OF PENNY DREADFUL FROM THE ABYSS OF AESTHETIC LONGINGS......

I loved PENNY DREADFUL more with each gorgeously appointed episode.......Especially.....the scene wherein Vanessa and Victor shop at "Gabriella ("G""Pescucci") Pescucci's shop within the episode......{Pescucci and Iris Van Herpen being my very favorite clothing/costume designers}.......or the scene wherein Dorian takes his new 'girlfriend', drag hooker Angelique, to a table tennis event.....or the touching scene between Caliban and Lavinia......The most spectacular sets and subtle special effects.........and, of course, the resplendant Eva Green! The diabolical Helen McCrory and the beautiful Reeve Carney .....The Series is a psychological, metaphysical, aesthetic Work Of Art..

I'm assembling a stack of 'Sci-Fi' DVDs.......about 'Time Out Of Sequence'......Where's that copy of "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"?

watched an episodic 'old' movie yesterday...The Story Of Three Loves...In one of its three 'parts', a ten year old boy, played...incidentally....by Ricky Nelson, of the "Ozzie and Harriet Nelsons".....who is granted a wish by an old witch, played by Ethel Barrymore......and is, like Cinderella, turned into a 21 year-old Farley Granger, and falls in love with his French teacher/governess, Leslie Caron....the Governess that he had despised for her critical nature, when he was ten, just hours before.....I thought of this amusing take on many people's fantasy of 'being young again'.....well....there IS dementia....one way of accomplishing this, but in an increasingly decrepit old body.....Watching the beautiful/handsome Granger, I'm wanting to watch ROPE and SENSO again.....

A DREAM FULL OF FILMS/A FILM FULL OF DREAMS

Weirdest dream of the Year, so far...... In the dream, I was hired by Lars Von Trier to write a screenplay for an Existential Bio-Pic about John Stompanato, which would 'star' Madonna, as Lana Turner......IF I could convince Daniel Craig to 'play' Sean Connery......The Dream seemed to go on and on and on......as though it were, itself, a 'realized Amra Ekta Cinema Banabo Film'.......I convinced, in the dream, Cate Blanchett, who was...conveniently enough.....in Atlanta, or wherever I was supposed to be..in the Dream...'on set', across the street...in a tree with a naked 25-year old Julian Sands...to play "Lana" and her co-star from 'Carol', Rooney Mara, to play Turner's homicidal daughter, Cheryl Crane......This 'DREAM' became, increasingly EPIC, as it unfolded into production with a Fellini-esque Crew, as my old Royal typewriter ejected reams of paper, covered with elite type......Eventually, I must have 'figured out', within the context of this elaborate concoction of dreaming, that this was just 'A Dream' and that my sweaty efforts would come to nothing; I was awakened by a pinging from my laptop....reminding me to 'plug in' to AC if I wanted to save whatever it was that I'd been writing before falling asleep into these Slumberland Antics.... Plugging in the laptop, the project that I had been writing came up, as I was asked 'if I wanted to save this'.....[My 'take' on the Life of Grace Metalious].....Scrambled eggs with pig brains for b'fast, anyone?

;THE WHISTLE........We're cutting break time down a few minutes to give the CEO a million dollar raise........;

Viewing Robert Siodmak's lesser-known 1951 Film, THE WHISTLE AT EATON FALLS, this morning.....only because it starred Lloyd Bridges and a 'Gish' sister, Dorothy.....within a couple of minutes, noticing the similarity...on many levels.....between this film and ON THE WATERFRONT, made a couple of years later, my mind spun off in typical analytic mode.......eventually....(minutes later)...themes from both versions of ALL THE KING'S MEN and some other 'noirish' films...and books.......Theodore Dreiser's, being one of the first, in line......about the abuse of power and the facile inducements of mass opinions, attitudes and belief systems......and the seeming inevitability of ethical and moral degradation that accompanies rises to Power and Economic Status..... [I tossed these words to this Blog entry....hopefully, to return...and write a more cohesive 'article', since hundreds of observations, from many perspectives,  keep inundating my head......So, a semi-colon must suffice...and a plethora of commas, until later......However, I've laid a bookmark to come back to...after I re-watch a couple of Ayn Rand Film Adaptations....and a couple of dozen post WW2 'rise of Capitalism' movies, made during the "Communist Fear" era of the "G-Man Hoover Years"......]  I'm feeling like a steel ball, being batted and redirected around an old Arcade Game.....the ones with buttons, flippers, flashing lights and 'you lose' pockets, closest to the hearts of once-eager naive  Players with nickels to spare......Hmmm, 'we' could make more profit if we could 'cut down' on the size of those plastic shirt buttons by a quarter of a cent......fire some workers and  replacing them with Chinese-made Industrial Machines......then award the 'savings' to our CEO......he needs another vacation home, doesn't he, on his pursuit of a seat in Congress, or The Presidency.....where he can fuse the minds of the Hoi to the Will of The Powerful....Aren't 'they' just wind-up modeling clay figures, after all?   Get your hands off your hips or you'll be fired!  And we're re-designing the 'coin-slot' to take quarters, now.......no...make that a 'dollar-grabber'........the metal is waay too expensive.....how about just re-engineering the machines to read credit cards, still in folded wallets, in those not-so-deep pockets......Yes!....that'll work.......you get a dollar/hr. raise and 'preferred' health insurance.....but watch those coffee breaks.....you can't bring your own java, you know!     

THE BLINKING ISAAC OUTTA JULLIARD.......

Underdog, Isaac, doing his Guatemalan Erland Josephson (with Jessica Chastain, channeling Liv Ullmann), is taking on a remake of Ingmar Bergman's SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE.......directed by Hagai Levi, the former Film Critic, who did "IN TREATMENT" and "THE AFFAIR"......confirming Oscar's 'heaviness' and dark diversification.....On the "sudden", Oscar Isaac seemed to be oozing from every crack in the ever-morphing Hollywood walk of Stars........Poe Dameron, Llewyn Davis, Nathan (Ex Machina), and Blue Jones......an Oscar for Oscar in the near future was my prediction after INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS, eight years ago....and his portrayal of Paul Gaugain in AT ETERNITY'S GATE......

I wish someone would make a Short Film....or a Feature FIlm.....from this story!

GARDEN SNAKES CAN BE DANGEROUS...

Snakes also known as Garter Snakes (Thamnophissirtalis) can be dangerous Yes, grass snakes, not rattlesnakes. Here's why.

A couple in Sweetwater, Texas, had a lot of potted plants. During a recent cold spell, the wife was bringing a lot of them indoors to protect them from a possible freeze.

It turned out that a little green garden grass snake was hidden in one of the plants. When it had warmed up, it slithered out and the wife saw it go under the sofa.

She let out a very loud scream.

The husband (who was taking a shower) ran out into the living room naked to see what the problem was. She told him there was a snake under the sofa.

He got down on the floor on his hands and knees to look for it. About that time the family dog came and cold-nosed him on the behind. He thought the snake had bitten him, so he screamed and fell over on the floor.

His wife thought he had had a heart attack, so she covered him up, told him to lie still and called an ambulance.

The attendants rushed in, would not listen to his protests, loaded him on the stretcher, and started carrying him out.

About that time, the snake came out from under the sofa and the Emergency Medical Technician saw it and dropped his end of the stretcher. That's when the man broke his leg and why he is still in the hospital.

The wife still had the problem of the snake in the house, so she called on a neighbor who volunteered to capture the snake. He armed himself with a rolled-up newspaper and began poking under the couch.. Soon he decided it was gone and told the woman, who sat down on the sofa in relief.

But while relaxing, her hand dangled in between the cushions, where she felt the snake wriggling around. She screamed and fainted, the snake rushed back under the sofa.

The neighbor man, seeing her lying there passed out, tried to use CPR to revive her.

The neighbor's wife, who had just returned from shopping at the grocery store, saw her husband's mouth on the woman's mouth and slammed her husband in the back of the head with a bag of canned goods, knocking him out and cutting his scalp to a point where it needed stitches.

The noise woke the woman from her dead faint and she saw her neighbor lying on the floor with his wife bending over him, so she assumed that the snake had bitten him. She went to the kitchen and got a small bottle of whiskey, and began pouring it down the man's throat.

By now, the police had arrived.

Breathe here...

They saw the unconscious man, smelled the whiskey, and assumed that a drunken fight had occurred. They were about to arrest them all, when the women tried to explain how it all happened over a little garden snake!

The police called an ambulance, which took away the neighbor and his sobbing wife.

Now, the little snake again crawled out from under the sofa and one of the policemen drew his gun and fired at it. He missed the snake and hit the leg of the end table. The table fell over, the lamp on it shattered and, as the bulb broke, it started a fire in the drapes.

The other policeman tried to beat out the flames, and fell through the window into the yard on top of the family dog who, startled, jumped out and raced into the street, where an oncoming car swerved to avoid it and smashed into the parked police car.

Meanwhile, neighbors saw the burning drapes and called in the fire department. The firemen had started raising the fire ladder when they were halfway down the street. The rising ladder tore out the overhead wires, put out the power, and disconnected the telephones in a ten-square city block area (but they did get the house fire out).

Time passed! Both men were discharged from the hospital, the house was repaired, the dog came home, the police acquired a new car and all was right with their world.

A while later they were watching TV and the weatherman announced a cold snap for that night. The wife asked her husband if he thought they should bring in their plants for the night.

And that's when he shot her.

DESERT MEN IN MACHINE-MADE ROBES

watching BBC News, this morning, a segment about 21st C. Afghanistan religious Shara Law was so off-putting, as bearded men, 'wearing' semi-automatic assault rifles, and carrying 'big sticks', beat 'others' for not observing some trivial gesture, required of their dogmatics... and women, for daring to show an ankle or their cheeks, or learning to read and write.....where MEN run the 'Show', perpetuating the ancient 'traditions' of this repressive, guilt-ridden religious Insanity........Annoyed, I turned to some 'Movie' channel, where yet another egregiously annoying 'religious' film was being broadcast {ironically, starring atheist, Max Von Sydow, one of my favorite actors since his 'Ingmar Bergman Days'}.....This Junk just doesn't fill me with awe and devotional, self-righteous reverential holiness....but. just reminds me of how long it will 'take' before all this piousness and devotion to the Imaginary Gods and their formulas for Everlasting Life will be dispersed by the Conscious interception of frontal lobe development...

EASTER FILM RETROSPECTIVE

 

Lounging abed this morning, writing and drawing.......the 1950's take on "BEN-HUR" was being 'presented' for TCM's Easter Morning viewers......I would look up at the screen when many of the widescreen, cinematic moments caught my attention.......The Film is great for film students to study and analyze, as it presents literally hundreds, if not thousands, of examples of botched 'dubs', peculiar edits, impossible visual scenarios, costumes and jewels of velvet, rayon moire and mid-century plastics, chariot wheels with torch-soldered stainless steel parts, 1950's takes on makeup and hair styles.....the list goes on...and on....modern tire marks in sand, cameras and lights in scenes....even reverse-printed frames......Yet, many of the scenes are spectacular.....even with the relentless and never-endingly annoying "music" soundtrack by Miklos Rozsa..... presented in super wide screen and vivid colors.....I lost interest, of course, near the film's ending....when Ben-Hur's leprosy-diseased mother and sister were miraculously "healed" as they watch Jesus' trip to the 'mount' and his death in the dismal rain......

GUY MADDIN'S RELIGIOUS FILMWORK.....AN EASTER CELEBRATORY

Easter's coming up, and those campy Bible Story Adaptations from the 1950's and '60's will be inundating TCM's Playlist........Here's Guy Maddin's 'Take', if a bit obliquely tongue-in-cheek.....I awakened this morning to the awful Stewart Granger vehicle, SODOM AND GOMORRAH.....Wide-Screen Cinema Junk for the 'Righteous True Believers'........At least...after Easter....those Cadbury Chocolate Bunnies will be on sale for half price at the local drug stores.......Alas, Oxycontin will NOT BE!.......Pre-diabetics alert~~ Feed the Multitudes with pastel sugar-coated super sweet milk chocolate eggs, filled with Eagle Brand Milk Creme......There's yellow marshmallow bunnies on Aisle 3.....Let's eat their ears, first.....I'm sure they're not listening, anyway......

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS70M5-7DiU

2021 OSCARS.........THIS WILL BE THE FIRST TIME, IN MY ADULT LIFETIME, THAT I'VE SEEN NONE OF THE NOMINATED FEATURE FILMS!

'Driver's Permit'......

After getting a 'driver's permit', at 15, the new World of Teen-Terror Trash was opened, at sunset....just as the vampires and werewolves came out to fulfil John Ackerley's plan to terrify the Mouseketeers with "B" movie Schlock with off-the-shelf electronic kazoo soundtracks......Of course, I was seated behind the wheel, a bit nervous...with the window rolled down to accommodate the aluminum speaker box that delivered the shrill screams of women in Décolletage, requiring the manly protection of a rock-hard 9th-grader... Martian invaders, sucking human brains out with Dr. Phibes' latest pre-Cronenberg surgical instruments.....sexualized Zombie dolls being manipulated by mad scientists....and beatniks, smoking 'weed' and making sculptures from cat cadavers, as humans became wasps, panthers, walking dead sonambulists, goo-dripping flies, wax-covered naked-woman mannequins, alligator people and retributary apocalyptic destroyers of Humanity..........All this was far less unsettling than watching Old Yeller getting gored by a bull, hoards of soldiers being eviscerated by machine gun fire, yellow toxic smoke clouds,  and thermo-nuclear bombs, cowboys shooting one another in the streets, then  hung in trees for their transgressions against other drunken outlaws........After the movie(s), there was still time to rush home for Marvin, Dear and the Deadbeats' "Shock Theater"... Friday Nights......9th Grade Beatnik-ish corncake......from Chicago, via rooftop antennas and rabbit ears... to TV Stations in most cities and towns.... right before 'sign-off'....."How would you feel if you were dead....and didn't have to pay taxes?" Well, Nothing, I guess....and "I'm in 8th grade, and don't pay taxes, anyway." A 15 year-old's hormonal  contradictory rebellion against Lawrence Welk and the Conventionalization of Polka as an Art Form.....A lot scarier without a 'laugh track'.....I'll go for Celluloid, every time! Buzz off, Annette!.....Anita Ekberg's 'playing' at Woody's Drive-In, and Immoral Mr. Teas' got some naked women wrapped in plastic wrap at The Whitesburg Drive-In.... Then, suddenly, it's off to University and the discovery of Art House Terror, in French, Italian, Polish and Russian....with sub-titles.......This 'all' must be better fare.....right?......Right?  

https://youtu.be/GsEALyn2qyM

thoughts from last year's Academy Awards........in anticipation of 2021 Awards

Roman Griffin Davis deserves "at least" a 'best supporting (at least) actor/actress' award!' Right, Jody Foster? Right, Patty McCormack? Right, Tatum O'neal? Right, Freddie Bartholomew? Right, Haley Joel Osment? How about Quvenzhané Wallis, Keisha Castle-Hughes......(even though 'hard to remember/unfamiliar/too-foreign names are quickly filed away and forgotten) Maybe, at the Academy Awards, he'll get that 'one second pause' as the cameras pan the Ocean of Hollywooders, showing their Glamour in Designer costumes and borrowed jewels......Will he get more 'on camera' time than Timothée Chalamet garnered last year as he hammed it up in the background while Meryl Streep 'acted' as though she didn't really give a fig....errr, or a white truffle?

THE HOLY GRAIL: ALL THE CRITERION EDITION FILMS......BOXED, WITH COPIOUS NOTES AND SPECIAL FEATURES!

I was totally google-eyed this morning, to discover a boxed set of ALL the Criterion Edition films for sale at a local sale......downside......as I was checking my pockets for cash.....the 'estate administrator' replied to my 'how much for everything?' question.....with $5000!......oh, well

NOT QUITE RANDOM JUXTAPOSITION

Watching a few minutes of the 1947 melodramatic adaptation of GREEN DOLPHIN STREET, in which...if my memory serves me with oblique associations.......Lana and Donna's characters 'doll up' in Hollywood costume department's fashionable post WW2 Pastel tropical bird Couture, and are greeted by their mother's childhood beau...having cruised, with some "sexual/he's got some money" bent on his young hottie son.....and arrived, unannounced (!), over-dressed for this early in the morning....only to be greeted by Mom's 'ex', who makes sexist remarks, immediately.......calling them 'colorful fish'.....Everyone's 'manners' are pretentiously Nouveau Riche Bourgeoisie, posturing as 'our shit don't stink' upper class gold diggers......Some of the dialogue from this scene was lifted by Melvina Reynolds, for her tongue-in-cheek song about American Suburbanites, 'Little Boxes'......   This 'not quite random association' was a new observation....as was the association with Miles Davis' track, 'On Green Dolphin Street', from his Album, 'Kind Of Blue'.......Every 'association' is with the largesse of stored 'data', within the resources of our 'Inner Sanctums'........Even Lana's character, Marianne,  seemed right on the heels of Cora Smith, from the year before.......with a Lux Radio Theater 'costuming' upgrade by Walter Plunkett.......

Soon.....at your urban, local drive-in theaters.......free cheeseburgers, fries and cokes to the first million ticket-holders........

La Dolce Haggis ----What happened to Rupert Sanders?

What will happen with "The Juliet", Paul Haggis' proposed adaptation of the Alfred Bester short story, "Fondly Fahrenheit"? The movie's production was tossed around producers and directors for years....finally ending with Haggis as director.........Now, that Haggis is being placed on the 'noli me tangere' list...you guessed it.....for forcing women to their knees to service his knob..... will this production go South? Or, get another last minute director? Or, just be abandoned for it's infantile comic book plot line? I'm sure the last reason wouldn't be a consideration, as movie goers love Marvel Comics' film adaptations.......Maybe, if it were made, with it's principal female android wearing all black, to support current feminists' political correctness.........and ended with the male protagonist being decapitated by his 'step-down' androidess.....everything would be just hunky-dory....justice served to a populace that thrives on guilt and punishment......Caravaggio, get your hands off that boy's butt! Who do you think you are.......Leonardo DaVinci?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6hAr9WkGec

Vapid Fodder, Lifted from Comix Pages......Transformed by the Wonders of Technology.....but, still......Just leaping over tall buildings with a single bound.....

"I watched Wade Watts and his High Five both defeat plausibility and engender complicit deniability, as comics-reading/virtual gaming fantacizers, incapsulated in CGI-actuated-retro-nostalgia, fill their goggles and headsets with Alter-World displacements of the exigencies of Dulldrum and its replacements of excitement, super-powers and the considerable unthinking rewards of Deus Ex Machina,,,,,,,,,The escapist fare looked great!.... It IS all about the surfactants, isn't it.......with the catalyst of unquestioning adolescence, buying this all up...then rushing out to Circuit City for the latest escape mechanism.... Now....clean up all this crap and do your trig homework or move out and get a job wrangling your plastic trash into the garbage pickup truck.....and McDonald's needs drive-through window order takers, you know!...."

Sincerely, your parents, King Kong and Godzilla, recently wed.. to legitimize their many offspring...[recently, in a lake of molten discarded electronic circuit boards and batteries, as The Iron Giant melts like The Terminator, and the enormous gorilla with lifelike fur dissolves in evanescent, liquid Imagination.....