Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis (2006)

TEN YEARS AFTER MY GLUTTONY OF MOVIE 'GOING'........

I've not been in a movie theater more than a dozen times in a few 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, chortling and snorting  people........This morning, on a dare, which I accepted.....ummmmm.....I was given the 'opportunity' to attend 'the movie of my choice'..... ANORA, THE BRUTALIST, A COMPLETE UNKNOWN, CONCLAVE, DUNE: PART TWO,  EMILIA PÉREZ,  NICKEL BOYS,  A REAL PAIN,  SING SING, or WICKED ?  ..Looking over these '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 replacement for the Christopher Plummer 'replacement for humiliated Kevin Spacey' film!.....maybe..... In my youth, I averaged seeing about 5 movies a week on Big Screens! 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, 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.......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!

LAST YEAR IN MARIENBAD - Official Trailer - 55th Anniversary Edition

EARL HOLLIMAN, DEAD THIS WEEK...AT 96....

 photo from his 1995  Noir Film, "THE BIG COMBO", a film with subtle gay subtexts   ...... Lee Van Cleef and Earl Holliman as hitmen,  Fante and Mingo......

Round and Round, then Down... in the 'Ratings Game'.......

 

3.2 lbs of disks......that's a lot of 're-watching'.....a TV Series that, I thought, ended....prematurely......damn those 'ratings'.....Yet, Law & Order goes on and on and on......Do No Harm, Weeds, Dexter, 24 and United States of Tara....even Shameless.....had inevitable closures......with little fanfare....With the exception of Shows like Mr. Robot, for example, that had...originally....a Plan....to End.....My issue with 'Series'......their survival depends upon 'the numbers'......Even I LOVE LUCY! At least, I was spared the possible idiotically desperate screenwriting of another Gotham season, wherein Bruce opens a batburger joint with Enigma working the register; James and Harvey checking for Covid masks; Oswald and Barbara running the back office; Butch and Leslie in charge of TV advertising.....perhaps, 4...and a bit more....was enough.....and only the dog would drink from the toilet of another season......

Galileo Movie (1975) || 720p HD || SUB (eng/spa/por)

A LOOKBACK TO THE PULLMAN 'CAR'.......WITH REMEMBERED BUT UNMENTIONED REFERENCIALS FROM 'THE POLAR EXPRESS'......

 Over a quarter of a century after Philip Pullman's grown up reply to the adolescence of J.K. Rowling's infantile gibberish, the DARK MATERIALS TRILOGY.....sorta Milton for intellectual youths....I heard, a few years ago, that he will have a new 'trilogy' on the presses....beginning with a prequel, “La Belle Sauvage” ........Will it be bought up and made into a movie? I remember, well, all the controversy over his last series of books and the Christian Right's boycott of the movie adaptation of "The Golden Compass', which led to the other two sequels being dropped from production, in obeisance to the Right Wing, that condemned it as atheistic and unsuitable for American YOUTH.....a baker's dozen years ago, after theaters pulled GOLDEN COMPASS as Atlanta's "Christian" 'Moms" marched on the Capital downtown.......I cranked out, in my 'Bitching' blog of the day: "After waiting impatiently for the film adaptation of Phillip Pullman’s classic trilogy....it seems that i must be pacified by "The Golden Compass", alone......for the general public apparently has little interest in atheistic fantasy film adaptations! Chris Weitz's artistic work still lies, bleeding.... butchered in the editing room, reflecting New Line's fear of fundamentalist backlash to one of the first atheistic children's fantasy films......too bad.....maybe Criterion will... at least.... issue a director's cut of the film as it was originally conceived before the post-production debacle.......After all, the Religious Right has the trashy Chronicles of Narnia and the Prince Whatever to balm it's offended sensibilities, doesn't it? I am doubtful that The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass will be filmed, in the near future, although The Golden Compass brought in a couple of hundred million bucks on the European market.......Calvinistic American Parents were less than enthusiastic about the release and New Line Cinema stupidly released the film during "Jesus" season in the States! Incidentally New Line went belly up, losing big bucks......Do 12 year-olds actually know who Nicole and Daniel are? In America, its all about catering to populist tastes....and we know that is "C-minus"!"

DANIEL CRAIG'S 'FULL CIRCLE'?

A 'queer'  Daniel Craig film...that I remember having seen...was John Mayberry's "LOVE IS THE DEVIL:  STUDY FOR A PORTRAIT OF FRANCIS BACON", in which Craig 'plays' George Dyer, a gay hustler...opposite Derek Jacobi, as the painter, Francis Bacon.   And...oh, yes....there was 2008's "FLASHBACKS OF A FOOL"........and his run as macho James Bond, for which he is largely identified...Now, hot off the editing room......"QUEER"......  Luca Guadignino's current Film adaptation of the  1985 William S. Burroughs work.....To challenge the mall theater-goers loosening, fading preconceptions about what a Man .....Is...... 

 

"The time between midnight and dawn when most people die, when sleep is deepest, when nightmares are most palatable. It is the hour when the sleepless are pursued by their sharpest anxieties, when ghosts and demons hold sway." Ingmar Bergman

I watched the early directorial work of Kenneth Branagh, DEAD AGAIN......and thought of all the 'supernatural' films of its kind that play on primitive Belief Systems......and there have been hundreds of these...even since Bridey Murphy Days.....all this 'seriousness' just reifies my thoughts about how slowly Civilization seems to evolve out of religious conceptualizations,,,.like 'Souls' that can exist outside mortal bodies, 'Life After Death", Reincarnation and Transmigration...a 'theme' of this Fantasy Movie that took itself so seriously.....Some great actors, nevertheless, earlier in their careers and a darker Robin Williams, in a predictive performance.....a small role by under rated Campbell Scott and some foolishness with Derek Jacobi as the 'funny man' antique dealer/therapist/psychic fortune teller/hoarder.......This film was 'on trend', of course....on the coattails of a dozen films....like it....that were being cranked out by "The Business" of Film-making at 'the hour of the wolf'.....OR: the Whacko Mass Delusional Sytems that "Most" believe as 'Real'.......

SOMETHING DANCING ABOUT HER

I've been looking for a copy of the film adaptation, which was made a few years ago. Principally a biography of Pegi Nicol, it concerns the inter-woven lives of three Canadian artists, Pegi Nicol, Marion Scott and Marjorie Oberne.....played by Dana Green, Fiona Reid and Sheila McCarthy, respectively. Marjorie Oberne and I were friends for many years before her death, and we played bridge together every Wednesday night for years. I knew much about her, but she never mentioned her previous life as a Painter and was largely dismissive of her own accomplishments. Since I discovered that this film had been made and that one of my favorite actors, Sheila McCarthy, had played Marjorie, I have sought out a DVD or a showtime on IFC.....to no avail, however.......I did, however, find one of Marjorie's paintings.....[Marjorie Borden Oberne (Canadian/Georgia, 1911-1992) oil on canvas painting titled "Georgia Clay," comprised of geometric forms in shades of red, orange, yellow, blue green, white, black, and brown. Signed and dated "'57 M. Borden Oberne" lower right. Signed and titled en verso on top stretcher. Housed in a carved wooden frame with off white rabbet edge. Sight - 28 1/8" H x 36 1/8" W. Framed - 33 1/2" H x 41 1/2" W. Mid 20th century. Provenance: Deaccessioned from the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. ]  now, a victim of Fashion and Forgotteness.....which was sold at an auction in Knoxville, Tenn....where she lived before her move to Florida, then Atlanta, where we met.......

Today is the 'official' JAMES BOND DAY......

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!... My vote is for Aaron Taylor-Johnson...or....Tom Hardy....

A MENTION OF THE JOHN WATER'S FILM, "PECKER" THAT MY MENTION OF IT WAS CENSORED BY FACEBOOK POLICE FOR BEING 'INAPPROPRIATE'......

a film resurrection for NewFest 36, in NYC.... with a remarkable casting of Edward Furlong, Mink Stole, Christina Ricci, Mary Kay Place, Patty Hearst, & Martha Plimpton,,,,,under the magic directorial wand of John Waters....I'm thinking that this would be a great double-bill with 'Absolute Beginners'...or a triple-bill with 'Blow-up'.....

"MAD LOVE" (1935) AKA "THE HANDS OF ORLAC"

 

The 1935 MGM Karl Freund  film adaptation of Maurice Renard's novel, "Les Mains D'Orlac"....featuring Colin Clive, Ted Healy, Frances Drake and Peter Lorre; produced by John Considine Jr. ...adapted by Guy Endore...with costumes by Dolly Tree,  Musical Score by Dimitri Tiomkin, and Art Direction by Cedric Gibbons....clicked all my buttons this morning at 3:45, when it was shown on TCM.....We get Keye Luke in his 'Mister/Dr. Wong' persona and seemingly ever-present Ian Wolfe in yet another of his dark roles.....remember "Bedlam",  or his many character actor performances?   ......The  Film opens with a fist breaking a frosty glass window on a snowy, frigid evening, to reveal a man, hung by his neck in a painted set room of Le Theatre Des Horreurs.....the viewer is diverted to 'the real world' as a courting couple exits what was a Wax Museum-ish exhibit of Terror and Torture......the young woman, squabbling with her boyfriend over not having gone 'someplace' to 'have some fun'.......They pass by a Theater Sign advertising "Yvonne"....at Le Theatre....then the camera, abandoning the couple that disappear with other fashionable couples...all wearing the then obligatory hats and couture essentials,  as we are now engaged by Yvonne, primping her 'look' for a performance, as "Torturee",  reading her fan mail and wondering if Dr. Gogol is rich enough for her attention..........All of these observations are from the first couple of minutes of the Film, incidentally....

REFLECTING ON "MAGGIE SMITH": A BRIEF REFLECTION IN THE HALL OF MIRRORS THROUGH WHICH I DOGGEDLY, CONFUSEDLY, DELVED INTO....LOOKING TO FIND WHO I MIGHT BECOME.....

James Ivory, Pierre André Clémenti, Alan Bates, Armelia McQueen.....now, Maggie Smith.....All, introduced to my intellectually formative young adulthood via French, Italian and Swedish Cinema have, although dead and gone..now, have left my Mind....full of reconsiderations, alternating paths of emotional alternatives and a deepening appreciation of The Art Of Life, as my own Life unravelled, reweaving its components into a more truthful assemblage........Thank you....or, well, my memories of you, Miss Brodie.....you were a Prime Mover...always offering keys to the shackles of compliance and internalization, linked by the chains of conformity........

Sturgill Simpson - The Dead Don't Die

Both exhausted and stimulated by the bites of hatching, blood-sucking black fleas that had incubated in an old Persian rug that I dragged home from a yard sale......I escaped to my Fortress of Solitude in the Attic, clawing at my ankles and feet and crushing some of the armored vampires between my fingernail tips. Requiring some distraction, I turned on the satellite receiver and monitor, just as a Jim Jarmusch Film, THE DEAD DON'T DIE, was beginning.....noting its Cast 'n' Credits.......[and having, previously, appointed one of his earlier films, ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE to my personal Pantheon of Late Night Weird Cinematica.....] It devolved into a mess of referentialities; George Romero, scribbling furiously in a lined Blue Horse tablet, in red, colluding with David Lynch, holding a spiky copper scouring pad between his butt cheeks. while re-directing Spielberg's Alien Saucer-ship from its landing, without being observed by Francois Truffaut, whose Bolex formatting cameras tumble to the desert floor and are gathered up like the possessions of Lila Kedrova in ZORBA THE GREEK...and taken off for taste-testing by the native cast of CAT PEOPLE..... So...the zombies plod through the streets of Centerville, with all those referential cues from 200 MOTELS, to a recreation of the Bates Motel, where, late in the stupid film, the three City Kids get devoured by zombies, then have their heads demolished by Officer Petersen, who...minutes later.....is also devoured, along with Chloe and Bill's deadbeat cop characters..........During all this, Tilda'a character, Zelda Winston, channeling..simultaneously, Legolis & Beatrix Kiddo....meets the Intergalactic Cruiser ship, as it is surrounded by flesh-eating zombies, and is taken aboard in an anti-gravity ray beam and whisked away from this mess of rednecks and walking dead.....Did I miss anything of any importance, whatsoever? My 'takeaway' was only the sad memory of Hermit Bob, cooking the blood-drained corpse of Anton Yelchin, while having some juicy spider appetizers as they struggle between his fingernail tips.....

I consider NEW YORK, NEW YORK to be one of Martin Scorcese's worst Films......

OUT-PACED BY ROBERT DE NIRO'S GREAT PORTRAYAL OF A DISGUSTINGLY, MACHO, SEXIST, BUT MUSICALLY BRILLIANT, EGOTIST, LIZA WAS RESOLVED TO THE BACK OF THE SADDLE, HOLDING ON FOR HER LIFE....EVEN WHEN IN HER 'ELEMENT'....THE FOOTLIGHTS!.....ALL THIS SCREECHING AND FORMULAICALLY STYLISH CHOREOGRAPHY REPRESENT 'WHAT I DON'T LIKE ABOUT  BROADWAY'.....1977  WAS A BIG YEAR FOR FILMS ABOUT 'ASSHOLE MEN' AND FOR WOMEN, CHANNELLED INTO SUBMISSION BY THEIR SUBMISSIVE INSECURITIES .......AT LEAST, LIZA'S CHARACTER HAD THE SENSE TO QUIT PLAYING ALONG WITH THE 'GAME'......[AS I RECALL ANOTHER 1977 FILM, "LOOKING FOR MR. GOODBAR", IN WHICH DIANE KEATON'S 'CHARACTER' IS SERIALLY AND FATALLY ABUSED BY FOUR ASSHOLES WITH MACHO DOMINATION ROUTINES......]

Roger Corman's "Bucket of Blood" - (opening credits) Some absurdist Subterranean Beatnik Poetry, accompanied by really 'cool' jazz saxaphone by Paul Horn .......

During a 9th Grade Saturday night of playing 'Beatnik'....in not-very-cool N. Alabama...three friends and I snuck into 'The Drive-In'.....likely, "Woody's Drive-In"....for a double feature of Roger Corman's "A Bucket Of Blood" and Russ Meyer's "The Immoral Mr. Teas"...with a couple of Herbert Tareyton 'cork-tips', some Heath bars and a carton of 'Cokes'.......I was 'ready', then, to excape the duldrums of Space City and hitch a ride to Bohemian Individualist Thinking ....'that' was in NYC, of course......'The Village'....It was 4 years later, that I first arrived 'on the Scene'..... already, transformed by Fashion and Fad to accomodate the then rapid-change from 'Beatnik' to 'Hippie'......with a stopover at a Hootenany Hoot with some prancing beer-can-rolled Confusionaires with bows in their hair and Dick Clark on the over-bar b/w TV, dictating the "LOOK" to go with the Watusi Craze....no corny poets with Ferlinghetti pocket poetry books next to their butt-filled ashtrays, ringed java cups and beer-foamed mugs.....Boxes of beads and Crackerjacks trinkets becoming the rage of beret-clad soon-to-be hipsters' mini-stage Acts with bongos and deep mascara......

FROM MY COLLECTION OF 48 AUTOGRAPHED PHOTOS OF 'OLD MOVIE STARS'......

 

From Mitzi Gaynor to, well, right now.......marketing the allure of cosmetic glamour to duldrum women.......the rise of Big Red Lips and fragrant necklines......

Wim Wenders' observation in his 1982 Film, "THE STATE OF THINGS"...

 

JEWELLED COINCIDENCES The Devon and 'Madame Mandelip'

Watching Todd Browning's 1936 film, The Devil Doll.....I freeze-framed a couple of stills.......One was from a scene wherein Lionel Barrymore is digging an emerald from a platinum ring........."Hmm"....I thought.....I have a ring that's almost identical.......and have renamed it The Devon Ring......Obliquely, "Devon" was sitting next to a cluster of a dozen old German figurines.......In the film, the ring mount and it's emerald, removed, is placed in a 'doll', on a table with a dozen other dolls......And, even more coincidentally, Barrymore plays a character, in drag, wearing a pair of earrings that are exactly like a pair that I have and have worn........Go figure! This film, a sub-text being the sub-miniaturization of creatures.....to make the Earth more capable of feeding the exploding populations of 'everything'......was created shortly after Einstein's having published his then Science-Changing Theory of General Relativity and the introduction into Art of the Physics of matter and energy.......Early in the film, the Scientist, Marcel, lectures, briefly, on the Theory... that, if the space between atoms were reduced, miniaturization would be possible.... Levond comments, in The Devil Doll: "if most men were reduced to the dimensions of their mentality, Marcel's plan wouldn't be necessary."

THE BEST RE-FORMATTING OF THE LEGACY OF BUSBEY BERKELEY'S MUSICALS.......Christina Aguilera, perhaps the greatest living 'Blues Singer' ...with her naughty 'touch of Etta James'........

The familiar Story:   days before the Show goes 'belly up' in bankruptcy, A singer/dancer is replaced...at the last minute, by an unknown Chorus Girl......Saving 'The Show'........Steve Antin's short stretch from "It's My Party"  tribute film to 1930's Hollywood Musicals...........A 'Formula' that still works, today......

Lenny Bruce without obscenity and Dustin Hoffman with no Academy Award Statuette in his hand......

MY LEAST 'LIKED' FORM OF 'ENTERTAINMENT' HAS ALWAYS BEEN ONSTAGE PERFORMANCES BY NARCISSISTIC, DESPERATE FOR ATTENTION STAND-UP COMICS......YET, DUSTIN HOFFMAN'S DEPICTION OF LENNY BRUCE BROUGHT SOME SYMPATHETIC TEARS TO MY FACE.....

"THE GAY DECEIVERS" ....(1969)

Well, it HAS been half a century since 'this' was an excuse for Vice Squads to round up 'congregated' 'Ah Men'-clad gays and haul them off in handcuffs, and contact their parents....begging some parental humiliation and 'straightening out'....before their sons 'get into some REAL trouble'!....And, furthermore, June Buckridge.... put on that pretty flowered dress.....you're looking like a man....What will our righteous neighbors think? Don't you know that Mercy Croft is Jack Arnold Alexander Tancred Gurney's mother? Real Ladies won't put up with this......We're going 'clothes-shopping' in downtown Tuscaloosa, where there may be both a Schwobilt's and a Lane Bryant Shop....Wear your tassel-loafers, son.....those 'pinkish' suede Pat Boone loafers may give someone the 'wrong idea', you know...... 

Challenging gender stereotypes, Taiwanese men have donned skirts both to celebrate Taiwan's long-awaited marriage bill.....and, that bill was the most liberal version, of three proposals!......Of course, wearing 'skirts' & 'dresses' is not as 'out of line' in the 'Orient', is it? Even testosterone-laden Samurai went into battle, wearing skirts, didn't they? Americans still prudishly 'dress like Joe Bob'.....until pop-culture conformity gets Idaho farmer boys into do-si-do hoop skirts....with some chains, tattoos, combat boots, trendy-framed dark shades, chrome and black leather bondage jewelry, foundation cosmetics and butch-wax....to let everyone know that they're not 'sissies'.....I'll bet that some angry fag-haters are rolling out some barbed wire fences....

Passing Parade: "People on Paper" 1945

I watched all of John Nesbitt's 'documentary films' when I was still a 'pre-teen'....... They installed a 'perspectivometer' under my skull, I think.....encouraging self-determination and the courage to develop as an 'Eccentric'...... After viewing "The Great American Mug", also made in 1945, I thought it a bit absurd to 'go to the barber shop' to conform to the 'Fashion TRENDS of the Day'......

PONDERING THE INTERVIEW WITH ANTHONY CARRIGAN........CONTRASTING 'JEREMY' AND "VICTOR"

Remembering "Jeremy" aka "Powder" from the 1995 film, while listening to PBS' interview with Anthony Carrigan.....I'm thinking of Victor Zsasz's hyper-violent criminal character and, 180 degrees away....of Jeremy Reed, a character with 'higher purpose'...and of the current, more cynical, violence-obsessed public of 2019 as the obverse of the spiritual optimism of the earlier Film,....just pondering.....A 'sign o' the times' or the perpetual, kinetic mobile of Humanity....a target for our own demolishment......

'THE TRANSATLANTIC TUNNEL'..... 1935

early 1930's predictory Film about the building of The Transatlantic Tunnel, and subsequently, probably, driving one's 2.97-liter 75 horsepower V-8 alloy engine Czechoslovakian TATRA T87 , at it's maximum speed of 160 kmph, from England to America .....in a 'tech time line' with METROPOLIS and some other 'high tech' Futuristic Films of a Century ago.....Lots of insights into the Political Scenario, Market manipulation and transitional gender role-play.....'same as it ever was/is'....and some wry anticipatory cynicism, dressed in sentimental drivel with some artsy sound-editing and transitional fading, quicksanded by a conventionally dull, ubiquitous sound track and the intermittant drone of early airplane engines......

WHO CAN RESIST... "Noli Me Contendere".....I had to watch 'it'......'It' is, now, a tradition.......

 

The 'JIMMY KIMMEL OSCARS SHOW' was great-looking....especially the first half of the 'Show'...Fine Couture and well-chosen, and largely complementary, borrowed/advertised jewels ..The ill-conceived 'Memorial' Photoshow lost my interest during its few moments; and some of the acceptance speeches reminded me of High School Dramatics Club Award Stuttering Stumbles......(especially the clumsy, 'read the cue cards', utterances by zoned-out Jennifer Lawrence).. As the cheers faded for Oppenheimer’s lavish 'get-on-board' Oscars victory lap, to the 'get even more attention, narcissists, After Oscars Parties', muster some compassion for Bradley Cooper’s & his Film, Maestro, the recipients of exactly Zero awards...Is Bradley the new 'whipping boy'? Greta Gerwig wasn't even nominated.....go figure that one out! As always, THE OSCARS is, as always, a staged and scripted card magic trick...wherein, we are shown the Royal Flush cards, then the 'other' cards get shuffled in for relatability for the Hoi, on their couches, recliners and beds, eating from bags while 'hitched to the posts' of Entertainment, while the Cowboys are fighting it out for the golden breath mints.... on the other side of the swinging doors of the Rancho Notorious Hollywood Saloon......Cudos to Wes Anderson, who may have been watching from his pillow, while working on a corduroy Phoenician Scheme set design or Jimmy Kimmel's next Academy Awards Show Mock Up... and to Rita Moreno, for best-dressed actor over 90....make that 'under a hundred'......T. Chalamet must have stayed home, practicing his "Bob Dylan" look, in hopes of a 'big win', a year or two from now.....Are you paying attention, Austin Butler? I'll bet 'you are'! Do I hear Cate Blanchette, chuckling under her gloved hand?   Production Design for the 2025 OSCARS SHOW is already in production.....Here, 'past winners' appear, to flatter next year's Nominees for the 'Top 6 Awards'.....Hang in 'there', this year's 'LOSERS'.....next year's big show may be 'In The Cloud'.....and disappointments will seem much more dimuitive, on your mobile devices than on your 146" IAB Series, Class 4K, UHD HDR Commercial Monitors....."MAESTRO" AND "BARBIE"......Soon, redistributed as  a double-bubble-feature, at your local cut-rate drive in theaters.......half-priced Lite beer with 'proof of purchase' ticket receipt....available at the concession stand, where Bradley Cooper will be, to autograph old Columbia LPs of Mahler's 9th Symphony.......

A TRIO OF 1968-9 STILL PUBLICITY PHOTOS FROM FILM DISTRIBUTOR "SHERPIX".....PROMOTING "LONESOME COWBOYS", WRITTEN AND PRODUCED BY PAUL MORRISSEY & DIRECTED BY ANDY WARHOL

 

HERE:  VIVA HOFFMAN, AT RIGHT AND LEFT......& AT CENTER, VIVA, TAYLOR MEADE AND, NAKED, TOM HOMPERTZ.......OR, MAYBE, ERIC EMERSON.......

SLAUGHTER ON TENTH AVENUE.......

MOON MANOR ......A RELATIVELY OBSCURE FILM BY ELIZABETH BRISSENDEN, AKA 'MACHETE BANG BANG'..... THAT TAKES ON THE DISCOMFORTING THEME OF HUMAN FRAILTY AND ULTIMATE DEATH FOR ALL HUMANS..........ANOTHER SUBTLE PERFORMANCE BY LOU TAYLOR PUCCI, STAR OF ANOTHER OBSCURE, MONEY-LOSING FILM, "THUMBSUCKER'

CHAIN-SMOKING IN THE FILMS OF VINCENTE MINNELLI ....well, in most Movies........

WATCHING, THIS MORNING, "HOME FROM THE HILL', AND NOTICING THAT EVERYONE, ALL THE TIME, SEEMS TO BE 'LIGHTING UP'.......I THOUGHT OF SOME OTHER 'MINNELLI' FILMS THAT HAD THE SUBTEXT OF 'CHAIN-SMOKING' CIGARETTES:   FOR EXAMPLES....LAUREN BACALL'S NEUROTIC PSYCHO-ANALYST'S NICOTINE ADDICTION IN "COBWEB';  THE CHARACTER, DAISY GAMBEL, IN 'ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER'.....WHEREIN BARBRA STREISAND'S CHARACTER SEEKS PSYCHIATRIC HELP FOR HER NICOTINE ADDICTION....AND, NEED I MENTION HIS ONCE-WIFE, JUDY GARLAND, WHO SMOKED FOUR PACKS A DAY.........MINNELLI DIED, FROM COMPLICATIONS OF EMPHYSEMA, AS DID MANY CELEBRITIES WHO 'CHAIN-SMOKED' THEIR CAREERS THROUGH THE 40'S-70'S.....WHEN 'SMOKING' WAS CONSIDERED A 'DE RIGEUR' COMPONENT OF SOCIAL CONFORMITY......(Studios and stars changed cigarette brands as different tobacco campaigns rolled through Hollywood. In these years, American Tobacco (Lucky Strike), Lorillard (Old Gold), RJ Reynolds (Camel), Liggett & Myers (Chesterfield), and Brown & Williamson (Raleigh) collaborated with Paramount, Warner Bros., Fox, MGM, Columbia, RKO, United Artists and Universal. Most of these movie studios are still in business today.}

http://tobacco.cleartheair.org.hk/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Tobacco-kills-2-out-of-every-three-users.pdf

AN ODD ANALOGY PRESENTED MY 'CRITICAL CINEMA' MINDSET THIS MORNING.....

 AS I WATCHED ABOUT TEN MINUTES OF THE 1967 ANDREW McLAGLEN 'WESTERN',  STARRING THE MACHO ACTORS, RICHARD WIDMARK, KIRK DOUGLAS,  AND ROBERT MITCHUM.....THE WAY WEST,  I REALIZED THAT THE CAMPY TV SERIES,  MIRACLE WORKERS, HAD LIFTED MUCH OF ITS INTENTIONAL HUMOR AND PLOT AS WELL AS ITS 'ACTING STYLE',,,  FROM THE 1967 FILM.......

https://youtu.be/l7QtmMsDFAc?si=7GKU_Dw1EHBNH2hb