Happy Birthday, Kim Cattrall

Happy Birthday to League fave Kim Cattrall.

Whether she's having Big Trouble in Little China, Sex in the City, taking a Split Second, or heading off for Star Trek 6's Undiscovered Country, we're a fan.

I'm not sure what she's up to at the moment, but we hope she's having a good time.

In the words of Crow T. Robot:

Marxist Watch: The Cocoanuts (1929)

Watched:  08/19/2026

Format:  TCM on DVR hosted by Eddie Muller

Viewing:  First

Director:  Robert Florey and Joseph Stantley

Apparently the first-ish Marx Bros. movie, The Cocoanuts (1929) is also an early talkie.  So, yeah, someone said "we're adding sound!" and someone said "What people need is to keep up with Groucho and then have Harpo say nothing.  Ever."

The movie is more interesting than laugh out loud funny - but it sure feels like a draft of what was to come and what would work for the Marx Bros. for years to come.  Playing scrappy underdogs not above some lightly criminal doings, but with hearts of gold, the Marx Bros. are dropped into a scenario where Groucho plays someone who has fallen backwards into legitimacy, while Chico and Zeppo show up on the scene to see what they can shake loose, moneywise, from a collection of wealthy people.

As I'll often point out here, maybe the biggest difference between the 21st and 20th Century when it comes to cinema is that the 21st Century does not like stories about scrappy underdogs making fun of the elite.  There is no Flashdance.  There is no Rocky.  Warner Bros. was so horrified about their own movie about a cartoon coyote taking ACME to court, they tried to bury the movie and then sold it to someone else to release.  We can't get a good Bugs Bunny cartoon, because they keep making him play basketball or be a middle-class guy instead of a rabbit fucking with bullies, from Elmer Fudd to Opera singers.  

We're siding with Yosemite Sam out here and it shows.

In this film, we get not just the first movie with the Marx Brothers, we get the first appearance of Signal Watch fave Margaret Dumont, the world's best straight-man.  Here she plays the mother of Mary Eaton, a young lady Dumont wants to marry for money, not for love.  

A priceless necklace is involved, a scheme to win the girl is hatched, the Marx Brothers get involved, and there's a whole sequence at a property auction (I guess Florida real estate was a hot commodity in the 1920's?) and then an engagement party.  Shirts are stolen, drinks are consumed, cracks are wised.

The lad Dumont wants Eaton to marry is a hotel clerk who is trying to become an architect, played by Oscar Shaw.  I didn't know the name Mary Eaton, and Oscar Shaw was new to me.  Eaton only made about five movies and dipped.  Shaw was apparently more of a Broadway guy and headed back to New York by 1930.

I'll be candid and say the eye-catching one here is Kay Francis, who plays a schemer looking to make some money and ruin Mary Eaton's life in the process.  Francis looks every bit the high-class flapper, and was the Queen of Warner Bros. in the 1930's.  I had to look at pictures of her from the 1930's to fully remember who she was (oh, how time makes stars fade away).  

Released in 1929, the movie is clearly from the first wave of talkies.  It's stilted, they actually stumble over one another's lines sometimes, and the camera is mostly just trying to sit still and let the Marx Brothers run around and do their thing.  But with sound came music, and so we stop for some musical numbers, from romantic ballads to floor-show routines as the bell hops in the hotel movie are all young women.

What is *not* surprising is that after however many vaudeville performances, the Marx Bros. have their routine down, and it's everyone else to catch up.

This one was more of a fun ride to see an early movie than anything that made me laugh uproariously, but it's a fun artifact.  It's just not where I'd start someone with the Marx Bros. if you're trying to sell them on the group.

DC Animated Watch: DC's League of Super-Pets (2022)

Watched:  08/19/2026

Format:  Disc 4K

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Jared Stern

One of the oddest of casualties of a certain point in time was DC's League of Super-Pets (2022).  

Started before COVID and then, mind-bogglingly, released during COVID as a kids' movie - it seemingly tanked at the box office.  Fun note:  it made $80 million more than Supergirl.

My memory was - people found the advertising very confusing, and the notion of Superman having a *dog* seemed preposterous to the uninitiated.  One wonders how a kid's movie about Krypto would fare now.  

DC's "Lanterns" Episode 1

I used to love Green Lantern comics.  I came to Green Lantern by reading Emerald Dawn and then Emerald Dawn II.*  But GL and it's cast were a lot, and so I was an inconsistent reader for years.  I eventually fell into the monthly habit, and was there for the last of Kyle's run as the only Lantern, the return of Hal Jordan, elevation of John Stewart and eventually Geoff Johns' expansion of the Lantern spectrum.

A few things killed Green Lantern for me. Repetition of the same story concepts.  No real notion of how to write stories that fulfilled the promise of space cops.  Stuff like that.

Unstuck Watch: Slaughterhouse-Five (1972)

Watched:  06/16/2026

Format:  TCM - first ever showing on the network

Viewing:  First

Director:  George Roy Hill

It's been many years since I read Slaughterhouse-Five, or the Children's Crusade: a Duty Dance with Death. So long ago that all I can say for certain is that it was post-2000 and probably before this blog was founded.  I was just old enough reading it to know my WWII history and a bit embarrassed I'd not read it earlier in life.

But Vonnegut is, hopefully, something that works for you no matter your age.

As it's been a while since I read the book, I won't spend energy comparing and contrasting.  Instead, I'll just suggest watching the movie Slaughterhouse-Five (1972) sometime if you've already read the novel.  If jumping straight to the movie, it also can't hurt to pre-load your knowledge of the last year of World War II in Europe, to get what audiences in 1972 would have likely known just through cultural osmosis.  Things like "oh... Dresden" may not mean as much to some folks here in 2026 and all that you would know is coming.

I won't get into whether what Billy experiences is real or not.  Y'all can make your own decisions and I don't think the answer is that easy.

Ghost Watch: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947)

Watched: 08/16/2026

Format:  TCM on DVR (Alicia Malone hosting)

Viewing:  First

Director:  Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Considered a bona fide classic, I knew the basics of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), but had never managed to get around to the film.  I had no predictions going in - just knew it was a romantic comedy about a widow who moves into a house haunted by the ghost of a former sea captain played by Rex Harrison.

I'm not sure how *funny* this movie is.  It's *charming* and there's humor, but it's more of what Alicia Malone, hosting with TCM, rightfully included into the now very popular genre of Supernatural Romance.  

Gene Tierney plays a widow (Mrs. Lucy Muir) and mother to a young Natalie Wood.  She has some income from her husband's holdings in a gold mine, and so chooses to leave her in-law's house in London to move to the sea-side and live a new life - pushing against turn-of-the-century decorum.  

Happy Birthday, Julie Newmar

Today is the birthday of screen star Julie Newmar, who has just a ridiculous filmography, but has been nerd-famous for decades as one of the women in the Catwoman costume on TV's Batman.  

see!

Newmar is a dancer and actor, and stands at a startling 5'11", which probably kept her from many roles over the years as she'd tower over most of Hollywood's leading men.  For this 6'5" blogger, we think this is just fine.

She appeared in Star Trek, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Call Me Madam, and plenty of others.  We've been looking for a DVD of the 1959 version of Lil' Abner for a while to see her take on Stupefyin' Jones.  You know, for film history research.

Today, she turns 93!  I hope she's having a good one.

 

Mental Health Watch: Bedlam (1946)

Watched:  08/14/2026

Format:  TCM on DVR

Viewing:  First

Director:  Mark Robson

Well, this is *weird*.  Somehow, unintentionally, I watched two movies by the same director in the same day, the other being Valley of the Dolls.  Mark Robson everybody.  Apparently he made Patty Duke cry a lot.  I wonder if he made Boris Karloff run away weeping.

This is an historical drama with large dollops of political commentary and a dash of the horror film - we do have Boris Karloff in the movie, after all.

The movie is essentially about a young woman, Nell (Anna Lee), who is the protegee of the porcine Lord Mortimer.  Mortimer is a rich idiot living well in the world of 1770's-ish England.  He sees himself as a generous fellow, and one of the things he does is employ Sims (Boris Karloff) to manage a lunatic asylum, which has a different name, but is commonly called Bedlam.  

"Bedlam?" you say.  "Doesn't that mean chaos... or... crazy...?"  Yes.  And guess where we got that word, humans of 2026?  Yeah, the English language is a wild ride and I am sure this will make some well-meaning people very cross, indeed.

Anyway, two things happen.  1.  Nell considers herself a stone-hearted jerk immune to the suffering of others, surely a useful tool in an era where people were in rags begging for scraps as you rolled by in your gold plated wagon pulled by local urchins.   She visits Bedlam, which the rich do for their personal amusement.  Back in these days we called the mentally ill "idiots" and "fools" and it was all a good time. However, Nell is horrified.  Shit is bad in the badly run lunatic asylum.   2. She meets a Quaker who was also there to take work as a mason.  He says "I can tell you're secretly a good person", which she denies.

However, Nell *is* a good person with a conscience.  She seeks to use her favor with Lord Mortimer to improve the lot of the inmates, but Sims convinces Mortimer this will be costly and if he spends the money, he'll lose favor in the Royal Court (of King George.  Boo.  Go, America!).  

Sims contrives to have Nell put in the asylum.  

There is *a lot* going on here which, 20 years ago, would have seemed like a hyperbolic echo of the misguided ways of the past, and now just feels like "oh, yeah, totally".  Rich people?  Who can't see other people as human?  Almost impossible to imagine.

It's a good movie!  Well acted, hits all the right beats, tells the story in 80 minutes, in-and-out.  This sort of movie is my bag, baby.  And Karloff's fate is some prime "Val Lewton was here" stuff.  

  

60's Watch: Valley of the Dolls (1967)

Watched:  08/14/2026

Format: TCM

Viewing:  First

Director:  Mark Robson

This movie was not for me.  I did not enjoy it.

I imagine in 1967 this was quite a thing, and I can understand the cultural moment and the reason why people cared.  Young women engaging with foul language, occasional partial nudity and frank depictions of sexual relationships.  It's the earliest I can remember a studio movie being this blunt about sex, drugs and Hollywood.  

Like much of the 1960's, it feels weirdly naive and you can't shake the feeling you're just watching a lot of dumb people making bad decisions.  And that can be a movie.  And, indeed, it was.

The movie follows three women.  Patty Duke plays a girl who gets discovered, becomes a star of screen and stage, and gets hooked on pills - which she calls "dolls".  Sharon Tate plays a woman who is hot but untalented, and who marries a guy and has to put up first with his sister/ manager, and then his chronic condition.  And then Barbara Parkins plays a good New England girl who becomes a secretary, then just seems to hang around her former agent as his girlfriend.  

The movie is mostly about why taking a bunch of pills is a bad idea, why letting an older guy use you is a bad idea, and why porn as a career is maybe not ideal.   

I didn't like a single character nor care what happened to them.  That's not true - Susan Hayward uses her middle-aged-crankiness to good effect as an aging actor who hates Patty Duke.

It just feels like a very long soap opera, but was probably revelatory at the time.

I *think* that what I wanted to see was the quasi-sequel, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, which famously is written by Roger Ebert and directed by Russ Meyers and sounds like a fever dream that took the brown acid. 

This movie was so tedious, it took me four viewings to finish it.  But finish it I did.  Why?  I kept thinking something good would happen.  And it didn't.  

I was mostly bored to tears.

I just wish Patty Duke's cousin had also been in this movie.

Epic Watch: The Odyssey (2026)

Watched:  08/09/2026

Format:  Regal Westgate

Viewing:  First

Director:  Christopher Nolan

Well.  I'm the last person you know to finally see The Odyssey (2026).  All I can say is: You Oughta-See It!

Fortunately, you can't really spoil The Odyssey unless you haven't attended high school in a number of western countries.  (An hour after I typed this sentence, Jamie, unprompted, offered up she doesn't think she read it, but she still knew all the story beats, but wasn't sure why.  I assure you, I have not been, like, babe.. babe...  and then Odysseus?  He disguised his guys like sheep to get out of that cave!) 

I'll keep it short, because enough has been said about the movie.  

Yes, I liked it a great deal.  I haven't read any version of The Odyssey in 35 years, but it hit the beats I remembered.  So, check.