It's Gloria Swanson's Birthday!

Yesterday we posted our Daily Dose of Good Cheer, showing an image of film star Gloria Swanson.  Well, if I knew her birthday was coming, I'd a baked a cake and moved the post to today.  But I didn't know, and so here we are.

Born this day in 1899, Gloria Swanson is now most famous for her role in the absolutely mesmerizing Sunset Boulevard where she plays Norma Desmond, an aging actress of the silent era, now living in a decaying mansion of ridiculous splendor.  She meets a handsome, younger, out-of-work writer, and, well, things go south from there.

Swanson had never quit acting, and was, in fact, a huge star of the silent era.  But she had faded into the background of Hollywood and did a lot of work in theater.

I cannot imagine the bravery that it took to accept the role of Desmond, but in doing so, she turned in a performance that still resonates through American culture.

Today is the birthday of Sterling Hayden

from "The Asphalt Jungle"

You probably know Hayden from Dr. Strangelove, where he was worried about fluoride in the water and what it had done to his virility, or The Godfather, where Michael put a bullet in him from a gun he took from a toilet.  Hayden is also the featured player in a couple of my favorite movies, The Asphalt Jungle and The Killing, two great heist movies with a noir core.

Born this day in 1916, Hayden was never overly excited by his Hollywood career, and he was a bit of an odd guy.  When War II broke out, he joined the military and served under an assumed name (in the OSS, no less).  After the war he had communist ties, later named names, and generally seemed to never recover from the overall experience.

He also once ran off with his kids against court order and sailed them to Tahiti.  Literally, he captained the boat.  That was his thing.

Nobody puts Sterling Hayden in a corner.

We salute you, Mr. Hayden.  You always look how I feel.

And now... People re-enacting scenes from "Miller's Crossing" for some reason

In film school, some courses will ask you to reshoot a scene from a movie.  Folks get ambitious, and it's a hard lesson in how important things like good sound equipment, talented actors, rehearsal, and a knack for direction can actually be.  But it's an exercise a lot of schools have you do before you head out with your own material to butcher.

Below are what I think are likely YouTube videos of those class assignments.  I can see why you'd want these scenes.  Two people, both strong characters.  It's all right there on the page.  And you're only dealing with two actors.

Tom talks to Verna about the death of Rug Daniels...


I'm going to go on and say this: walking in heels in difficult. It's also something everyone who wants to be on TV or in movies should learn how to do. Also, don't outfit our actresses with a jingly purse, movie-people.

Join Us: Miller's Crossing at The Drafthouse Ritz

If you knew me in college you knew two things about me:

• I was probably up for getting some tacos
• I never got over that first viewing of Miller's Crossing

The movie comes to The Alamo Ritz on March 28th.  Simon, Paul and I have our tickets, and we expect you'll be joining us (we're seats 7 - 10 on row 21 for reserved seating).

Put on your fedora or mink coat and come on out and join us to see the movie that sort of set me on the path of being into movies with guys in hats and a lifetime fascination with women in gowns who talk fast and maybe carry a gun.

Wreck-It-Ralph, Birthday, Quiet Man, Pam Grier is well liked

I should probably have something smarter to say, as I haven't really posted much on the usual topics the past several days.

On Saturday evening I wasn't feeling up to snuff, so we watched the Disney film Wreck-It-Ralph, which turned out to be a pretty good flick.  While the themes and story are going to hold up, I am concerned that the trappings of the nostalgia and with the concept of a modern game (or kids paying to play games at an arcade at all) it'll fall into Oliver and Co. territory for Disney, a sort of dated product of its time.  Still, at this time, it was a really fun movie that, even if the kids don't quite get all the gags, they can stick with what's offered up on a story and emotional level.  The "over their heads" bits seemed mostly winky stuff towards 80's video games, much as the Toy Story movies might reference a toy from a Gen X'er's youth.  Heck, one of the credit songs is performed by Pac-Man Fever maestros Buckner and Garcia.

Today was my brother's 40th, and we spent most of the day out at my folks' place with a wide variety of characters.  I saw people I hadn't seen in years, including the children I had never met of several of Jason's pals.  Some of those kids are kind of not so little anymore.  Time flies, man.

SXSW is here again - and, no, I am not going, again

I've never paid for a SXSW badge.  The only SXSW badges I ever got were through work for (a) the relatively new SXSW Interactive around 2000 and (b) about three years ago I returned to Interactive.  I've never paid for film or for music.

I've never been to a SXSW screening of a movie, and the few times I saw music at SXSW, it was near accidental and incidental.  It's probably safe to say that I'm not particularly interested in the scene, and the idea of dealing with the crowds, the lines, and sheer volume of people at all of these events has been off-putting enough that whatever appeal there might be to seeing bands or movies is significantly reduced when I weigh the cost factor of dealing with the scene around SXSW.

For those of us in town, SXSW is an annual period where we sort of just avoid downtown between certain blocks and as locals who feel the presence of the tide, we know to brace ourselves for:

• The bizarre take on Austin that journalists mistake for Austin but which is really just the bubble of SXSW (East Sixth is not "no-man's land".  It's a few hundred feet from regular Sixth.  By the way, no one really goes to Sixth anymore but tourists)
• The number of people who, based on the drunken revelry to be had during SXSW, associate those good times with a need to move here - and they do
• The handwaving that SXSW isn't, basically, spring break for three industries and that this is somehow work 
• People who are the True Believers in SXSW seeming shocked and indignant (and often demanding answers) when you say you don't want to spend the money or time

We Finally Watch: On the Waterfront (1954)

Somehow, and I don't really have a good explanation for this considering I have seen Manos: The Hands of Fate at least four times in its entirety (including once in the theater), I had never seen the 1954 Marlon Brando starring classic On the Waterfront.

This is young, virile Brando, who was full of ideas about acting that would change the artform forever and who made the ladies swoon.  As much as I like old, weird Brando, you need context, and between this movie and A Streetcar Named Desire,  it's not hard to see why the name still gets tossed around.

And, before we begin, was Karl Malden just born aged 42?  Because, seriously, Karl Malden.

I am in the awkward position of admitting I liked the 2012 film "Battleship"

So, Jamie's dad had more than once recommended me the 2012 film, Battleship, which he'd seen in the theater.  I had heard some atrocious things online, but Dick was the only person I knew who had actually seen the movie.

A good, brainless movie can really pass the time on the elliptical, so I threw on Battleship, directed by the notable director and producer Peter Berg of Friday Night Lights fame, and starring Taylor Kitsch of FNL fame as well.

If you have high hopes for a groundbreaking film based on a board game, which throws up a title screen that this is a Hasbro movie, and which stunt casts Rihanna, well, you may come away disappointed.

I am not averse to, and am actually a fan of, what my brother calls "hardware porn".  Movies that feature lots of military vehicles, space ships, cannons, what have you...  and in this vein, I am quite excited for Pacific Rim.  It's worth noting that Battleship is probably intended for middle school boys, from the chaste romantic story to the color-by-numbers scrappy-rebel-learns-honor-in-the-military plot.  And, also, the complete fetishization of naval combat against alien aggressors.

King Kong Released March 2, 1933

I don't remember a time in my life where I didn't generally like the concept of King Kong.  One of the books I remember best from about the age of 4 or 5 was a story book of King Kong, based on the 1933 film with nice illustrations, that my folks read to me.  In the way things are when you're a kid, I just knew who King Kong was, already.  I knew he'd climbed buildings and wreaked havoc, but not much else.

if Kong can make it over there, he can make it anywhere...!

I saw the 1970's Jessica Lange/ Jeff Bridges/ Charles Grodin version on TV around 1st grade, right up until Kong was walking through New York and stepped on some people and, I still recall, me freaking out a little.

By the mid-80's, my folks dropped me and Jason and someone else (I think our own Matt A.) off at Showplace 6 to go see King Kong Lives.  If you've not see it, and I haven't since a brief cable run shortly after it was in the theater, it was amazing.  Oddly, it never really took off as a fan favorite.  It does star a young Linda Hamilton.

One evening when I was in high school AMC finally ran the original, and I taped it in glorious VHS and then watched it, like, three times.  If I liked King Kong as an idea before, I adored the original movie.

If you've never seen it, it's an amazing technical masterpiece for the time.  The stop-motion animation and miniatures are terrifically seamless with the practical sets and actors, the puppetry for Kong manages to create a true character, and the entire Empire State Building Sequence is just truly a remarkable feat.

An Open Letter to The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences: An Idea for 2014

I tuned into the Oscars Sunday night for a few minutes to catch Adele sing Skyfall (a song I quite like in its own right), and ,later, accidentally at one point to hear Seth MacFarlane bomb on a joke about Rex Reed that really just beat around the bush taking a poke at Adele for being on the curvier side.  At this point, I turned off the Oscars.  And, no, I have no plans to watch next year.

Literally billions of people watch the telecast, clearly not caring that it's just absolutely miserable television, and I don't think I remember anyone being satisfied with a host since Billy Crystal was in his hey-day.  I have to assume Seth MacFarlane's sense of humor was a weird fit, just as whatever happened that year when James Franco and, I think, Anne Hathaway (is that right?) hosted.

I have no idea.  The last Oscars telecast I watched I believe was hosted by David Letterman.

But, Academy, I think I have your solution.  I know how to set this right.

In 2014, hire The Admiral as your host and show producer.  He's retired and he needs a project.

This man is TV gold

Two Movies Make me Ponder the Nature of Showbiz Stardom: The Great Ziegfeld (1936) and Fame (1980)

On Sunday and Monday I watched the 3 hour marathon that is the 1936 film The Great Ziegfeld.  I taped this one off TCM a few days ago as I knew it co-starred William Powell and Myrna Loy, and I was pretty keen to see more of both now that I'm out of Thin Man films.  I was also actually very curious about the historical figure Florenz Ziegfeld who brought into being the Ziegfeld Follies and pioneered much of the modern showmanship of American big theater and the now lost art of "glorifying the American girl".

Top that off with some famously complicated technical numbers, and what wasn't there to want to see?


Well,again, the movie is three hours.

That doesn't mean it doesn't cruise along at a good clip, but, you know, block off three hours of your life for an absolutely stunning visual treat, the kind they quit making around the late 1950's.

One of the great lost commodities of the early 20th Century, a phrase that probably rings familiar but you aren't sure why, is Ziegfeld Girl.  Lifting his idea from Paris revues, Florenz Ziegfeld filled his shows with dozens of young women to dance and sing in a fashion that would be imitated in Hollywood musicals for years in huge chorus productions that, today, I suppose, is mostly associated with Busby Berkeley films.

What's amazing is how many names were once Ziegfeld girls, including Barbara Stanwyck, Norma Shearer, Lucille Ball, Joan Crawford, Louise Brooks and countless more.

The movie spanned Ziegfeld's adult life, from carnival barker at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair to his death in the early 1930's.  The movie bills itself as tracking the "romances" of Ziegfeld, and it does, at that, politely skirting around any shenanigans.  Less politely poking fun at is mismanagement of money.  Powell is actually pretty great, and if you've got the time to kill, it's not a bad way to spend your time.

Happy Birthday, Lee Marvin

Happy birthday to actor and US Marine Lee Marvin.

I believe today marks his 89th birthday.

I hear you, Lee

Marvin passed in 1989.

So, "The Internship" is coming out - How was I involved?

This Vince Vaughn/ Owen Wilson comedy was filming last summer. I happened to be in the building where they were filming, but it wasn't at Google in the Bay Area. The scenes on the steps there? That's a sort of union-like building at Georgia Tech.



I was scheduled to give a presentation after lunch, and I was delayed thanks to the scene you see in the trailer with Aasif Mandvi talking about how lucky they are to be interning at Google.

It was weird.  You kind of forget that when they're filming a comedy, the scene is funny to the audience but not to the characters, so Mandvi was improvising and trying different things, but to a room full of stone faced people in beanies.

The director, meanwhile, was laughing behind the camera, but nobody on the crew looked even mildly amused.  So, do with that what you will.

I know this, because I got trapped watching the filming when I was coming back from the men's room and trying to re-enter the room where I was presenting.

I think we were supposed to sign an NDA about this, but I didn't sign jack.

If that 0.5 seconds film you see has a little extra juice, that's The League you sense there.

By the way, everything about this movie makes me feel incredibly old.

Also, Vince Vaughn is about my height, which was surprising.  But he's in much better shape, which was less surprising.

Signal Rewatch: It turns out "Avengers" is a pretty good movie

I didn't hate Avengers the first time I saw it, but I also wasn't a huge fan of the movie.  I liked it well enough, but something about it didn't click with me as much as I was hoping for.  Look, straight up, I'm a Captain America fan, and I kind of though the movie gave Cap short shrift.  I think I had expectations vis-a-vis Cap's assumed leadership role in Avengers, and that just didn't happen, exactly.

But as a fun roller coaster ride?  Yeah, it's pretty phenomenal.

I still don't quite get how people even followed the movie who hadn't paid to see the other Avengers movies in the lead up to this one, especially if you missed Thor (and, really, why would you miss Thor?  My MOM liked that movie).

On a second viewing, a bit more calibrated for what one could expect from Avengers, I didn't just watch it to enjoy a few choice scenes, I really quite liked the whole package much, much better - even if the ending is kind of ridiculous.  And, man, yeah, no wonder they can't keep Avengers toys on the shelf.

Watching the big, exciting fight scene at the end, I'm now in total awe of the package Joss Whedon put together.  I mean, it's about as perfect a super-hero-y playscape, threat, etc.. as you're going to find, and then the camera work and FX just really carry you through that whole terrific, chaotic cityscape.

I know I'm telling you guys something you already know, but by that point the last time I saw the movie, I was sort of ready for the conclusion, and everything between me and our villain stowed safely away felt a bit like a semi-welcome delay before we could all file out.  Not sulking about Cap's second-tier status kind of set my mind at ease, as did enjoying a lot of what Mark Ruffalo was up to in every shot where he appeared as either Banner or Hulk.  And, yeah, as much as a Planet Hulk movie sounds boss as hell, I'd like a Ruffalo-as-Hulk movie first.

Anyway, that's this evening's geek-out.

I'm pretty jazzed about Iron Man 3, and the in-production Cap and Thor flicks.  And word is that fricking Rocket Raccoon is coming to the big screen in a Guardians of the Galaxy movie.  Rocket Raccoon is getting a movie before The Flash, Shazam, Wonder Woman, Aquaman...

Go to hell, DC.

Now, if I can get a Black Panther movie, I might relax a little.

Signal Watches: Punisher - War Zone

So, yeah.

I'm, at best, a casual reader of The Punisher comics from Marvel.  Back in the 80's, when Punisher was sort of relevant in the wake of a few Deathwish movies (clearly the idea behind the character came from Bronson), and Bernhard Goetz had opened fire on a NYC Subway, I recall names like Mike Zeck, Klaus Janson and a young Jim Lee working on Punisher stuff.

I've tried various Punisher comics over the years, but it's a book that, when I'm not reading it, I don't really miss.  Watching someone stone cold execute people because they're "mobsters" or "criminals" - gets kind of stale after a while.  Yes, I started reading Ennis's run, and enjoyed it.  I intended to read it as trades, and just never got around to it.  I am reading Rucka's stuff, and it's good, solid, Rucka - if a bit spot on the nose "oh, of course he has a broken female protagonist" Rucka, but that doesn't mean its not worth checking out.

Noir Watch: What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? is a tough sell for a "hey, want to pop in a movie and relax?" kind of movie.  For this reason, I hadn't seen it in its entirety since college*, and had to do some convincing to get Jamie to watch the movie with me - but she soldiered through,and I think she liked it again.

I will do what a straight dude in 2013 will rarely do and admit a lot of affection for Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, even though the number of films I have seen each of them in is fairly small.**  By this point in both of their careers, the two weren't considered bankable stars, and while we tend to think of the early 60's as a conservative time, it's almost impossible to imagine this movie getting made today - and getting an audience to look up from their phones long enough to pay attention.

Trailer for Animated feature - Superman: Unbound

A loose adaptation of the final Brainiac story from the pre-boot DCU.

Should be action packed.

Super Watch: Dark Knight Returns, Part 2

There isn't much to say about the plotting of this second installment of the direct-to-video adaptation of Dark Knight Returns that a generation of comics fans grew up with via the comics page.  The dialog, often the framing, the depiction of characters...  It's likely the closest adaptation I think you'll ever run into that doesn't fall into whatever trap Peter Jackson fell into with his The Hobbit Part 1 that felt like a checklist of scenes with no real narrative push or (dare I say it) heart in its desire to lovingly recreate each beat and scene.  Nor is it the Zack Snyder slavish recreation that misses everything about why Watchmen worked, and figures that showing the same stuff we saw on the panel is good enough, even if all the directorial decisions - like casting, emotional beats, musical selection and cinematography - were completely misunderstood.

In this second installment, as an audience we've had the opportunity to get used to Peter Weller as Batman (and he's actually pretty great), and we get Michael Emerson as a giddy, cerebral Joker (God bless you, Andrea Romano).  And, somewhat like the 3rd chapter in the Dark Knight trilogy from Nolan, Batman actually takes a back seat to some of what else is happening in the story.  World War III is seething to break out, Superman's relationship with the government is filled in, and against that backdrop, Batman is still running around concerned with cleaning up the streets of Gotham.  You can almost understand how it got ignored for all those years until he retired.

I recently saw a quote from comics creator Faith Erin Hicks noting how dated Dark Knight Returns felt on a re-read.  She's not entirely wrong, but I sort of also sort of rolled my eyes.  It's a work of its time with undercurrents that remain relevant and resonant.

Comics weren't really intended to have a shelf-life when the book hit the direct market, they were commenting on the moment, and Watchmen is no less a piece of the Cold War than DKR.  And we were so ready to forget about the cloud of nuclear annihilation when Gorbachev instituted Glasnost, I'm not surprised that a generation had grown up without the context, and doesn't quite get what it felt like to do duck and cover drills until everyone admits that it's kind of pointless when you're in about 3rd grade.  Nor has the era of street crime that pervaded the big cities been seen in Gen Y's lifetime (although Chicago spent 2012 doing it's damndest to recreate the era that made "Bloods" and "Crips" household names).

Happy Birthday, Ava Gardner

Thanks to Roger Ebert's blog, I now know it is Ava Gardner's birthday.

If you don't know who Gardner was, this was Gardner:

Yeah.  I know.

Adapting "Parker" for the big screen and changing the rules

"Civilized people need to follow rules.  These are mine:
I don't steal from people who can't afford it and I don't hurt people who don't deserve it.  Most importantly, you say you'll do something and you don't, I'll make sure you regret it."

I'm not an expert on Richard Stark's character Parker, but I have read several of the books in the Parker crime-novel series.  They're short, easy to read, good airplane stuff.  I'm not even sure there's an arc to Parker's character development until around the seventh book.  That's, as we say, a feature, not a bug.

I really like Parker novels in part not because I relate to Parker as a master-thief, but because I think in some ways I relate to Parker as someone who spends a lot of time planning things out, enough so to improvise if things go poorly, but I also become fairly irritated when people's quirks and personalities get in the way of the plan when - darn it - we all knew the plan.

However, I am just slightly less inclined than Parker to actually straight up blow up my co-workers if I feel they messed up a project.

There's a movie coming out based on one of the later books in the Parker series. Hollywood being the clever folks they are have named the movie Parker, and are not starting at the beginning of the series. You've likely seen ads with Jason Statham and (yes, people are still hiring her) Jennifer Lopez.

I find it fascinating that J-Lo actually has fans in 2013

The quote above is from the Parker trailer.  If the trailer looks like a standard, inexpensive Jason Statham action movie, I am guessing you are not far off.  The critics at Rottentomatoes certainly seem to feel that way.

The quote of Parker's rules - the thing that gets you to know the character and makes you interested in the character - is not from the books and, really, if casting Jason Statham wasn't a weird enough choice, this little good-guy-thief code has nothing to do with Parker's rules or the purpose of those rules in the series of books.