Signal Watches: The Americans (that Commie Spy Show on FX)

This is how I know I'm getting older.  Time has marched on enough that the scary people of whom we lived in fear during my formative years are protagonists on a new TV show.

FX's new hour-long drama, The Americans, follows the adventures of two KGB sleeper agents in the US at the dawn of the Reagan administration.  The Commies are the protagonists and Ronald Reagan is the looming specter of a heightened state of intensity as (we used to say) the cold war heats up.  We also have a federal agent living across the street from our Commie-heroes, the clammy bureaucracy of the Kremlin, and the rich pageant of life left behind in Mother Russia to contend with.

Movies and TV have taken various stabs at turning the traditional antagonist into the protagonist since Little Cesar pondered how this is how he ended.  Once we dropped the Hayes Code and adopted a rating system that didn't require a moral lesson at the end (ie: the Bonnie & Clyde ending for our protagonist and a realization that crime ends in a premature death and misery), we've explored bad-guy-ness in the movies.  And, of course, Sopranos broke the mold for TV, giving a weekly view and building sympathy for a mob family.  These days, of course, Breaking Bad gives us the drug manufacturers' perspective.

No Post Thursday - Superheroes on TV

I watched the first 2/3rds of What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? for the first time since college, and its even better than I remember.  Saving the rest for tomorrow, but, man, everyone in that movie is so good.

Anyway, we'll talk about that movie later.

And, we really need to find me a copy of Straight Jacket.

Also watched a PBS show, Pioneers of Television, that I think Randy originally sent me the link for.  Anyway, the topics was superheroes, and featured Batman, The Hulk, The Adventures of Superman, The Greatest American Hero and (sigh) Wonder Woman.


You can watch the whole thing on the PBS site, so go nuts.

Watch Superheroes on PBS. See more from Pioneers of Television.

Here, Lynda Carter has had enough of your nonsense:

Here's, like, 9.5 minutes of Diana Prince turning into Wonder Woman.  It's kind of weird.




 And, as a reminder, The Adventures of Superman is a terrific TV show.

Thursday: Eddie Muller on Turner Classic - Talking Noir

Noir fans are exceedingly lucky to have a few key figures playing ringmaster for the genre mostly out of pure love for the genre.

Eddie Muller is known in some circles as The Czar of Noir.  He's written a few books on the topic.  I read and loved, Dark City, myself.  He also hosts and manages not just the San Francisco based Noir City festival (now in its 11th year), but he also hosts other noir festivals around the country.  

I first became aware of Eddie when I went to The Alamo Ritz to see The Prowler in a print restored with proceeds earned for the Film Noir Foundation at Noir City.  He's spent decades tracking down the films and some of the stars, now mostly forgotten except by the noir audience, and out of that - he's an excellent story teller, warm host for interviews and a really decent guy.

My pal Jenifer (@J__Swift) knows Eddie a bit, and so she introduced me at Noir City X.  Eddie was exceedingly kind to a dopey guy from Texas, making sure we got a tour of the Hammett apartment on Pike Street, and we agreed that the cinnamon laced bourbon they were serving was more than a little iffy.

Anyway, on Thursday, Eddie is guest hosting at Turner Classic with Robert Osbourne.  

Eddie isn't going to trot out the crowd pleasers, necessarily.  We've already all seen Gilda and Laura.  But he will uncover gems you might not otherwise ever see, and which have special qualities or performances you don't see anywhere else.

Of the films, Eddie selected four and the fifth was chosen by TCM as a special nod to Eddie and his restoration efforts for the film.

• Cry Danger
• 99 River Street
• Tomorrow is Another Day
• The Breaking Point
• The Prowler

I've got my DVR set, and I'm looking forward to seeing the films on this list I've not caught before.  Very much looking forward to the intros we'll see.

So, Golden Globes. amiright?

You either like award shows for the entertainment industry, or you do not.  I suppose this is true for both participants who have to go to these things, and for those of us who can opt out at home and not watch.

As a media consumer, you either value what an award for a member of the entertainment industry represents, or you do not.  This is also true for the folks who show up for a one-in-five chance of winning a kind of gaudy statue, as well as us, the viewing public.

I won't try to convince anyone to my viewpoint.  That way lies madness.  I don't watch awards shows, and I don't think much of the value of the awards.  I will confess that I am often interested to see what won some of the technical awards and categories such as "score", because it gives me something to consider if I've seen a movie.

This evening I turned on The Golden Globes just long enough to see Lena-what's-her-face win some award for her HBO program, Girls, which I've seen exactly five minutes of, felt terribly aware that the show was aimed at an audience which did not include me, felt I got where this show was headed, and got out before I got emotionally invested in actively disliking everything about the show and those involved.

Because of when I tuned in, all I know is that The Big Bang Theory has fallen from grace with the Hollywood Foreign Press as, this year, it was not funnier than Girls.  Is it possible Louie was not nominated?  Can you see why I can't take this seriously?

I made it for a whole of three minutes before Jamie saw me walking off with my laptop and just turned off the TV again.  I heard enough of Lena-what's-her-face's speech to recognize that it sounded like everyone else's speech.  It sounded like every television or movies award speech ever done that wasn't someone going crazy once they had a chance with a microphone and a massive, captive audience.  This was the banal, overstuffed speech where people who made a thing drop superlatives.

As a facebook friend said:  Dear Hollywood, stop saying it took courage to make your TV show/ movie.  It took money.

Some end of week Media: Bernie, Where Danger Lives, Ghosts of Belfast, Downton Abbey

Watched two completely different movies tonight.  Bernie and Where Danger Lives.  These days I'm re-watching movies less and trying to see new things more.

Bernie was shot somewhat locally by Austin-based filmmaker Richard Linklater and got a lot of local praise when the movie was released, but I don't know how far and wide it was seen outside of Texas.  A true story of a mortician (Jack Black) and his nebulous relationship with an older woman (Shirley MacLaine) and how everything's relative in a small town in Texas, including murder.

I'd heard a lot of good things, and the locals both cut into the movie in "interview" segments and playing themselves were a very clever twist.  I just wasn't sure the movie actually worked all that well, especially as the murder - which is a matter of public record - doesn't come til the 2/3rds mark...

Probably worth a spin sometime.

Also watched Where Danger Lives with Robert Mitchum, and it's sort of a studio-friendly take on the Detour concept.  Frankly, that is one crazy movie and I'll need to watch it again.  It's so noir, it's almost dripping black off the screen, with Mitchum getting in way, way over his head, while drunk and concussed with a classic femme fatale who doesn't have Ann Savage's brutal, sexy cruelty, but has her own more recognizable looney-tunes-ness.  It's a great "and mistakes were made" kind of story.  Bonus points for brazen sexuality in a 1950 film, all through a lack of camera movement and a few key lines of dialog.

Started listening to the audiobook of The Ghosts of Belfast.  It's an interesting book thus far, and I wish I knew more about the history of the IRA, but even what little I do know is sort of keeping me up to speed.

Last night we tried our first episode of Downton Abbey.  I can't say I exactly see what the big deal is, but it was the pilot.  We'll try again later.  I do not get hot and bothered often by Upstairs/ Downstairs-type dramas, and it's so over the top, it does feel like camp.  Is this show supposed to be camp?  Someone help me out.

All right.  I'm tired.  I'm going to bed.

Pre "Man of Steel" Superman-a-thon?

I am planning some sort of epic re-watching of Superman media in the lead up to this summer's release of Man of Steel.

I have several issues.

unlike Superman, I do not go to the moon to ponder.  I bore you guys.

1.  What do I watch?

I own:

• The Fleischer cartoons
• The original serials starring Kirk Alyn
• The entire George Reeves series (6 seasons)
• the four cycle movie series with Chris Reeve, including the Superman 2 Director's Cut and Superman Returns
• Supergirl - yes, it's in continuity and it counts
• the animated series from the 1960's
• the animated series from the 1980's
• Season 1 of Superboy
• Season 1 of Lois and Clark
• Superman the Animated Series, Justice League
• a handful of DC/ WB Animation Studios direct-to-video movies like Superman Vs. The Elite

end of football season 2012-13 (also, Brent Musberger)

I watched the BCS Championship game between Alabama and Notre Dame, and - as you may have heard - Alabama destroyed Notre Dame, 42-14 (you can argue that last ND touchdown was someone from Alabama being nice).

I don't have feelings one way or another about either team.  It's cool to see Nick Saban earn his 3rd National title in 4 years, and I was glad Notre Dame was back as a serious contender in NCAA football.  But I think this absolute rout of The Fighting Irish will be putting some questions around Notre Dame's unique position as a team without a country/ conference, and that their schedule may be a wee bit lopsided as they milk their TV contract.

It was a fun year for football, and I wish I'd had a less hectic schedule and could have enjoyed more of it.  Even when UT is doing poorly (and we ended up with 9 wins, so as bad as it felt, it's still a decent season), it's something to do.  I still like watching Big 12 teams and a few, random other teams when I can.

Between you and me, I can't stand commentator Brent Musberger.  He certainly knows the sport, but he's still wishing it were 1975.  I like a little fake impartiality in my hosts, and Musberger chucked all that years ago.  Sometimes he's right, sometimes he's wrong.  But having had listened to his nonsense as he's called (and constantly dogged on) UT games over the years, I just sigh when I realize he and Herb are on commenting duties.

The 2012 Not-a-List Rundown

author's note:  2012 is a year I have been looking to put behind me for quite a while for any number of reasons.  Obviously the events in my personal life marked a very sad end to the year for us at our house.  Perhaps we should declare 2012 Annus Horribilis and move on.

With recent events weighing so heavily on me right now (and with this post started a long, long time ago), I'm going to stick to pop culture and the original, intended tone of the post - and this blog - and take a look back instead at...  yeah, I guess comics and whatnot.

here we go.

The 2012 Not-a-List Rundown

My Totem for Everything About my Pop Culture Hobbies in 2012

My relationship fundamentally changed with my hobbies and past-times, and superhero comics have begun to dip below the horizon to the same place Star Wars went circa 2002.  Because of travelling and the fact I was sick a lot this year, I also didn't really make it out to the movies very often.

Happy Birthday, Audrey Totter!

December 20th is the 95th Birthday of actress Audrey Totter!  I suppose that makes the timing of this post Audrey Totter-Day Eve.

Ms. Totter starred in a terrific run of films, and had one of her breakout appearances as a source of temptation for the always terrific John Garfield in The Postman Always Rings Twice.  Ms. Totter's character caused a bit of jealousy in Lana Turner.  People, if you can give Lana Turner a moment of pause, clearly you're a force to be reckoned with.

The first movie I saw in which Ms. Totter got top billing was The Set-Up, and it's an absolutely terrific bit of acting under the direction of Robert Wise, but I'd also point you toward Tension, which is a terrific example of noir (and also has Cyd Charisse and Richard Basehart!).  In this one, Totter blows everyone else on screen right out of the frame.   I'd also recommend The Unsuspected to see her alongside Claude Rains and playing a wide range in a single film.

That's sort of what I think of now when I consider Ms. Totter's films.  She wasn't a character actor, and in all of her movies, she manages to do what better actors pull off - and that's too completely fill the character in a unique way and disappear into the role, but still retain the ability to make you notice them.  Her roles in Man or Gun and Tension couldn't be more different, but she's terrific in both movies.

In the 50's, Ms. Totter began working in both film and television, she starred in series like Cimarron City and Medical Center, and retired from the screen with her final televised appearance in 1984 on Murder, She Wrote.

Today, Ms. Totter is still living in Southern California, and through a terrific series of internet blips by way of Jenifer, on Sunday morning I received a video in my email that made my year.   The video is of Audrey Totter sending Jenifer and me best wishes.  The video absolutely blew my mind.  It's like someone you watch at the movies turning to the screen and saying, "Oh, hello, Ryan."

Special thanks to Ms. Totter's granddaughter, voice artist, Eden Totter.  (Eden is super-great, by the way.)


Happy Birthday, Ms. Totter!  We wish you the best on your birthday and will be spending the holiday break catching up on some of your movies we haven't yet seen.



PS.  If you ever want to know what it would be like to be a detective in the presence of Audrey Totter, I highly recommend the experimental first-person movie, Lady in the Lake, based on the Raymond Chandler novel.

Signal Watch wishes Noel Neill a Very Happy Birthday!

Born November 25th, 1920, Noel Neill played Lois Lane in the original Superman movie serials with Kirky Alyn, and then in all but the first season of the 1950's TV series, The Adventures of Superman alongside George Reeves and Jack Larson.  She went on to appear as Lois' mother on the train in Superman: The Movie and appeared briefly as Gertrude Vanderworth in Superman Returns.

She is one of our favorite performers in any Superman media, and we want to extend a big birthday howdy to our Lois of choice.

Larry Hagman Merges with The Infinite

Larry Hagman, of Dallas TV fame, has passed at the age of 81.

I am a child of the 70's and 80's, and was living in the Dallas area circa 1979-1981 and Houston, after that.  There were four channels at the time.  We all watched Dallas.  Yes, we all knew who JR Ewing was.  And, like much of America, I also wondered who had shot JR.

He drinks your milkshake

Son of actress Mary Martin and a native Texan, Hagman's relationship with Texas continued on and off for most of his life.*  Hagman was a major wheel in TV, both in the US and abroad, where the show ran in re-runs well past when the show had been cancelled.

Later, I'd start watching re-runs of I Dream of Jeannie, where Larry Hagman played astronaut Tony Nelson. He got to be on TV with Barbara Eden every week, and that ain't bad.

Major Nelson was never any Darren-like pushover

Readers of this blog will also remember him from Superman: The Movie as the Army officer who bravely steps up and assists Valerie Perrine when she fakes an auto accident to distract a convoy for Lex.

bravely, bravely ponders a stricken Valerie Perrine

Hagman had recently returned to TV in a reboot of Dallas, and was enjoying a second wind of stardom.

Hagman passed today in a Dallas hospital.

*As a side note, the more someone is like the villainous JR Ewing, the more likely it often seems that they'll be elected governor in Texas, over and over and over.

So, I watched that "Breaking Amish" Reunion Special

editor's note:  I don't think I've talked this much about TV or a reality show since I predicted in Season 1 not just the impending divorce of Jon & Kate, but exactly how ugly it would be for Jon.*  

Last night I posted the following to Facebook:

So, those "Breaking Amish" kids sort of played TLC for a trip to NYC and reality TV fame. Well played, Amish thugs, well played.

A few months ago I was on the elliptical and decided to spend my time watching Breaking Amish, one of several series on the cable spectrum that has launched in the past 10-12 years.  The series are, invariably, about Amish young adults leaving the fold and experiencing our world for the first time.  The shows have arrived in highbrow flavor from National Geographic channel taking a true documentarian's approach, to Fox "reality" shows pairing Amish 20 year old's with the worst reality-TV-type folks you can imagine and turning in a show about Amish people squirming uncomfortably as dopes try to ridicule them for not being awful people with subscriptions to Us Weekly.

"so... do we pretend we don't know what a bus is?"

Breaking Amish took several young adults from Amish communities (and one from a Mennonite community - where electricity and other conveniences are allowed), and dumped them into New York City. It was a TLC show, so it followed the formula of "come watch the weirdos we found as we walk them through something that looks like a heartwarming learning experience, but, I mean, yeah, obviously not really".  TLC is, of course, home to Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.

I didn't think very much about the show other than that it had the usual "well, this is all clearly 'stage managed'" vibe I get from all reality shows, and I didn't watch more than the one episode.

And then the internet happened.

Halloween! Garth Marenghi's Darkplace!

If you've never watched Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, I cannot recommend this BBC show highly enough.

Here's the first episode.

AXE COP. NICK OFFERMAN. GO!!! (Halloween, Cartoons and Awesomeness)

If you're like me, you're busily trying to model your entire work persona off Ron Swanson, head of the Parks Department on NBC's Parks and Rec.*  Ron Swanson is played by the amazing Nick Offerman, the man manly enough to be married to Megan Mullally.

Mr. Offerman is now also The Voice of AxeCop.**

Here is the first clip from the upcoming show, an adaptation of one of the "Ask AxeCop" mailbag sections popular in the comic strip.

Bear in mind, the strip is written by a 6 year old. That may fill in some important blanks as you consider the mind-boggling sequence about to beset your eyes.



*and, seriously, Parks and Rec is one of my favorite shows right now
**thanks to Kristen B for the link!

Octoberama! Yvonne Craig!

Batgirl fears no tricks!

Lazy Post - Intros of swiftly canceled 80's Sci-Fi shows

Here's the explanation/ origin story for TV's Automan.



When you think about all the work WB put into making Green Lantern's costume work in the movie, it all seems sort of silly. This looks just as good, really.

Here's the intro to a weekly episode.

Opera Watch: Götterdämmerung - We Wrap It Up with Opera #4

People, let me start at the end and the advice I have for you:

If you see some gold at the bottom of The Rhine, just leave it.

Okay.

more or less how Jamie sends me off to work on Mondays

We broke up the fourth and final of The Ring Cycle Operas up into three separate viewings, one per act, as the opera stretched over roughly five hours of TV time. Götterdämmerung (in Ingles, The Twilight of the Gods) catches us up with our hero, Siegfried and his beloved bride, the fallen Brünnhilde as they make pronouncements of eternal love to one another. What we know, that they did not see in the previous scene, was that The Norns (basically, The Fates) have foreseen the end of The Gods and bad times for everyone associated.

Opera Watch: Siegfried from the Met (2011)

Again, I know absolutely nothing about opera, Germans, Norse/ Germanic mythology, etc...

But we did make it through four hours of Siegfried, the third in the four opera cycle by our good friend Wagner.

And, boy howdy, does a lot happen in this thing.

Siegfried is the child of the lovers/ twin siblings (I KNOW) from Die Walküre, the preceding episode.   He has grown to manhood under the watchful eye of Mime, the brother of the Nibelung, Alberich, from Das Rheingold. Our hero is both preternaturally brave and oddly unworldly, having had grown up in the woods among bears and wolves.

Singing AND Dragon Slaying!

I'll leave it to you to Google the plot, but in this installment the use of the rotating arms of the set and integrated visuals reached a new level of sophistication, with interactive digital leaves, a singing, 3D bird and imaginative use of the shifting set.

Opera Watch: The Ring Cycle Parts 1 & 2

Again - I know absolutely nothing about opera.  Nothing.  I'm also not particularly up on my Germanic/ Norse mythology, my Wagner, or basically anything to do with what I've committed upwards of 18 hours to watching.  And, you know...  it's nice to try something outside of my 21st Century comfort zone, especially when I can do it from the comfort of my living room using the power of DVR, HD TV and state-of-the-art, semi-avante-garde (by opera standards) production.

Musically, the show is familiar in part because it's been endlessly repurposed over the 20th century for cartoons, movies, commercials and television.  Most famous is the "Ride of the Valkyries" theme from the second opera in the cycle, which everyone knows at least in part because of the helicopter scene in Coppola's Apocalypse, Now.  Hell, this cycle of operas provides the reason behind the common imagery of the zaftig broad in the viking helmet with a spear belting out the high notes.

@#$% is gettin' real in Valkyrie town

The production shown on PBS last week was not the one recommended to me a few months back.  That was the 1992 production, also recorded at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.  While the production made it to DVD and the sound quality is excellent, the video suffers from the limitations of the time and an insistence by the videographers to shoot the opera more or less from an audience member's distant vantage.  I can't comment on the vocal performances knowledgeably, but the actual acting performances in this version are noticeably stronger and assisted by the camera's ability to get in much closer.

Gotter DAMN erung! We're taking a break from blogging.

Y'all, I'm kind of not going to be posting this week.

WHY?

Because Wagner's The Ring Cycle is going to be playing every night this week on PBS.

For some reason this opera keeps crossing my path of late, and I think it's all leading to something, man.

So I am going to take a break from blogging and I am going to get cultured.

Deborah Voigt in the role of Brünnhilde

Hey.  So.  Why not join in?  It's on all week!  It might be a nice break from the usual stuff on TV.

It's got mermaids and trolls and gods and valkyries and dragons and all kinds of crazy stuff.  It's the basis for half the fantasy, comics, sci-fi and bigger-than-life entertainment we enjoy today.

It's going to be a blast!

So, put on your viking helmet, dust off your love of Bugs Bunny cartoons, and we can all rock out to some old fashioned Wagner.

Watch Wagner's Ring Cycle Preview on PBS. See more from Great Performances.